Gwen Stefani and Nelly Furtado are both giant sell-out whores to the R&B movement. Even if I hadn’t just had four molars forcibly removed from my head, my teeth would still hurt from the enormous suckage that is Gwen and Nelly.
I am reminded of this fact almost constantly, because of Pandora. If you don’t know what Pandora is, click the link and learn, cuz it’s a really cool tool for hearing music you like and discovering new music that you may like even more. They did not pay me to say that, but I wish they would, cuz I say it pretty frequently. Pandora rocks!
But despite how cool the website itself is, I have fallen victim to the two aforementioned skankerpoofs because of it.
I think we all knew in the back of our heads that someday Gwen Stefani was going to leave No Doubt and go out skeezing solo, so I wasn’t surprised when she did leave the band and release a solo album. And I really wasn’t expecting her to be so successful, to tell you the truth. When I heard Gwen’s solo stuff, I thought to myself, “Ha. That bitch’ll think twice before she ruins a good thing next time. Her career’s as dead as her over-bleached hair.”
Imagine my surprise when people starting lapping it up like Kool-Aid. No accounting for taste, I suppose, but can’t you people listen to shitty music in private? Do I really have to be assaulted by another one of Gwen Stefani’s skank anthems every time I turn on the radio? How can anyone listen to the over-produced tripe she’s singing now and not rememeber the days of No Doubt? The fact that I know she was once part of something that was the opposite of a pile of steaming suck makes it impossible to listen to her garbage now; it’s just too disappointing. This girl used to play music that meant something and didn’t make your ears bleed. Now she’s just another white girl jumping on the R&B bandwagon because that shit gets more radio play and probably makes more money than pop or rock nowadays.*
Now Nelly Furtado… She’s even worse, for two reasons. 1) Her old good stuff was better than Gwen Stefani’s old good stuff and 2) she can’t even blame the change in the quality of her music on a heartbreaking band split. She’s just a whore, plain and simple. When I was in college, I got into Nelly Furtado because I have a hidden streak of folk-music lover in me. I liked that Nelly Furtado’s first couple of albums were so different from everything else I heard on the radio. Yeah, she has a nasal voice, but the music itself was cool. It was part pop, part bohemian folk, and yes, part R&B. There were elements of rap and R&B on her earlier albums, but they were woven in with the folk and acoustic guitar elements, which made for a really cool sound.
But something awful happened to her! Some hideously-sequined demon has possessed her and whispered into her ears every night, “Dress like a whore and collaborate with Timbaland** and you will make some MAD money! Take everything that was cool about you and dilute it, cover it up with glitz and Essence of Club Rat! Do it and all your dreams will come true!”
And she did. One morning, I was watching VH1 with my little stepsister and I saw that a new Nelly Furtado song was coming on. “Pay attention to this chick,” I told my sister, “you’re going to like this.”***
Let me tell you, eating those words was hard, but after watching the entire “Promiscuous” video, I had to do it. I tried to tell myself, “Well, anyone can have one bad song. I bet the rest of the album is better.”
Then I heard “Maneater.” Less than reassuring. Then I heard ‘Say It Right,’ and I knew it was all over. My Nelly was gone, replaced by an evil pod person with too-tight clothes and a head full of collagen.
NELLY, GODDAMNIT!!! This must be what it’s like parenting a slacker genius. I know she can do better than this because I’ve seen and heard it! Why won’t she just apply herself instead of taking the easy way out like every other tart in the music industry?!
The reason I bring this all up is because of Pandora. At Pandora, you make an account and then you type in bands or songs that you like and the website will play music with similar features. You know, like Launchcast on Yahoo! only it doesn’t lick balls. So one day I’m tooling around, listening to Emerald Rose and I think, “Man, you know who I miss? Nelly Furtado.”
Thinking that they would have to play at least some of the Nelly I used to know and love, I created a Nelly Furtado radio station. Now I spend half my time thumbs-downing Beyonce Knowles**** and Rhianna, because apparently there’s now more sucky rap Nelly music out there than there is old folky Nelly music.
Stupid music hooker sellouts.
*Sad fucking state of affairs.
**I hate Timbaland because he embraces ignorance like it’s a fucking life raft. The man has a song called “The Way I Are.” Need I say more?
***I am on a never-ending quest to expose my stepsister to good music and women who don’t dress like trollops, because I have seen what the rest of her generation is intent upon becoming: prosti-tots. Prepubescent mindless whores who wear their thong straps over the waist of their too-tight jeans. I blame Bratz, and I try at every opportunity to point out to my sister how awful those bitches look.
****The wagon-jumping last-name-dropper. You’re not fucking Madonna.
