Hit the Lights – “Anthem” • Page 7

damn, i didn't even realize hopeless was that bad right now. jeeeeez

 

Artists | Hopeless Records

That's a LOT of dudes.

 

My point was how quality alone does not necessarily push units. Especially at that time, major label support made a big difference. It took All Time Low's first "hit" four years to go gold, whereas Boys Like Girls' one took five months. BLG's self-titled album also went gold less than two years after release, and ATL has yet to achieve a gold full length. That's not to downplay ATL's accomplishments, just show the difference in resources.

Boys Like Girls (album) - Wikipedia
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I didn't say that. I just think they had more resources than most bands on their first album.

 

Not sure if this point has already been made (there's 7 pages here), but HTL once wrote a song about tying up a woman and taking advtanage of her. So....

 

Yeah, like they meant that in a literal sense.

 

NickyThom.Com

 

That was an interesting read. He kind of makes my point. It's so stupid people are complaining about lyrics that obviously aren't meant to be taken seriously.

 

wtf is wrong with some of you?

 

This is fucked up

 

I can only imagine if you can read lyrics like that then go "oh, it's okay, he didn't mean it for real" then you must be okay with someone being physically assaulted if the person who did it afterwards goes "Relax, it's just a prank bro".

I don't care whether or not something is meant to be taken "seriously", you don't write lyrics like that (or harass or do anything to someone physically or through words) no matter what because some things shouldn't be said or done in jest or for any reason. Like holy shit this is common fucking sense.

 

It still remains a big debate today whether people should be "allowed" to use violence as a plot device. I don't think the purpose of the post was to give the song a pass, though. For what it's worth, they don't even play it live anymore.

 

Someone responded to you and literally said that they see nothing wrong with the lyrics because "they aren't meant to be taken seriously".

If they don't play the song anymore, then good on them, but thinking that the lyrics are okay because "they aren't serious" is a major problem because that's just plain wrong and shitty to think. Just because someone says something "they don't mean" doesn't mean they are free from criticism for saying it in the first place.

 

Also, do you really think their teenage fans are going to say "oh not a big deal, I'm sure he doesn't mean it"? Of course not. They're going to internalize the misogyny and start to see its manifestations as more acceptable because a band they love and idolize wrote a song romanticizing it. There are multiple factors at play here and it's incredibly shortsighted to write off criticisms of a song "because it's fiction."

 

That's a big assumption on your part. I assume most of the people who know that song are fully-grown adults now, but regardless, it's possible to write off flawed art as a product of its time. I certainly haven't seen many people up in arms about songs like Me Vs. Maradona Vs. Elvis. Either way, it's too easy to tear apart songs from over a decade ago with current social justice terminology. No one's saying it's not problematic, just that it's debatable and in the past.

 

I'm pretty sure the TFT whatever person was in fact saying it's not problematic

 

Its not in the past though, problems like this are extremely relevant nowadays. People might argue that songs like this are the reason the pop punk scene is as fucked up as it is today.

All of the 13 year old kids listening to misogynistic songs back in 2005 are now in their 20s and in bands and the pop punk scene is full of cases of sexual assault, misogyny and songs containing lyrics about shaming to a person (usually female) "because they don't like you, the 'good guy'". So, is something like this really in the past? Rhetorical question, it's not. Songs like this still get written and problems like this still happen in this scene. These topics are even more relevant in the present day because the Internet exists in such a way that voicing these concerns is much easier than a decade ago.

 

As for the other point, I'm far from a Brand New fanboy but to me the whole point of Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis is that the protagonist is self aware and in conflict with themselves over the shitty thing they know they're doing

 

Woof. I didn't expect a thread like this when I poked my head in to see what the discussion around HTL would be like.

If anyone wants one more random schmo's opinion, I always separated pop-punk into three general tiers:

1) The standouts who would go on to do greater things (FOB, ATL)
2) The standard-bearers who did derivative better than anyone else (HTL)
)3 The rest of the pack

HTL's first two albums tickled me in a way that most derivative pop-punk simply didn't back in the day, which is why I held onto them after the genre died down. I still believe they could have broken into that standout tier in an alternate universe where Invicta gained more traction, but then again, I think similarly about The Used getting on MCR's level with Lies For The Liars. At any rate, if HTL had to go back to a derivative sound, I thought Summer Bones was the best way to do it -- it hit all the same pleasure points for me as their oldest material, but with tighter overall structure and performance. Sad to see that they seem to engender such strong opinions going the other way, but I'm still hoping the next album iterates well within my admittedly conservative expectations.

 

Of course those are still problems. All I meant is no one should be using a song from 11 years ago as leverage in their argument against a band. If we're going to write off bands for having misogynistic songs in the past, we'd have to include Fall Out Boy, Panic!, Paramore, Mayday Parade, and various others.

That's one interpretation of the lyrics, and the HTL song can be taken multiple ways as well.

 

People have given FOB hell for TTTYG and Paramore has received flak for some stuff too. Hell, Brand New's debut album is full of shitty messages in songs.

The point I was trying to make wasn't that HTL were the only one's at fault. My point was that you can't write off lyrics like that because "they didn't mean it" and to be fair, it wasn't even you who my initial comment was directed towards. This tangent is just going a little too far away from the point was actually trying to make originally.

 

Good god is jba in this shitty band?

Stop defending misogyny on my website. Just stop. Any other attempts to justify that shit will result in being banned. It's gross.

 

I assume a lot of you are against Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto because kids might get the wrong message? Why am I trying to argue with stupid people?

 

Yes, exposing young children to over the top violence can be bad. And people have criticized GTA and other games like it pretty much since they was first released, don't exactly understand the point you're making.

However, that doesn't correlate directly to music because people associate on a more personal level with a band because a band is something much more "real" and "concrete" than some pixels on a screen. People can (and will) internalize their messages and lyrics more than something in a video game (but of course the latter happens to) because it feels more personable. A lyric from a band will resonate with a young person more than an almost cartoon over-exaggeration of a KO in Mortal Kombat.

But like I said, both have their negative effects.

Also, shoutouts to another tangent.

 

That user calling people stupid is just rich hahaha

 

Yikes. Didn't really think people would argue that there's nothing wrong with that song. I think it's important to note that he mentions they wrote it meaning for it to be creepy. They didn't think that people would take it literally, but guess what, some people do.

This is a good point. A lot of these younger bands that have members sexually assaulting and abusing women would have grown up listening to this older generation of bands, where they had often written songs like the aforementioned HTL song.