Track Review ⊙ Daily Ops Home
Gym Class Heroes f/ Patrick Stump :: "Ccupid's Chokehold"From As Cruel As School Children (Decaydance; 2007)
It is perfect that this song was recommended to me by one of my students. I won’t bore you with the details of how a class discussion ended up with me humming a few bars of “Give a Little Bit,” but the important thing is that a first-year art major had the savvy to know that “the Supertramp girlfriend song” was sampled in the new Gym Class Heroes single. I was intrigued. Just a few months earlier I was introduced to the Heroes through the hilarious and wonderful “Taxi Driver,” a 2-minute exercise in how many indie band names can be crammed into a rap song about teenage lust (a taste: “I could still see her bright eyes / Like sunny day real estate”). Here is a concept band whose concept is being a high school geek; here I was, the geeky teacher being told about some hot new song by one of my students. So I went home, cooked some Ramen, and downloaded that shit like it was the glory days of Napster in my dorm room. And damn if this song doesn’t capture some teenage feelings.
Gym Class Heroes unabashedly make soundtracks to high school; if the name wasn’t enough, this new album is broken into segments like “1st Period,” “Study Hall,” and “Intramurals,” where this track occurs. The song opens with some bubbly “ba-ba-ba” vocals before kicking into the piano riff from Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America.” Cue everyone’s fave Fall Out Boy, Patrick Stump, to croon some vocals and off we go. The appropriated Supertramp bit was made for songs like this, as lines like “not much of a girlfriend / I never seem to get a lot” speak to the implicit male peer pressure in young relationships, though the verses never give us any indication that the narrator is unsatisfied. On the contrary, this is a paean to young romance, where the narrator describes the details of his relationship (and the woman he’s with) not to brag, but to make us, and his parents, proud of him. This isn’t locker room braggadocio, but a tender (albeit terribly naïve) dinner conversation. One that you can sing along to.
The glimpses we get into the dynamic between the lovers reveals the way the Heroes masterfully weave their own adult experiences with the innocence and youth of their imaged narrator. A line like “She even cooks me pancakes / And Alka-Seltzer when my tummy aches” seems cute enough, even as it suggests “the morning after,” all hungover and post-coital. Probably lost on some of the target demographic, the song also works as a satire of high school lovers who take themselves so damn seriously: “We can be on the phone for three hours / Without saying one word.” This is what gives the song a kind of attractiveness reached by most Pixar films; it’s for “the kids,” while operating on a level that “adults” (and those of us who still feel in-between) can appreciate and enjoy. And remember, you learn something new every day.
Craig Eley :: 6 March 2007 |
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