It’s Always Sunny In Medford #12 (In Which I Apologize To Jason Mraz)

Dear Jason,

I’m aware you will never read this, or for that matter any of the bad things I have written about your music. However, since your fans have commented on them, I figured I should address my true feelings on it. By “fans” I mean “friends of mine that like you”, and by “comment on them”, I mean “ironically dedicate your songs to me during karaoke outings.” I figured I should offer this olive branch, because there’s a misconception as to just how much any of it really bothers me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan. “I’m Yours” is fluff, “Lucky” is one of the most overwrought pieces of crap I’ve ever heard anywhere, and generally, your songs’ lyrics sound like they were ripped from the script of a terrible romantic comedy. The truth is, however, I really don’t care that much about your music. It’s mostly pretty harmless, I suppose, and it appeals to a certain bubbly, hopelessly optimistic demographic.  Besides, you aren’t the only bland white dude who picked up a guitar and got a record deal. Matt Nathanson, for example, got popular for basically breathing into a microphone for a few minutes. It isn’t just you!

It’s not my thing, but again, whatever. It’s not going to cause the unraveling of western civilization or anything. This, however, might:

The band is called Brokencyde, and it’s part of a genre called “screamo-crunk”, which I can only assume was created as the product of some kind of dare to see if somebody could combine the very worst of every genre of music at once. Truly, this video encapsulates everything there is to hate about modern music. Most of the people I have shown this video to can only watch about 15 seconds, making it only a slightly more bearable than waterboarding and suggesting that Brokencyde may be in violation of the Geneva Convention.

You can usually tell how shitty a band is by their name, but not even a name like “Brokencyde” could prepare one for the unprecedented levels of suck brought to the table here. Their youtube channel includes videos of the band members (supposedly) doing drugs and generally being the tremendous douchebags they appear to be in their video. There is really no explanation for anything going on here – somebody conceived the music, wrote up the lyrics, and made this video, without at any point thinking to themselves “Man, this is a pretty fucking terrible idea, isn’t it?” That is troubling, to say the least.

An intrepid researcher/prankster added this informative blurb to their Wikipedia entry:

Metal Edge Magazine has called brokeNCYDE “fucking horrendous”.^[10] Thrash Magazine has called them “a mockery to the world of music”.^[11] Another metal magazine, Decibel, has repeatedly made fun of the band, mentioning them in a interview with the group Big Business, and once ironically referring to then as their “favorite screamo-crunk band”. British commentator Warren Ellis calls brokeNCYDE’s “Freaxxx” music video “a near-perfect snapshot of everything that’s shit about this point in the culture”.^[12] Says August Brown of the Los Angeles Times, “The ‘Albucrazy’-based band has done for MySpace emo what some think Soulja Boy did for hip-hop: turn their career into a kind of macro-performance art that exists so far beyond the tropes of irony and sincerity that to ask ‘are they kidding?’ is like trying to peel an onion to get to a perceived central core that, in the end, does not exist and renders all attempts to reassemble the pieces futile.”^[13]

Fantastic!

For an added kick, I checked out the video’s YouTube comments. YouTube comments, regardless of video content, are generally a pretty grand cesspool of subliterate jackassery. The comments here were, unsurprisingly, no different. What is surprising is that there are actually fans of this shit:

Again let me ask u the same question.
Why the fuck are u watching it if u hate them?
Silence cuz u know u have no life.

And:

IF PEOPLE DON’T LIKE THIS SONG OR THE BAND THEN WHY ARE YOU LOOKING IT UP?!

JUST LET PEOPLE LISTEN TO MUSIC THEY’RE HAPPY WITH!!!!! ITS SIMPLE!!! STFU!!  awesome song though!!!

Of course, if you can’t defend the music, bring up how much tail the band (allegedly) gets:

oh and another thing
i saw them in concert and a bunch of hot girls were goin in there limo with them
can you do that
didnt think so
SHUT THE FUCK UP ! (:
brokencyde is amazing

Yeah! You tell ‘em Shannon101895!

If it comes out that this was all a big practical joke, I’ll look stupid for writing this, but these people will look even stupider. I take solace in that. Fortunately, there’s plenty of people who still have enough taste to decide that this is pretty much the worst thing ever, but the fact this exists is troubling. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that the only acceptable explanation for this is that it’s a social experiment to test the absolute limits of human taste. Whether that is or isn’t the case, congratulations people! We’ve hit a new low! Pat yourselves on the back.

Where was I? Oh yeah: Jason, take solace in the fact that you’ll never be as bad as Brokencyde, and know that this is the last time I’ll mention you here. As it turns out, there’s far greater evils out there. I think we can all agree on that.

Sincerely,

Tino