One of my personal pet peeves is non-consensual music. Specially the radio. Who wants to listen to the radio in the age of SoundCloud and playlists anyway?

Well, some people do.

In fact, many people might do. The people who answer I LISTEN TO A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYHTING when you ask them the kind of music they like.

In this particular Thursday I was having a pretty horrible day and that fucking song was playing and I obviously could not keep my mouth shut. ‘Ugh, I just cannot stand this song’, I said. My listener was a lovely lady that obviously was not used to ugly statements. Or anything that doesn’t go her way in general. Huge phone in hand, luxurious blond hair and a pretty smile. I am not going to be the one championing pretty privilege, but I somehow knew that making people do things for her was in her wheelhouse. She looked at me and said, in one of those singing voices ‘I actually like it.’

And in my immense wisdom, I could not edit myself and I said, ‘Well… maybe you have no taste.’

I am not proud of this, but at the same time, I do not regret one bit. The song is awful and needs to be demonized. That harrowing riff on a loop and the other three instruments just drilling my brain with that appaling melodic hook THAT DOES NOT CHANGE IN BETWEEN THE VERSES AND THE CHORUS. Just atrocious.

And she got so mad at this, but like, so mad, that I cannot stop thinking about the underlying reasons. Maybe she was just an ignorant individual, totally unaware of the lack of creativity of the musical elements. Or most likely, she felt a real connection with the lyrics. And due to the fact that I am very petty, I cannot let this go either. The lyrics explore the middle-class fantasy of having many layers to life, when all the aluded people do is work in finance and go to brunch with the girls while your boyfriend does whatever it is that straight men do. So I will try to debunk couple of lyrical statement of this song by using dialectical tools ued by philosophers.

Occam’s razor: Entities should not be multiplied without necessity. The more assumptions there are, the more possibilities there are for error, and the simplest explanation is usually – but not always – the correct one.

If he does find you boring, perhaps you are just boring. If you have a voice that someone finds annoying, maybe that voice is annoying for more people (She sounds insufferable) .

Sagan standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You do not deserve to be called a bitch even if you want to, Kate Nash. In the words of Latrice Royale, a bitch would be;

And you do not deserve that at all, Kate Nash. Not you or any of your listeners, to that matter.

Hitchen’s razor: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

“Your face is pasty / ‘Cause you’ve gone and got so wasted / What a surprise, don’t want to look at your face / ‘Cause it’s making me sick” All evidence we have is the solely opinion of the singer, so we can declare that (like my conversation partner), she might just lack taste.

Hume’s razor: Causes must be sufficiently able to produce the effect assigned to them.

“Then you’ll call me a bitch / And everyone we’re with will be embarrassed” Perhaps you need more and better emotional tools, since the minimum inconvenience throws you off.

Popper’s falsifiability principle: For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be possible to disprove or refute it.
“Yes, it was childish and you got aggressive / And I must admit that I was a bit scared / But it gives me thrills to wind you up” Like literally extrapolating theories with only one empiric try. Not worth it, sorry!

Newton’s flaming laser sword: If something cannot be settled by experiment, it is not worth debating.

Rhyming bitter with fitter. There’s no experiment on earth to justify that corny ass juxtaposition. Because you eat lemons? Oh, shut up.

Grice’s razor: Address what the speaker actually meant, instead of addressing the literal meaning of what they actually said.

The metaphor of the chorus it’s just pathetic.

Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity.

“And every time we fight, I know it’s not right / Every time that you’re upset and I smile / I know I should forget / But I can’t”. Also may I add that the definition of craziness is knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway? Thanks.

And probably my favourite one,
Duck test: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

If a song seems kind of empty, meaningless and uninspired, maybe it’s just bad.