Shea Serrano[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.]
See also: If You Don't Like Country Music You're a Blue State Elitist
Song: Luke Bryan's “Drunk On You”
History: “Drunk On You” is a song by country musician Luke Bryan from an album that he had the audacity to name Tailgates & Tanlines. It's been at the top of Billboard's Country chart for about 100 years. I know some people who like it, but that's because my social circle is lacking. See below.
Atmospherics: Like someone said, “Well, we need a hit, but don't really want to try very hard, so let's rip the guts out of a few Kenny Chesney and Blake Shelton songs and call it a day. I don't imagine anyone'll notice. So… you guys maybe wanna go get a burger?”
Scientific Analysis: Minus its obvious creative CC:-ness, there are two significant barriers between “Drunk On You” and nonshittyness.
1. Boom goes the dynamite
Wordle is a program that assigns importance to words in bodies of text. How it works: You paste words into its entry box, and it generates a word cloud from the entry. The larger a word is inside the cloud, the more times it was used.
How does this help us? Easy. If we take something we already know to be fact — in this case, that there is a definite correlation between the number of times that the word “boom” appears in a song and how terrible it is — and combine it with this technology, we get a clearer understanding of why “Drunk On You” makes you wish a meteor would fall right the fuck onto your head.
We can all agree that Frank Sinatra's version of “Luck Be A Lady” is one of the most enjoyable and elegant songs in all of history, right? Here's what the cloud looked like when its lyrics are plugged in.
Beautiful. See the “boom”? Of course you don't. Because Sinatra was hot shit. They don't call him the King of Science and Songs for nothing, yo.
Now, here's the Wordle for the Black Eyed Peas' “Boom Boom Pow,” which Michelle Obama (probably) disregarded with a “Man, that shit is weaksauce.”
Gross. It's an abomination. Or, more accurately, an aboomination.
(p.s. Also, what's a “get-get”? See it in the cloud? Black Eyed Peas are the worst.)
How does “Drunk On You” rate?
Substantial aboomination. Which equals:
Bam-o. Upended by science.
2. Benecio Del Toro
This one might even be more troublesome than the booms, at least if you're interested in not being mauled to death. A bit from the lyrics:
Dancin' on the tailgate in a full moon… You're lookin' so good in what's left of those blue jeans.
!!!
What's supposed to be poetic songwriting that indirectly implies our protagonist isn't a dullard does quite the opposite. Because it seems pretty clear that this lady that he's talking about, the one that he's drunk on, is TURNING INTO A WEREWOLF RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS GODDAMN EYEBALLS.
The signs are there: the full moon, the “dancing,” which is really her body handling morphing into a giganto-hairy killer, which would explain why her pants are tattered and torn. I mean, it shouldn't be hard to notice a werewolf standing in front of you, is what I'm saying.
Credit: Larami Serrano
See? Fourth one. Easy.
Conclusions:
(I) Tailgates & Tanlines HAS to be the worst album title of all.
(II) Frank Sinatra is aces.
(III) Someone call Webster and tell him to go ahead and throw “aboomination” in there.
(IV) When I started writing this, I wasn't expecting it to end with werewolves.
If You Don't Like Country Music You're a Blue State Elitist
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