She Got Hot, They Did Not

Weezer “The Girl Got Hot”

I like late-period Rivers Cuomo because he’s basically like Martin Short in Clifford trying to make faces like a “human boy.” He is a deeply bizarre man who is going far out of his way to be “normal” and make music for “normal” people, but his attempts at banality are so affected and deliberately dumb that he comes off seeming much weirder than he would if he was writing total nonsense. The lyrics and music on Raditude are all signification and no meaning, and push the willful vacuity of his last few albums to an absurd extreme. Interestingly, the only tracks that outright fail on the album are the ones that display some degree of self-awareness, as in the dreadful club pastiche “Can’t Stop Partying” featuring Lil Wayne. This sort of thing can only work with a glassy-eyed, poker-faced commitment to ridiculousness, and that’s certainly in evidence on “The Girl Got Hot,” a cheery pop tune that comes across like a long-lost collaboration between Gary Glitter and The Gas Station Dogs.

“The Girl Got Hot” is about being out at a rock party and running into a girl who was homely in junior high, but has blossomed into a total babe. (If we’re operating on the logic of Hollywood, and it’s pretty safe to say that we are, she simply ditched her glasses for contact lenses. Whoa!) The interesting thing here — and a woman had to point this out to me — is that the scenario in the song is not at all a typical male fantasy, but it is something a lot of young girls imagine for themselves. That he makes a point of harping on the notion that all the other girls from school are now basically unfuckable hags only highlights the wish fulfillment aspect for insecure girls. It’s empty objectification, but a triumph all the same. There’s no subtext in this song, no perspective or criticism. It’s just “Hey, wow, the girl got hot! Awesome!,” and out. But the context adds some weight to this glorious fluff, because the whole time I just imagine this cable news ticker scroll in Rivers’ head reading “This is normal, right? Parties. Girls. Malls. Fun. Normal! Normal! Normal! Right?”

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