Allow me to pose a hypothetical situation to you, my dear Pipe Dream reader. Consider for a moment that you are a pop artist in this day and age who is desperate to pen what will unarguably be called the song of this generation.
Your first step is simply writing the lyrics, the poetry of the song if you will. You begin with a phrase that will surely speak to the youth of today. Something like, “Poppin’ bottles in the ice.” That is an excellent start. Young adults are always drinking champagne.
However, your lyrical brilliance doesn’t stop there. You remember hearing about something called a simile and, of course, you think to include it in your song: “Poppin’ bottles in the ice, like a blizzard.” Ah yes, a sentence like that will truly make your fourth grade English teacher proud. It uses both a simile and a comma!
Despite the fact that you are a poetic genius, you may have just made a grave mistake. Unless the next line of your groundbreaking song pertains to lizards or Harry Potter, finding a rhyme for the word blizzard may prove troublesome.
This is the moment that separates you from all the rest. With your quick thinking you invent a word and explain that, “When we drink, we do it right, gettin’ slizzard.”
So go the first two lines of the song “Like a G6” by Far East Movement.
Perhaps I should back up a little and explain why I find myself dissecting a song that has all of the droning repetitiveness of a jackhammer without any of the productive results or usefulness of construction workers. Far East Movement will be coming to our fine campus this weekend as part of our yearly Spring Fling. They will not be alone, however, as they will be joined by Taking Back Sunday and Super Mash Bros.
This lineup is the latest injustice in an ongoing trend here on campus. Binghamton University has become the “Venue of One-Hit Wonders.”
When I first toured this school as a prospective student, I was shown spacious model rooms, warm sunny weather and told that the Foo Fighters had recently come to campus. My tour guide cheerfully explained that Binghamton University is frequently visited by the biggest names in music. Alas, four years have passed and I have yet to see these big names. We have hosted Third Eye Blind, Eve 6, Girl Talk and now Far East Movement, Taking Back Sunday and Super Mash Bros.
The six groups have only six “hits” — by measure of only the loosest definition of the word — to split between them, half of which belong to Third Eye Blind. Perhaps I am being too generous in claiming that we only host groups that produce one-hit wonders. It seems that we frequently book acts that have no hits at all.
The solution to this problem is simple. Instead of spending a year’s worth of my tuition dollars for Snooki to come to campus and judge an ab competition, we should put it toward getting a respectable music act. Instead of getting three bands that no one knows, we should pool our money and get just one decent performer. I understand that it is important to offer variety, but surely having a sampling of three different, terrible bands is not better than having a singular, decent one.
I fear that my objections will go unheard over the sounds of emo yelling and, of course, comparisons to a G6.