Ranking the Artists in Brian Posehn’s “New Music Sucks”
I feel like I owe Brian Posehn a lot. Without him, The Skip Button might not exist.
Back in 2003, he was featured on Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn”. During a conversation about whether violent music can lead to actual violence, Posehn - a comedian you might recognize from his roles on The Big Bang Theory and New Girl - quipped, “No one talks about the studies that show that bad music makes people violent. Like: Nickelback makes me want to kill Nickelback.”
Comedy Central ended up playing that clip on repeat as part of a promo for the show. Now, 18 years later, no one remembers “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn”, but the idea that Nickelback is violently bad has been engrained into our collective conscious. And thank God; if that wasn’t the case, I never would have gathered in my friend’s apartment with four other dudes (pre-quarantine) to talk into an iPad about why the hell people still hate that band so much.
Posehn, a self-professed metal-head, loves to use his platform to talk about horrible music. (Can’t relate.) That all seems to have culminated in his recent metal/comedy album “Grandpa Metal”. The comedy on this album ranges from self-deprecating jokes about being a middle-aged metal fan, to send-ups of all the music he hates. A pretty clear example of the latter is his song “New Music Sucks”, the video for which he released on January 7th. Posehn uses the song as an opportunity to air his grievances about how bad music is today, name-checking dozens of artists that he can’t stand. Some of these names should be familiar territory for Skip Button listeners: Mumford & Sons, Chainsmokers, and DJ Khaled. Others caught me a little off guard (who the hell hates Lorde?).
While there are some solid punches on the song - the line “Imagine Dragons? Imagine me stabbing your face” made me laugh harder than it should have - there are actually very few jokes here; the majority of it is him just naming names and repeating the phrase “new music sucks”. It all takes place over a beat that I suppose is meant to approximate contemporary pop music, but sounds more like a rip-off of music you might have heard 10 years ago than anything that’s popular today.
Throughout, there’s the faintest hint of irony in the song, a sense that Posehn knows how out of touch and grumpy he sounds. For instance, he calls out Fall Out Boy, even though the song features band members Patrick Stump and Joe Trohman. The video also depicts people getting increasingly annoyed with Posehn as he doubles and triples down on his central thesis. Clearly, he knows how silly he’s coming off.
However, the overall tone of “New Music Sucks” isn’t “look at how dumb I’m being”, it’s more like, “I know I sound dumb, but I’m also right.”
Is he, though?
No. Obviously not. “New music sucks” is clearly not a statement worth critically engaging with. But maybe one can forgive Posehn based solely off the artists he named. Let me posit a thought experiment: if the only new music you listened to were the ones listed in Posehn’s track, would you agree that new music does, indeed, suck?
To help answer this question, here is a list of all the “new” artists Posehn calls out, ranked from least to most sucky:
Kanye West
Lorde
Drake
Ariana (Del) Grande
Lady Gaga
Farty B (Cardi B)
One Direction
Justin Bieber
Bruno Mars
DJ Khaled
Fall Out Boy
Halsey
Miley Cyrus
Post(mates) Malone
Ed Sheeran
Katy Perry
Ke$ha
Chainsmokers
Lil Yachty
Mumford & Sons
Alan Thicke’s Son (Robin Thicke)
Imagine Dragons
Macklemore
Kanye West is a tricky one because Kanye has had many phases, some of which - let me check my notes here - sucked. However, Kanye West’s career as a whole stands out to me as Posehn’s weakest piece of evidence.
On the other side of the spectrum are artists like Macklemore and Imagine Dragons. It goes against my better nature to write that these artists suck (not because I think it’s mean; I just need material for when I eventually make an episode about them). However, when I think about even their best songs, I come up with the least convincing case against the point Posehn’s trying to make.
That being said, if you took the worst moments of all these careers, then you might forgive Posehn for saying “New music sucks”. I can think of plenty of songs from all of these artists that I can’t stand.
So maybe Brian Posehn has a point. Maybe he’s just being a fogey. Maybe I’m trying to be objective. Maybe I fervently disagree with him but still very badly want him on my show.
Who’s to say?
