Old Bailey Productions did not create any of the audio or lyrics for this video. We produced the video as a favor.

April 19, 2012 4:16 AM

"This masterpiece pushes the boundaries of music. We take the backseat of the car with these two ladies on their inner journey, and are shown a contemplative side of them through a series of deep and meaningful confessions." Via. Via. Via. Via. Via.
posted by sweet mister (54 comments total)

When I was 14, there was a booth in Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire that let you make your own records, singing along to karaoke-like tracks of popular songs. My best friend and I recorded our version of "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb. We thought it was brilliant, until we turned 15 and decided to be punks and decided that Peaches and Herb were lame, and that we really couldn't sing that well.

I'm so glad that technology didn't exist so that over 1,000,000 people could witness our shame and comment on the relative desirability of my friend or me, because I had enough troubles shaking off my adolescent angst as it is.
posted by xingcat at 4:23 AM on April 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

I choose to believe these young ladies are doing this very knowingly and ironically. Yes, I do. Shut up. SHUT UP. LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
posted by Decani at 4:26 AM on April 19, 2012

Never thought I'd say this, but that is in desperate need of some autotune.

On second thought, I really couldn't give a flying one.
posted by item at 4:40 AM on April 19, 2012

More interestingly, one of the via links had this in the sidebar Worlds most Atheist Country?

Interesting that it comes up alonside an article with a video that will make people blaspheme.
posted by marienbad at 4:49 AM on April 19, 2012

ok, well i lasted 52 seconds. christ, nthing item's comment.
posted by marienbad at 4:51 AM on April 19, 2012

Wouldn't this be more persuasive if the self-proclaimed "hot" women were actually, you know, hot? They're about 60th percentile at best.
posted by aurelian at 4:58 AM on April 19, 2012

I was 100% on-board with this being piss-taking until the tag at the end. "Just kidding, we're perfect." Wouldn't have needed that unless they thought they were poking fun at themselves rather than an idea.

Nope, this is earnest. For certain values of "earnest."

Fuck.

Also, I can't think of Canobie Lake Park without thinking of their early-2000s (or earlier) jingle that ended "Canobie Lake ... PARK!"
posted by uncleozzy at 5:00 AM on April 19, 2012

The true measure of a society is not how it treats its best members, but how it treats those who manifest this kind of utter sabomination.

The United States' failure to nuke all involved from orbit can therefore be interpreted as an act of unprecedented benevolence/ malfeasance by the rest of the world.

"We let this happen. Judge us accordingly."
posted by ShutterBun at 5:02 AM on April 19, 2012

At least they Auto-Tuned Rebecca Black.

Somebody get the "producers" Celemony's Melodyne, it's only $99 for the VST plugin.
posted by kuanes at 5:04 AM on April 19, 2012

I liked this for the rare chance to see a video with a million views and 15:1 dislike to like ratio. What's the opposite of viral? Maybe this is an "antibiotic video"?
posted by DU at 5:08 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wouldn't this be more persuasive if the self-proclaimed "hot" women were actually, you know, hot? They're about 60th percentile at best.

aurelian, I'm a man often accused of insensitivity, and even I find that misogynistic.
posted by IAmBroom at 5:08 AM on April 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

I would bet quite a lot that this video was an intentional joke.

(And if I'm right, then apparently quite a successful one, judging by the responses here.)
posted by kyrademon at 5:25 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yes, indeed, just like me. Insofar as I can't sing and shouldn't record a single.
posted by drlith at 5:31 AM on April 19, 2012

The next rebecca black! And this time there's two of them! And these two are like, actually way worse which is quite an accomplishment.

I like the description:

Old Bailey Productions did not create any of the audio or lyrics for this video. We produced the video as a favor.

In other words: Don't blame us!!!!!

Wouldn't this be more persuasive if the self-proclaimed "hot" women were actually, you know, hot? They're about 60th percentile at best.

Are you talking about all women, or just 15 year olds?
posted by delmoi at 5:36 AM on April 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

It's a joke. Even if it wasn't, the song is kind of good in a challenging way. The not quite on-note and monotone singing, especially as they harmonize, is unique. By the end I was laughing with joy: the lyrics, the weird music, their vocal melody...

I'm almost positive it's a joke just because of how it so clearly copies Rebecca Black's Friday video: the backseat of the car, the same kind of dancing, the more spoken than sung vocal delivery...

Regardless of whether it's a joke or not, I like it.
posted by qivip at 5:37 AM on April 19, 2012

I liked this for the rare chance to see a video with a million views and 15:1 dislike to like ratio. What's the opposite of viral? Maybe this is an "antibiotic video"?

Dude really, you watched it right? It has a million views.
posted by delmoi at 5:40 AM on April 19, 2012

I feel as if I am a richer and more understanding person for watching that. Thanks for sharing.
posted by sourwookie at 5:47 AM on April 19, 2012

"Complete shit" captured on video manages to divide well-respected online community on gender issues as well as the current state of the music industry.

Malcolm McLaren would be happy, I think.

Think about it. Look how little it takes for accusations of "misogyny" or "parody" to come out of the woodwork.

Fucking sad, indeed.

Too afraid to call "shit" "shit" lest your opinions be slapped with an unpopular label. This is the naked Emperor. Oh, but the subject is "hot chicks" so that warrants some kind of special consideration, since it might be parody!

Call it as you see it. To me it's a shitty parody of shittyness. Anyone else willing to commit to an acutal opinion of the piece itself?
posted by ShutterBun at 5:51 AM on April 19, 2012

OK, ShutterBun -

I liked it. I thought it was funny.

There. One actual opinion.
posted by kyrademon at 5:57 AM on April 19, 2012

Funny is enough, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by ShutterBun at 5:59 AM on April 19, 2012

Surreal masterpiece. Or shit. Can't tell up front, it has to lodge in the back of the brain for a while to tell the difference.
posted by Bovine Love at 6:02 AM on April 19, 2012

IAmBroom: I don't see my assessment as gender-based, which I would think would be necessary to be misogynistic. If it were a pair of guys proclaiming how bitchin' they looked, I'd probably have the same reaction. It's more a comment on the lack of... what, humility? Realism? Differing sample sizes?

If someone claimed a high IQ (not that IQ tests measure anything other than the ability to take IQ tests, but hey), and then needed a median or slightly less often than median number of questions to walk through a logical argument, I'd see that as much the same.
posted by aurelian at 6:10 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Incredibly powerful and effective. This video filled me with a raw hunger, a bestial craving, an almost inexpressible need...


...to go back in time and unsee it.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:10 AM on April 19, 2012

Another masterpiece, from the French presidential race: Take power over me. Swedish model/singer Rebecca Carlborn aka Victoire Passage sings her love for left-left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélanchon.
posted by elgilito at 6:17 AM on April 19, 2012

Anyone else willing to commit to an acutal opinion of the piece itself?

I think it is fantastic and can't wait for the dance remix.
posted by inigo2 at 6:37 AM on April 19, 2012

Singing ostentatiously poorly in a flat affect is not funny, here or on my lawn.
posted by Infinity_8 at 7:17 AM on April 19, 2012

This is entertaining, but it's not Friday. The overreach is a little too predictable. It's some variation of "I'm dope," and it hits some basic teen pop song tics ("ass" present only as a missing rhyme, the "like Miley said" reference), but hits them in a way that seems fairly calculated and intentionally bad. Old Bailey Productions might not have done the audio and lyrics themselves, but someone did and they did it after watching Friday blow up. The PG13 sexualization feels off, too. Friday had hilarious lyrics ("Gotta get my bowl...", "and Saturday comes afterward...") and seemed as a whole more innocent and unintentional.

The segments of the internet who jump all over videos like this one and Friday, chorusing "It's shit!", remind me of Maddox doing the judging children's drawings shtick, except on youtube the judgments are blithely sincere.
posted by postcommunism at 7:18 AM on April 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Heh. The lack of obvious auto tune made it sound oddly fresh to me.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:44 AM on April 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's crap, but I think this is somehow a current version of being in a crap band with your mates. Which, I am assuming, a lot of us have done, although we did not post to YouTube, partly because the technology did not exist back then. But now you can do this and get it on the Internet by clicking a button.
posted by carter at 8:06 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Anyone else willing to commit to an acutal opinion of the piece itself?

It's terrible, but not really notable in its terribility; belongs in the same bin as "Tik Tok" or "Firework" or "Single Ladies". Maybe the second half has a bass drop, or a 1-5-6-4 chorus, or "feat." some hip-hop star, but I'm guessing it does without.

And chances are near-zero that I'm going to hear it against my will, on someone else's radio, or a movie trailer, or in the mall; can't really hate something you'll only hear voluntarily.
posted by kurumi at 8:08 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh, for Christ sakes, don't we have better things to do with our time than trawl the internet for young women we can mock?
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:12 AM on April 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

This actually works pretty well, in the way the girls could care less about their musical performance perfectly matches the lyrical content of the song. It's a strangely honest expression of emptiness, and the strange, val-speak cadence of their non-autotuned voices is sort of immediate and shocking in the context of the lite electro beats, even more when you're placed in the back of the limo with them. Very strange.
posted by swift at 8:46 AM on April 19, 2012

Bunny Ultramod: "Oh, for Christ sakes, don't we have better things to do with our time than trawl the internet for young women we can mock?"

I had an old friend who collected records of highschool orchestras. He saw them as unintentional exercises in xenharmony. Now granted these women are no Shaggs or even Porstmouth Sinfonia, maybe closer to a cognitively mundane Wesley Willis. This performance sits in that uncomfortable space where it doesn't break enough rules to be interesting, but it does a mediocre job of following a very well known formula. Regarding the "opposite of viral" idea, maybe (thinking whimsically here), music like this could inoculate pop culture, making it impossible for many to enjoy this sort of formulaic electronic pop afterward. I know Satisfaction will never sound the same to me after hearing a particularly bent version.

The attention these women (and Rebecca Black) receive has much more to do with their gender than the music they perform. This is the norm for women in just about every tier of music. We don't pay attention to the music of this caliber being made by men their age. I think this is related to our cultural model of female desirability - the fact that an accomplished or competent woman constructed to be less desirable, because she is in some sense self sufficient.

And this is also the context for the lyrics, since the song is all about being "hot". They know that their "hotness" is tied to their youth. In fact every pubescent woman must struggle with the problem of the "hot teen" archetype, whether by desexualizing herself, ignoring it (and thus likely falling victim to it, at the hands of the older men who want them for it), or emphasizing and overplaying. In fact "hotness" as they talk about it in the song is as vapid, fleeting, shallow, and unreliable as their performance of the song. And the style of this song (including the normal top 40 versions) will likely age about as gracefully as they do.
posted by idiopath at 9:00 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Two words:

Mrs. Miller.
posted by tspae at 9:10 AM on April 19, 2012 [4 favorites]

Oh, for Christ sakes, don't we have better things to do with our time than trawl the internet for young women we can mock?

No.
posted by Simple Answer to a Simple Question at 9:40 AM on April 19, 2012

Acoustic cover.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:27 AM on April 19, 2012

No.

It may be worth considering what that says about you, rather than what it says about the young women in the video.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:29 AM on April 19, 2012

idiopath: The attention these women (and Rebecca Black) receive has much more to do with their gender than the music they perform. This is the norm for women in just about every tier of music. We don't pay attention to the music of this caliber being made by men their age. I think this is related to our cultural model of female desirability - the fact that an accomplished or competent woman constructed to be less desirable, because she is in some sense self sufficient.

Oh, FFS. Bullshit.

LMGTFY:

Worst Band Ever returns videos of all-male bands as the top choices.

Worst Youtube Singer returns both male and female examples to mock. (The second link just happens to have a woman in the screencap, but it's actually to distortions of American Idol performances.)

It's not patriarchy every fucking time.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:14 AM on April 19, 2012

Just because men also get mocked doesn't mean when women get mocked there isn't specifically a gendered quality to it. If you want evidence that these young women are particularly being targeted for abuse based on gender, go ahead and read the YouTube comments.

Compare the comments in this video, which features a male band, and mostly mock them for being incompetent, to the comments on Rebecca Black's video, which are often specifically about her gender. In fact, here's a recent response to Black:

"This feels like heaven after listening to that 2 bitches' song 'hot problems'"

Now, in general I think this sort of online bullying is contemptible. There is great value in intelligent criticism, but pointing and laughing is just pure ugliness. But there is a big difference between pointing at a man and laughing because he doesn't know how to play his instrument and pointing at a young woman and laughing because who does this bitch think she is.

And its particularly notable on the video on this FPP, because the young women in it had the temerity to comment, however inexactly, on the culture of hotness. It has unleashed the fury of a thousand assholes who think good criticism is to remind women that they are not attractive. And I know some will say that they invited it by raising the topic and addressing themselves as hot. But nobody ever invites bullying. They just provide an excuse for it.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:32 AM on April 19, 2012 [4 favorites]

I wonder, if Ed Sullivan were alive would he book this duo?
posted by Twang at 4:02 PM on April 19, 2012

He booked Mrs. Miller.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 4:04 PM on April 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: struggling with the problem of the "hot teen" archetype.
posted by Twang at 4:04 PM on April 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

@Bunny: I did not know that.
posted by Twang at 4:05 PM on April 19, 2012

I had to look it up.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 5:16 PM on April 19, 2012

Heh, this cover was kind of cool.

If someone claimed a high IQ (not that IQ tests measure anything other than the ability to take IQ tests, but hey), and then needed a median or slightly less often than median number of questions to walk through a logical argument, I'd see that as much the same.

Yes, but claiming that these two are less attractive then 39% of all women in the world is utterly absurd.
posted by delmoi at 10:49 PM on April 19, 2012

Joel whats-his-name from Talk Soup gave them the exact same "rating". Not hot: 6.
posted by thinkpiece at 4:06 AM on April 20, 2012

I'm not a music producer, and don't have a trained ear, but I find auto tune strikingly obvious even when barely used.

I hear auto tune in this. Or, auto detune if you prefer. It's most apparent in the final bars.

Suggests to me that as mentioned above that this perfectly harmonized just exactly wrong off key is indeed deliberate. Also, that the final "We're perfect" is immediately preceded by "We lie" is too pat.

That this was deliberately detuned firmly puts it in the social experiment category, but also makes it a far less interesting or rewatchable artifact compared to R Black's sincerity.

We're talking about it now, but won't be next week.
posted by Skeuomorph at 5:35 AM on April 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm with Skeuomorph. This is satire on rich girls like Rebecca Black who get their parents who hire a production company for $$$$ to write a song and make a music video.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:10 AM on April 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Wildy viral ... for all the wrong reasons." dum dum Dum DUMMM!

Is 'Hot Problems' by Double Take the New 'Friday' by Rebecca Black?

"We knew we couldn't sing [yeah], so we decided to go for a more kind of talking [yeah] singing."

ABC NEWS, asking the tough questions ... "Do you think you're hot?"

so, no, not a satire. just two girls trying to be "funny." blah.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:15 AM on April 20, 2012

Yes, but claiming that these two are less attractive then 39% of all women in the world is utterly absurd.

Not nearly as absurd as positing that there is some universal scale of attractiveness.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:16 AM on April 20, 2012

Not nearly as absurd as positing that there is some universal scale of attractiveness.

Even if each person had their own scale of attractiveness, those scales could be averaged into a universal scale.
posted by delmoi at 10:34 PM on April 20, 2012

so, no, not a satire. just two girls trying to be "funny." blah.

Right, because obviously teenage girls are clearly too stupid to satirize something on their own initiative.
posted by delmoi at 10:36 PM on April 20, 2012 [2 favorites]

that acoustic cover is pretty good.
posted by Shit Parade at 1:35 AM on April 22, 2012

Counter-evidence to the argument that "when guy bands are criticized, it's for their music; when girl bands are criticized, it's for their looks." From Fark, of all places. A long offering of awful videos, with little more reference to gender than the pronouns "she" and "he".

Sure, idiot teens are going to comment on attractiveness, especially when the video itself comments on attractiveness. But sometimes it really is about how goddamned awful the videos are, without regard to what's between the singer's legs.
posted by IAmBroom at 7:41 AM on April 23, 2012