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Various Artists
Team America: World Police Soundtrack Atlantic 2004 D+ ![]() To be specific, there are six wonderful songs on this album. Each of these songs is conceptually, lyrically, and musically funny—quite a feat, really. Two of the songs, "America (Fuck Yeah)" and "Everyone has AIDS", have been noted in countless reviews (including the one here at Stylus). They are hilarious because they use the motifs of Top Gun and Rent songs (respectively) and turn them inside-out. "America" is basically Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" taken to its most logical conclusion: a hymn to the bloated, egocentric attitudes that dominate most pro-American propaganda, especially as it applies to military action. It contains a wonderful laundry list of all things American and great (each one marked with a "fuck yeah"), including Wal-Mart, baseball, fake tits—and slavery. "Everyone has AIDS", by contrast, is one of those mindless songs about multiculturalism (the concept that we're all the same). That this "sameness" is a deadly disease that kills the entire world is incidental in the ignorant mindset of the performers. Brilliant. Then there are two stabs at traditional song forms. "Freedom Isn't Free" is a Lee Greenwood-like song about the wonders of America and freedom, with a chorus containing the wondrous line, "Freedom isn't free / No, there's a hefty fuckin' fee". More than anything else, this song reminds me of those "Blow up the Moon" songs by CS Lewis Jr. on Mr. Show with Bob and David: sincerity wrapped in stupid. And then there's "Only a Woman", a power ballad to beat all power ballads. It starts out simple: "I don't need one heartbeat / I need two" and "Only a woman / Can brighten up my day". But soon the song descends into wonderful desperation: "You're around / You're right here / So you'll do". Yes, it's a power ballad about one man's desire to get laid to any female he can hone into his field of vision; in fact, by the end, the singer isn't even too worried about the "woman" caveat. Really, isn't that the point of most power ballads? The next great song here is "Montage", which was originally on an episode of South Park (the Aspen episode). The song tells the story of "montage" as used in modern films (no Eisenstein montage here, kids). As the lyrics explain, Show lots of things happenin' at onceSee, this is what Trey and Matt do so well: dissect the blistering stupidity and laziness at the heart of popular entertainment. Montage sequences where someone is getting ready for a dance or learning a skill are the staple of Hollywood B-films galore; heck, Matt & Trey have one of their own. However, the sequence is accompanied by a song about the very contrivance they are throwing into their film to save time. How cool is that? And then there's the single greatest song of 2004, "The End of an Act", featuring the immortal lines, "I miss you more than Michael Bey missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor". Yes, this is a song about what a horrible director Michael Bey is, from missing the whole point of the battle to casting Ben Afflek as the hero instead of Cuba Gooding. The complaint about the movie and Bey grow so intense that by the end of the song, the girl the singer is metaphorically comparing to Bey is stuffed in the background: "I guess Pearl Harbor sucked / Just a little more than I miss you". The music accompanying these wonderful words is equally impressive, as the song is performed in the style of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" (with cheesy synths and plaintive guitar and piano, and some deep reverb for the vocals). The tackiness! The Bey bashing! What a song! That's the end of the good moments on this album; sadly, there are ten other songs, too. Three of them are actual songs, one a reprise of "America (Fuck Yeah)" and two dumb songs about Kim Johg Il. These aren't memorable (the Il songs are just stupid), but they're better than the last seven, which are nothing more than filler: the kind of orchestration drivel found in most Hollywood films. As much as this emotion-laden music might be funny in the film (when it is often used ironically), it's just boring on its own. For this reason, the album as a whole can't rise above mediocre. But the album's gems are some of the best songs that Trey and Matt have concocted—which is to say, some of the best comedy songs of the last ten years. My advice: go to iTunes and buy "Everyone Has AIDS", "Freedom Isn't Free", "America, Fuck Yeah", "Only a Woman", "The End of an Act" and "Montage". These songs actually come out to little more than thirteen minutes of music, but those are thirteen wonderful minutes. ![]() Reviewed by: Michael Heumann Reviewed on: 2004-11-08 Recent Reviews By This Author
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