Fun.'s 'We Are Young': Why This Song Sucks

Fun.'s "We Are Young": Why This Song Sucks

By Shea Serrano Wed., Jun. 13 2012 at 5:00 AM

[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.]

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Song: Fun.'s "We Are Young"

History: Fun. are a band from New York. (We are not going to do that period thing anymore.) "We Are Young" is the first single from their second album. If you have ears and are not deaf then you have heard it. Ostensibly, it is brilliant, the actualization of cool. Which is why it can only aptly be described as the most nefarious, most misleading musical project of the last twenty years.

Atmospherics: Anthemic everythings.

Scientific Analysis: Fun would appear to exist within the parameters of science. I mean, dudes, their lead singer, Nate Reuss, obliquely looks like Guy Pearce and Guy Pearce was in a movie called Time Machine and in that movie he played a scientist who invented a time machine and used it to go forward in time and fought some monsters that lived underground and if I'm not mistaken that's basically the whole point of science, bro.

But that's largely why this whole thing is so effective. They're dangling reason in your face and engaging in witchcraft behind your back. The song is a farce, a dastardly magic trick played on not only your ears, but your eyes as well.

For your ears: This song is wonderfully interesting the first time you hear it, or even if you hear it occasionally in commercials in whatnot (I swear to God I thought I wanted to buy a fucking Chevy Sonic when they started using "We Are Young" as their theme song). There are interesting arrangements (the level changes are especially fun) and interesting drums (there are few finer moments in all of music right now than the opening stanza) and interesting songwriting ("My seat's been taken by some sunglasses asking 'bout a scar") and interesting supplemental vocals from a girl with interesting eyebrows. But listen to it more than twice in a row, or even all the way through at a high volume. Its charm unravels itself quickly; it all just becomes too much. It's like those marshmallow Peeps. Eat a couple and they're delicious. Eat more than three and you'll want to murder everyone standing near you. There's a reason they only sell them on Easter, is what I'm saying.

The Marshmallow Peeps Corollary

More dastardly though is the trick it plays on your eyes. To wit: the video.

Watch the video for a second. Marvel at it. That's what 74,000,000 have done since it was uploaded to YouTube five months ago. But, to be clichéd about it, in appreciating it you're missing the forest for the trees. What Fun does here is utilize the time-tested Slow It Down, Make It Look Cool As Shit video technique. Everything always looks more interesting when it's slowed down and played over music. Like this:

Tags:

Fun., We Are Young, Why This Song Sucks

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Gentry June

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Jeffro

This article is retarded.

No-to-ryan

Oh come on Ryan...don't even get me started. Yes, rap was a musical form that surfaced as cultural resistance...from African-Americans. It meant something for the exponents of this music and now that all the white kids have "claimed" it...it's lost, well it's power. But...still your comment makes no sense. I'll say you have a SHITTY COMMENT.

Luna

AND THE COMMENTS BELOW...ARE THE REASON WHY I WOULD NOT WANT TO WRITE FOR LA WEEKLY...THE READERSHIP IS MADE UP OF WISE-ASS PEEPS WHO THINK THEY KNOW THE DEFINITION OF COOL OR WHAT NEEDS (OR NOT) TO BE WRITTEN. "that necklace, which makes all of the photos the antithesis of cool or brilliant." Oh and you're the authority on "cool"? Hardly.

Robert Goodwin

Tip: This feature doesn't need to be three pages long. Protip: This feature doesn't need to be.

ryan

fuck you wipp, im guessing you listen to that shitty rap music that all fucking sounds the same.. unlike you, some people have real taste in music, you know the kind with instruments and talented singers. Nate Reuss has one of the most inspiring voices around right now. SO FUCK YOU AND YOUR SHITTY COMMENT.

Wipp

Haha, fuck this song and their shitty band name

Shea Serrano

But being the antithesis of cool is the only way to be cool these days, didn't you know? Kids.

katiepoche

I don't hate the song. I don't hate the video, either. I think the video would have been better if there were more buildup to the exploding scenes (& then also more things exploding). Things started getting smashed up pretty early, without building much tension first. Like, why should we feel satisfaction about things coming to that breaking point? What about the world is so intolerable that the only right response is to blow everything up? The same could be said for the song itself. I want there to be more of the beginning part, where Guy Pearce is setting the stage & the tone of the song. Did he already know Plaid Bangs? Did they go out, & it could have been perfect, but some one small thing went wrong, & now he just wants to show her that Sunglasses Scar is an asshat & Plaid Bangs MUST come back to him, that this is the only right thing in this world, but she won't see that until she's falling down? And so he, painfully, has to wait for her to fall down before she can see that. And he can't tell her, can't prevent the falling, because why would she listen? Agony. And THAT'S when everything should start exploding. (See?)