I've written and rewritten three opening sentences to this column so far.
1. "The word 'atrocious' comes from the Latin 'atrox,' meaning savage or cruel; the Romans had clearly never heard Paris Hilton sing or we'd have been handed down a much more severe word."
2. "If a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, is it still a more appealing series of noises than Paris Hilton's new song?"
3. "Some people say the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist, but I know he exists because I've heard Paris Hilton's new single, so what the hell is his greatest trick now?"
I wasn't satisfied with any of the three leads, but I decided to give up, and for once, it wasn't because I was lazy and just picked one.
No, as unsatisfying and halfheartedly humorous as those three attempts might be, I came to the conclusion that spending more than 15 minutes trying to come up with an opening that truly captured the disastrous assault on the human race that is Paris Hilton's new single, "Good Time," would hurt my brain too much and I wouldn't be able to get through the rest of the column.
I honestly didn't even want to write about this; I knew that I would hate the song, and it's (usually) no fun for me if I feel like I could probably write the column without actually listening to the song or seeing the movie or whatever it is.
After some prodding, I actually listened to the song, and I've got to say - in some sick, twisted way, I was impressed.
I expected to hate it, but even with my bias and expectations, it somehow, someway managed to be so, so much worse than I thought it would be.
For comparison: In "Die Hard," John McClane isn't super pumped to go to Los Angeles for Christmas. He hates flying, he and his wife aren't on the greatest of terms and he just isn't that big of a fan of California. What he expects to be a rough trip, however, turns into him having to save a whole host of hostages and blow up a skyscraper.
In other words, Paris Hilton's new single is, "Not looking forward to fighting with your wife but ending up having to kill Hans Gruber and blow up the Nakatomi building" bad.
The lyrics are mind-numbingly bad. The hook goes, "Wo-oh, let's party/Yeah, let's party, and have a good time/Wo-oh, let's party/Yeah, let's party, and have a good time."
Paris - the Black Eyed Peas called, and they want to sell you a thesaurus.
Her two verses, which consist of a total of nine lines, all sound like Ke$ha lyrics, if Ke$ha's songs were all written by fourth graders writing Ke$ha fan fiction who'd only ever heard music by Ke$ha. For example, "Good times are here, and you know they're here to stay." Go home, fourth grade Ke$ha fan-fiction songwriters.
And now here's the real kicker; the song features Lil Wayne. Paris Hilton featuring Lil Wayne would have been mildly surprising, though still humorous, eight years ago when she was almost famous and he was still pretty legitimate as a rapper. Now, though, the pairing is crushingly, depressingly not shocking in any way. Of course those two made a song together. I can't believe it took this long.
And whereas Hilton is a bad singer and musician, and that's why her performance is so jarring, Lil Wayne is intentionally profane to the max. In an otherwise mostly tame party pop song, the rapper's trademark nastiness is as out of place as ever.
It's like if you took one scene of "Low Winter Sun" and dropped it into the third act of an episode of "Two and a Half Men." Yes, both are ridiculously bad, but the fact that they're so bad in such different ways makes the combination unimaginably worse.
This is a really, really bad song, but I'm guessing Paris Hilton doesn't care. She's worth over $100 million, and nothing I can say will change that. She can just keep pumping out this garbage for as long as she wants and nobody can stop her.
Hey, I think I might've found an answer for that whole "greatest trick the Devil ever pulled" question.
Contact Kevin Noonan at knoonan2@nd.edu
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
