Ah, Radio Rant time. Toss the single art down there, who’s it gonna be today?

…right then. LFMOA. Wait, that’s not right. MLOAF. Shit, not that. LMFAO (Oh God, I have to type that a lot?) is an “electroduo”, a description that I’ve learned to avoid based on the existence of 3OH!3. Wait, LMFAO, why does that sound familiar…?

…oh, hell no. I am not doing this. I am not dealing with the guys who wrote “Shots”. I talk about hating a lot of songs, but I can’t think of a single song I’d wipe off the Earth faster than “Shots”, a song I hate so much that I can’t even rage at it properly over the internet. Well, “Party Rock Anthem” clawed its way to number 8 on the Hot 100, and I assume most of you out there have working ears and brains, so maybe it’ll be better. Please, God.

“Party Anthem Rock” starts wi–ok, this is stupid. “Party Rock Anthem”. Really, guys, this is what you’re going to call your song? A name so mockingly generic it could pass for a fake song in a Simpsons episode? Seriously, “Party Rock Anthem” doesn’t sound like what you’d name a real song; it sounds like the premise for a bad, pre-Lonely Island SNL skit involving a rock with some confetti glued on. Between that and the bad band name, part of me thinks LMFAO are from the Ke$ha/3Oh!3 crowd of “We know we make incredibly dumb music, but screw it, we’re making more money than we can spend” music. Well, let’s jump in.

First of all, kudos to LMFAO for not having some intro announcing who they are. Actually, this beat’s kinda nice. Nothing I haven’t heard before, but enjoyable. Kind of retro, too; I wouldn’t believe this as a 2011 hit. Then there’s the main synth hook, and…what? Why do I like this?! These synths sound like a tin can, I’m fairly sure that they’re a little more than inspired by Dynamite, and the vocal hook is generic beyond belief. But I can’t not dance to this, especially once the claps come in. Hell, the whole first minute of this song is great.

My enthusiasm wanes as we hit the synth that sounds like a cricket got caught in the band’s workstation, and now we come to the verses. As it turns out, LMFAO are not good rappers, and we don’t need to waste time dealing with a verse where the highlights are “Half black half white, domino” (mixed represent!) and “No lead in our zeppelins”. Other than that, we get the usual cliches; “rock and roll” being invoked in a song that neither rocks nor rolls, girls, drinks, etc.

After another round of “Pump you up” chorus, we get a half verse before a bridge with a female vocal. “Get up, get down, put your hands up to the sound” is all that gets repeated while the backing music swells up like one of my all-time favorite dance songs “Sandstorm“. The built up is, to be honest, freakin’ sweet, but the payoff is an exact copy paste of the chorus, and ends up being kind of disappointing. From there, the song goes back to the intro beat, and finally ends.

Even though it goes against my higher brain functions (and even some of the lower ones), I can’t help but like this song. It takes the most common themes of the lowest common denominators of pop music and mashes them together, it’s probably the 12th Top 10 “I’m at club, you’re at a club, we’re all at a club having fun” hit of the year, and it’s not even a really good song. The best comparison that comes to mind is that “Party Rock Anthem” reminds me of “I Gotta Feeling”: a fun and simple song that’s amazingly danceable despite some morons with the mic. I am in no way sold on thinking LMFAO are any more than smirking d-bags (they are, after all, the guys that made “Shots”), but everyone gets lucky sometimes, right?