"It's Like Watching Your Parents Have Sex With Your Dog"

"Hearing Escape The Fate slather Carlos Santana’s “Smooth” with teenage screams is like watching your parents have sex with your dog." - Blake Solomon

This is a review I found for a CD I recently purchased titled "Punk Goes Pop: Volume 2". I had been awaiting the release of this CD back in mid-March due to previous songs from Vol. 1. I am a fan of punk, screamo and hard rock music and this CD takes some of the up and coming punk bands and has them cover a variety of top-40 hits from the past few years. On this CD, everything from "..What Goes Around" by Justin Timberlake to "Toxic" by Britney Spears is covered by bands known more for their screaming then their vocals. When given this assignment, I knew I wanted to do this CD, just because of the possibilities for reviews and the analysis I found of the album definitely takes the cake.

I googled "review for Punk Goes Pop Volume Two" and received a calvalcade of hits, with everything from video blog responses to actual reviews from magazines and online sites. The review I chose was written by Blake Solomon of absolutepunk.net.

When I first read this review, I laughed so hard I nearly peed myself. It offers up a serious, yet hysterical view of this album from top to bottom. You can tell Solomon means business throughout the review, never meaning for it to be funny, but the way it comes off when you read it aloud makes you burst out with laughter. The review begins as a take on Solomon's younger days, relating the album to trying to maintain with his youthfulness, even though he has since passed that time. He then fires up his curveball by stating "I can no longer feign youth after hearing “in the name of fun” compilations like Punk Goes Pop Vol. 2. Don’t cry for me, though; cry for Fearless Records. They’re killing music and they don’t care."

This is where Solomon begins his case for why this album is god-awful, presenting to you the line at the beginning of this piece. It caught me so off-guard that I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. The rest of review goes over different songs and how they are an abomination to their respective original creator, stating how each song fails. In the following paragraph, he contends that a couple of the artists took completely different songs and made them sound exactly alike, leading him to question how this was recorded by "various artists".

He ends the review in the same manner he started, ripping apart Fearless Records for releasing this album to the general public. Perhaps the greatest atrocity of the album, according to Solomon, is the selection of the songs. It was believed these artists would venture out of the current age range and attempt songs from the late 90's. Solomon's last line caps off this review and it will still have me laughing from now until class tomorrow. His finishing line:

"14 year-old girls, eat your hearts out. Everyone else, blow your heads off."

I felt this review was really well-written and gets his point clearly across that this album sucks. I have to agree with him except for many 3 or 4 songs and that is because I like the bands performing the songs, so automatically I am biased towards their work. But I do agree with the review that the majority of the album leaves you wanting your money back from wherever you got it. Some of the songs are just plain unlistenable. But for a good laugh, I will let you read the review and just for those who are wondering who Solomon recommended this album for:

"Recommended If You Like: pop and/or punk, hickeys"