Lonely Island’s song Jizz in My Pants is not likely to be replacing Angels or My Way at too many funerals unless a disappointed lover decides to get revenge for years of disappointment by surreptitiously switching the cd. The video is being shown on one of those music channels which have as a mission to depress the viewer by trying to persuade us that The Killers are musically interesting and that the world needs even more identikit girl groups. On first listen you wonder if your hearing is starting to go, especially when you bear in mind that the programme was recorded at around lunchtime. “Is he singing what I think he’s singing?” “Does that word mean what I think it means?” are the two questions that occur early on. A quick check with Professor Google soon cleared that up.

The third question “Is this song strong enough to carry off being that rude?” is answered after about one minute. If it had been submitted for consideration into the fifty cd box set of everything Duran Duran ever recorded it would fail to cut the mustard. One good line does not justify being stretched over a whole song like that. If you are going to be funny and vulgar you need a bit of lyrical panache to carry it off and the writers don’t have as much of that as they think they do. They make up for lack of ability by repeating the jokey punchline over and over again. Arguably it worked in Little Britain. In a song it’s just irritating after the fourth time.

At least Lonely Island are trying to be something less than bland. Maybe their next outing will see them create something bit more substantial though they are lucky not to have got themselves banned. Amanda Palmer has not been so fortunate. She describes her single Oasis “an ironic, up-tempo pop song about a teenage girl who gets drunk, gets date-raped and has an abortion.” That alone would be mighty relief from the deluge of schmaltz that’s out there at the minute. Effectively it’s been censored either for being too clever and funny by half making fun of fundamentalist Christians. It’s not possible to watch the video without laughing out loud. What an unjust and arbitrary world!

PS: Good news on the youth rebellion front though. Ratings are due to My Chemical Romance. Their new video features the band fighting on stage with riot police and whacking a cop over the head with a guitar. That’s what you want from a band! They even do a good job on making Bob Dylan’s dirge Desolation Row into something you’d want to listen to.