By Jeremy Quintin
Elm Staff Writer
I’m sitting here drinking straight from a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke at two in the morning trying to wrap my head around the madness that is “Sorry For Party Rocking”, the latest album out this year from the electro-pop duo DJ Redfoo and Skyblu, better known as LMFAO. While forming one of the most popular electronic bands out on the scene right now, nothing about their music explains why they have such notoriety, except for being infamously outrageous.
When the first track played, I was given high expectations. As an introductory song to a dance album, Rock the Beat II is perfect. It creates an intense dubstep build up that fills the listener’s mind with the image of an epic space-rave taking place, and lets you know that LMFAO is here to “rock the beat and rock the show”. So naturally you expect to have a good time throughout this album. The design is typical but the presentation is professional and worth listening to. In fact, the track is on loop right now in my media player because it’s the only song on the entire album that I care for.
LMFAO is indeed here to rock the show, but probably not here to bring you a good time. They make that very clear in declaring their likelihood to vomit in your drink. They do in fact say, “if you throw up in a hoe’s cup, this is what you say: sorry for party rocking.” That’s the excuse for all the horrible things they do at the party, and really that’s the whole premise of the album. They apologize to make up for destroying your ear drums, for their misogynistic attitude, and for passing out buck-naked on stage.
There’s no denying the shocking nature of LMFAO’s lyrics. Right in their very first song, they profess having no manners, offend the neighbors, get plastered, make the music painfully loud, and pass out in front of you. Not to mention their treatment of women is unbelievably base. Women rarely advance beyond derogatory titles throughout these songs. It’s challenging to find an instance where women aren’t treated like objects to do shots off of.
LMFAO seems to produce the exact opposite of what they profess to want. The song Party Rock Anthem wishes that “Everybody just have a good time,” as long as that good time involves every girl at the party having sex with them. Every song afterwards is a rehash of the last. The album doesn’t make the listener feel like they are about to have a good time so much as they are about to be raped for showing up, or be degraded for showing up female.
The whole shtick is in offending the listener, and perhaps that’s the satire behind it all. There’s a reason why DJs Redfoo and Skyblu have dubbed their brainchild with the net acronym “lmfao”. You are supposed to be in hysterics by the end of this album from the sheer lunacy and obscenity that are the LMFAO lyrics, a satirical depiction of everything wrong in the club scene. The introduction even suggests the formation of LMFAO is an April Fool’s joke. But it all seems a little over-the-top. One extreme song for parody purposes is understandable, but the same song on every single track? That’s unnecessary, and leads me to believe that LMFAO just doesn’t care about their words, regardless of the message they impose. This seems obvious enough in their music videos which have absolutely nothing to do with their songs, as suggested by the dancing Jesus and golden robot.