I wanna be your…car or why we already know hot topic is not punk rock.

So I was watching television the other night and I heard a bit of a catchy song. The chorus was haunting. It sounded like Iggy Pop doing a cover. Well, it turns out it was for a new Cadillac ad. The original song is by The Teddybears, a Swedish pop band. The original song is sorta this techno-y thing with the line “cause I’m a punk rocker yes I am” used ironically. I think this song is a perfect example of metadiscourse. Iggy Pop is pretty punk rock. He is perhaps the only living person who could sing such an audacious line and give it gravity. You feel it in his voice that he really is a tough punk rocker. He’s not even bragging. He has nothing to prove.

BUT the song is used in a Cadillac commercial. It’s what a lot of elitist would consider being a “sellout”. You just picture them seething in the background thinking, doing commercials isn’t punk rock. So that adds another level of depth to it. Then, the music video for the song portrays Iggy Pop as this sad, ruined, aged rock star being chauffeured around in a big black Cadillac wearing a designer suit. Usually I hate music videos for really great songs because I like to have my own images and form my own ideas for songs. But this fit the song so perfectly. In fact, it enhances the song. That made me sorta sad. The local radio station that plays “indie” music sometimes plays what I think of as the most annoying song in the world. It’s by MC Lars and is entitled “Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock”. I don’t think we needed a song to illustrate this point. I don’t think anyone buys things to look “punk” in Hot Topic. And I think people into punk already KNOW Hot Topic is not punk rock. So shut up. You aren’t as clever as you think you are.

Seeing a man who rose to prominence with his youthful exuberance and raw songs and smearing peanut butter on his chest and cutting himself with glass bottles as the elder statesman, the king of a starlit city inhabited by alien beings, a man no longer young in a world that is no longer right for him. What a perfect metaphor for the world we live in.

So much better than an inane song cataloging a store that no one cares about with only passable lyrics.

So continue to shop in hot topic. Buy the tinkerbell lunchbox.

watch the video: