Knives After Class

Be Your Own Pet “Becky” – Teenage girls break up their friendships every day, but somehow, it’s always the end of the world. Nevertheless, even though that sort of thing is very commonplace and fraught with ridiculous drama, the topic seems to be rather under-represented in pop songs. Be Your Own Pet run with the scenario, and play it for laughs by emphasizing the mundane details of high school life, and pushing the situation to a silly extreme by having the story play out as a bloody revenge fantasy. Jemina Pearl absolutely nails the tone — on one hand, she’s mocking this sort of overblown manufactured drama, and on the other, she is totally respecting the anger and the bitterness, and letting out some candy-colored bile. Her vocal performance is the center of the piece, but the song is made by the backing vocals of her male band mates, who shout the name “Becky” with a funny mix of anguish and frustrated rage. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: I recently convinced Andrew W.K. to write and record a new song based on a batshit insane bit of tape from the McLaughlin Group. It is extremely catchy and absurd, and you can download the track and listen to the segment in which Andrew presents the song to Faith right here.