For those of us with ears attuned to musical nuance, the realm of mainstream pop can often feel like wading through treacle. While the occasional gem surfaces – think Adele’s raw emotion in “Rolling in the Deep,” the infectious charm of “Call Me Maybe,” or Beyoncé’s powerhouse anthem “Crazy in Love” – much of it is manufactured fodder, engineered for charts rather than hearts. And then there was LMFAO, a duo that didn’t just miss the mark; they seemed to actively target the nadir of musical taste. The news of their hiatus, far from eliciting disappointment, brought a wave of relief. A break from their particularly abrasive brand of pop felt less like a loss and more like a public service. Beyond the questionable musicality, what truly aggravated was their posturing as unconventional outsiders. Newsflash: cutoff shorts and glasses without lenses do not an eccentric artist make.
But let’s cut to the chase, or rather, to the song that became synonymous with a particular brand of sonic unpleasantness: “Party Rock Anthem.” This track isn’t just bad; it’s an assault on the senses, aural wallpaper designed to erode your will to live. It sounds less like a professional recording and more like a discarded GarageBand experiment from a middle schooler who gave up halfway through. The Europop synths are offensively cheap, the kind of sound that would make even the most ardent Ke$ha fan wince. Then come the “rapping” contributions from Redfoo and SkyBlu, so utterly devoid of rhythm or tone that they manage to leach any potential for mindless enjoyment from the already offensively simplistic beat. Despite a name that suggests levity, LMFAO’s music is so devoid of any discernible personality that listening to it evokes not amusement, but a profound sense of emptiness. It’s sonic nothingness masquerading as party music.
Their follow-up single from “Sorry For Party Rocking,” the ironically titled album, “Sexy and I Know It,” only deepened the descent into musical absurdity. The humor, if you can call it that, is painfully derivative. The chorus’s central hook blatantly rips off Right Said Fred’s already gratingly overplayed “I’m Too Sexy,” replacing wit with the staggeringly unfunny line, “Ah, girl look at that body, ah, I work out.” The supposed joke? That they, LMFAO, are not conventionally fit. The comedic genius apparently peaks later in the song with Redfoo’s “outrageous” confession: “When I’m at the beach, I’m in a speedo trying to tan my cheeks.” This isn’t just juvenile; it’s an insult to actual juveniles. It’s humor so inept it circles back to being aggressively unfunny.
LMFAO embodies that character we all remember from grade school: the kid relentlessly telling terrible jokes, oblivious to the complete lack of laughter. Day after day, you’d hope for a glimmer of self-awareness, a sign they might grasp the silence. But it never came. The urge to react, to somehow stop the onslaught of bad jokes (or bad music), was only suppressed by the weary knowledge that any attention, even negative, would only fuel the fire. So, you endured, counting down to summer vacation, the temporary reprieve the only thing preserving your sanity.
Ultimately, LMFAO’s legacy will likely be a regrettable footnote in pop music history, the kind of act that will elicit bewildered embarrassment from future generations when we confess, yes, we lived through the “Party Rock Anthem” era. Their hints at a future return loom like a threat of renewed sonic pollution. One can only hope that when, and if, they do resurface, the world will have collectively developed a stronger immunity to their particular brand of putrid party-pop. Perhaps next time, no one will be sorry for not party rocking.
