Composer Reacts to Toby Keith - Red Solo Cup (REACTION & ANALYSIS)

Intro hello and welcome back to another episode of critical reactions with your host brian we're going to finish off this week's theme of bad songs with a song called red solo cup from toby keith now i'm gonna be honest i don't know that i've heard this song but looking at this thumbnail i wish i could have kept that statement true past today i don't know i'm gonna go in with an open mind as usual i'm gonna approach this i could do with every song but i think this is the first time that i've been real scared about a song based on the thumbnail and not because it was grotesque or violent or anything like that with a lot of uh extreme metal covers so let's dive into toby keith's red solo cup Reaction [Music] now red solo cup is the best receptacle for barbecues tailgates fairs and festivals and you sir do not have a pair of testicles if you prefer drinking from glass a red solo cup is cheap and disposable in 14 years they are decomposable and unlike my home they are not foreclosable freddie mac kiss my ass red solo cup i fill you up let's have a party let's have a party i love you red solo cup i lift you up proceed to party proceed to party now i really love how you're easy to stack but i really hate how you're easy to crack some beer runs down in front of my back well that my friends is quite yucky but i have to admit that the ladies get smitten admiring how sharply my first name is written on you with a sharpie when i get to hittin on them to help me get lucky red solo cup i fill you up let's have a party [Music] [Applause] departed now i've seen you in blue and i've seen you in yellow but only you read will do for this fella because you are the abbott into my costello and you are the fruit to my loom red solo cup you're more than just plastic you're more than amazing you're more than fantastic and believe me that i'm not the least bit sarcastic when i look at you and say red solo cup you're not just a cop no no no god no you're my you're my friend lifelong thank you for being my friend red solo cup [Music] i lift [Music] i fill you up [Music] let's have a party proceed to party [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] [Music] why why did you guys make me listen to that Analysis - How to Even Approach This? okay i off the top of my head do not know any other toby keith songs that comes with the disclaimer like most of the times i say i don't know something that it's very possible i've heard a song of his just did not have the name to tie to it so i'm not sure how to come at this song because to me it feels facetious that is to say i don't believe it was done in earnest and that's a weird way to go about looking at this track but i don't know if the vocal delivery is typical the music i mean it follows a typical a b in fact there's not even a bridge it's just bouncing back and forth between oh no the bridge was the part where he was gazing at the cup in the sky so there was a bridge so yeah a b a b c b and uh you know we we stick with pretty much one key through the whole song uh two chord progressions one for the uh verse and one for the chorus but very stereotypical four chord progressions yeah i was thinking maybe the chorus was two chords but no it it's a four chord um just country blues kind of stuff right there's nothing real special going on in the music which i kind of expect out of this type of pop country right this says that this video came out in 2011 i'm going to assume the album was possibly the same year maybe the previous year but generally around that time is where i'm going to assume the album came out when the song was actually fully released and uh you know 2010's country was kind of uh moving in this direction of uh what i call pop country where it's still country fueling but it's certainly not based on a lot of the ideas of country from like the 50s and 60s has taken on more production value rhythmic concepts overall vibes and feelings and tones from pop music and has become more palatable in a ways this rebranding of that i think happened started in nashville uh sort of rebranding of what country music was to make it palatable to hopefully a younger audience and this is where that sits for me musically it's pop country but lyrically or i should say vocally it is lyrically it's certainly pop country i could not imagine any uh you know original big name country singers 40s 50s 60s uh being or receiving the song positively i should say at least on the lyrical level music evolves and you know we have the gatekeepers the old not really liking the music of the new that's typical that happens whatever but the lyrics i think um older country singers would have something to say about just kind of the vibe i get um so you know musically lyrically it's very poppy but vocally it's kind of rap like okay so obviously it's not technical wrap the kind of stuff we expect from some of the best rappers out there that is highly rhythmically diverse utilizing multiple variations of polyrhythm our polyrhythmic concepts and multiple cadences right we're kind of missing all that but it is spoken word in a rhythmic pattern to music which to me even though it is rather basic is rap not to mention that there are some inter-line rhyme schemes going on that do put above a little or do put it a little bit above the standard last syllable of a line rhyming so the rhythmic aspect of the wrapping is fairly basic but i would say that the rhyming aspect and the syllabic choices are not a little over that this is somebody who at least in my books is not a novice rapper uh you know the speed and the rhythmic technicality aren't there but the poetic writing the use of the language does show somebody who understands how to create uh poetic writing and it puts it in an interesting place where it feels both tongue and cheek while also being competently created this is sort of the opposite side of corey feldman's duh which i have been explained to that it was not done satirically that he honestly believes he's making phenomenal music but coming from my original place of purposely being created poorly to prove a point this is sort of the opposite where it's purposely created very well but it feels like it's also making fun of very well done music although maybe making fun of is pushing it a little bit far Analysis - Disingenuous Music? it almost okay so here's what it feels like to me it feels like a people by anything kind of vibe and again i don't know if that's just because i don't know toby keith's work maybe this is 100 percent in line with his style but to me it is this weird mashup between country rap and pop not hip-hop i'm not including hip-hop in there wrapping vocal delivery with pop and country music that feels very low effort but highly produced and that combination of sounds like a lot of work went into it production-wise so it sounds like a good song not musically the sound of it the soundscape the atmosphere uh the placement of the instruments that all makes it sound like a good song musically though it is very low effort well again and i want to rephrase that it sounds low effort i'm not going to say that no effort went into it like i've mentioned before it takes a lot of effort to make anything sound low effort so you know like i've said before about pop music specifically a lot of work goes into making simple catchy music it is a skill that not a lot of people have and it is difficult to do so i do want to you know mention that that even though this sounds low effort i'm not saying that it was sloppily put together or quickly arranged or anything like that i don't know what went into the creation of this track but to me it it has the it has the vibe of being low effort the the the lyrics are simple the music is simple uh the even just the vocal delivery it's just it's it's very low effort low energy right it's just kind of whatever the whole song feels kind of whatever and that paired with the strong production and the fact that it's a single and that it had a music video created for not even a lyric video granted 2011 i don't remember if lyric videos were kind of big back then nowadays they're kind of a way to put a single out with the music video without having to film anything um but you know they went through all the trouble to to put all this marketing behind it and it's really not that great of a song i mean again what is a good song we got to get into you know what that is but it's highly it's very well produced very well performed and has 64 63 million views um so by most metrics it is a successful good song and i just i don't know where to come at it from there like how do i feel about this song i Analysis - Uhh, This Lyrical Content let's dive into the lyrics right because we looked at the music it's simple there's a guitar chord progression there's a simple drumming and then there's spoken word or group vocals over that right it's a very simplistic song there's nothing really to dive into there but i want to look into the lyrics real quick and see what's going on and maybe go from there and see what my thoughts are about this track now i picked up on on a lot of the vocals as i was listening but uh you know so it's it's a song that's primarily about about the red solo cup right uh but there's also some weird gatekeepery stuff coming on in here right so you know at the beginning i think it's very innocuous the red solo cup is the best cup for barbecues tailgates fairs and festivals you know what we're off to a fine start you love something you're singing about your love for it i got nothing to say about that but then he says and you sir putting in sir the only time that he's ever referenced a specific gender in the entire song i believe oh no he does bring up ladies at one point later on yeah so very specifically talking to men here or at least who he perceives to be men i'm going to wager you don't have a pair of testicles if you drink from glass gatekeeping number one and then he says it's cheap and disposable in 14 years they're decomposable and unlike my home they're not foreclosable i don't i mean is this something about his life he he ref he specifically references somebody he doesn't seem to enjoy this freddie mac character i i don't i don't know interestingly though this is something that happens in rap or specifically i should say hip hop and is one of my biggest hurdles getting into it is all the referential lines that reference uh events or people or brands or anything outside of the song this shows up a lot in hip-hop culture and i do think it's interesting that while i reference that he was rapping he is introducing this right here and then the chorus which i think is the thesis statement for the whole song red solo cup i fill you up let's have a party you don't get more clearer than that uh verse two just continues to sing about things they stack well and they also break and not happy about them breaking now interestingly we shift perspective to something that's totally unrelated i have to admit the ladies get smitten admiring at how sharply my first name is written on you with a sharpie when i get to hitting on them to help me get lucky and i felt this was super creepy maybe this was just me it's not so bad in the context of the song so he says i mean actually it is kind of creepy because he says that uh he hits on women and uses his uh his status as a celebrity to help him get laid and like that power dynamic being introduced there is yeah that is a huge red flag but then also in the music video the person that he's hitting on and shining their and signing their sharpie is like half his age and like i'm gonna talk about that in a moment but the whole music video was real weird and i think it really colored some of my relationship to the song while i was listening to it because we'll get to it let's hit the lyrics first right we gotta lay down some of these thematic ideas because we don't really have any strong thematic well actually we do have a strong thematic element in the music and it's just laid back and chill which i think works well for this party culture stuff going on in the lyrics so there is some symmetry there where one theme helps build the other uh he goes on to say that there's other colors but they're not as good gatekeeping number two uh he says you're the abbot to my costello okay i think that works he really enjoys the company of this red solo cup he really has this affinity towards it for whatever reason i'm not trying to tell him how to live his life but then he says you are the fruit to my loom and i feel like he's trying to put a play on words with the brand fruit of the loom who make clothing but it feels like i mean there was it just doesn't work it's an allusion to a brand but it doesn't perfectly allude to it because they had to change one of the words and then root to my loom unless there's a different kind of loom i don't think that that works perfectly maybe i'm just missing a definition there but i don't think it works on either level uh red solo cup you're more than plastic you're more than amazing you're more than fantastic and believe me i'm not the least bit sarcastic when i look at you and say again just praising the cup it's very weird i just realized how product placement e this is makes me wonder how much money he got for this song from solo and then the bridge you're not a cup you're my friend thank you for being my friend this makes me think that toby keith is a very lonely person he's surrounded by all these people at the party surrounded by his bandmates but maybe he can't really be himself around them he only knows how to take the mask off when he's drinking the song is very sad but i think relatable for a lot of people not particularly because they find some sort of affinity with the red solo cup but because they don't have a way to express who they are without the help of alcohol anyways we finished the song up with the chorus repeated a couple of times and i think this is where i mean like okay so there's the synergy here right we have uh we have drinking party culture and this chill laid back song with group vocals like i think musically everything lines up really well here it's produced well i don't think it's a bad song in that very small concentrated lens it's simple but it's designed to be catchy it has a strong hook and there's strong cohesion between the lyrical and musical themes but here's my problem is that it feels contradictory on so many levels and i think this is what makes it a bad song for me Analysis - Why I Think This Actually Is A Bad Song uh because we have this person who is seemingly very down the earth they like to drink they like to drink in with cheap cups right he even said you're not a real man if you drink your beer from glass which i mean glass bottles man i know at a party we get kegs and stuff but i mean does he buy bottles of beer at home and then pour them into a solo cup and we're gonna get on that in a second we're gonna get on that in a second um so he actually we're gonna get on that right now i forgot what we were talking about he he speaks like he is a man of the earth like everyone else he just likes to go partying he uses cheap cups you know he goes to these parties with average joes all around him right but he's not an average joe he's toby keith something tells me he does not use red solo cups all the time in fact i'd wager he rarely uses them to me this is a song that says hey i'm just like you even though he's really not he's uh a very popular celebrity in country music and probably some sort of millionaire so right off the bat i'm already not believing anything he says not to mention later on during the song he even admits that he's not like everyone else there is status to him he can try to swoon people with a signature that's not a power a lot of people have especially not a lot of people who are going to use red solo cups at a party so we have this very disingenuous person who is professing his love for an inanimate object that feels extremely like product placement and it turns this entire thing into feeling like an ad that the person pushing does not support and it just becomes to a point where it feels very very corporate and that's where the clean production comes in and that's where the mismatch of ideas come in like this feels very focused tested how do we get this song to be loved by as many people as possible make it poppy and catchy give it group vocals so that people will feel more inclined to sing together give it ridiculously simple chorus so that people will be inclined to sing it together the more people who sing it together the more popular it becomes gets stuck in people's heads and they go and listen to it those listens are money views listens on spotify whatever it's all money it also puts the brand in people's minds right um we have the pop element we have the wrapping i don't know if it's actually going to bring in people who enjoy hip-hop music but it might right also wrapping is not really looked down upon in pop pop has its fair share of rapping in it so it's not like it's being hurt by doing that in fact it improves its chances of having a wider audience and it also brings a bit of the country redneck low income lower class people into the picture as well it isn't uh you know a snooty person uh you know a snooty californian uh you know tweener the second time i said tweener tween or somebody who targets tweens uh singing this right it's it's not uh whatever your big pop star at the moment might be right is this blue collared down to earth guy it it just feels extremely calculated on every single level and that to me makes it feel like a bad song despite its popularity despite its uh production and effort and performance everything about it is meticulously done for maximum listenability and infectiousness to push both toby keith as a brand specifically as a brand who would feel like your average joe yet despite that probably does not while also to push the red solo cups the next time you go to a party what kind of cup are you going to buy and through all of that because i now see it as an advertisement i immediately do not enjoy it you know there's a big difference between an ear worm that you don't like on the surface but can't help but recognize how catchy it is and an ear worm to an advertisement that you hate is stuck in your mind and that's where this sits i now think less of toby keith and red solo cup i have a negative uh association with both of them because i have had to listen to this song now i mean the chorus is stuck in my head i do not want it to be stuck there i cannot even appreciate what it is because it is a lie i do not like having a lie take up so much space in my mind it feels fake it is no longer facetious it is now intentionally demeaning and i think i might agree here that this is a bad song and the interesting thing is like i've talked all week about who makes songs and if that is important if this song had come from an up-and-coming artist someone with no following 100 subscribers or whatever it would feel more sincere and i would not have such an adverse reaction to it it really is a bad song because of its context which is something we've discussed all week even going back to my pal foot foot i've had some really good conversations in the comments as well as the discord server regarding if it is actually bad or not and like i posed in that reaction itself if it was released by an established artist would we still even consider it bad or would we just consider it as avant-garde art and i think that it's real that that context of who releases a song who creates it is really important and right here again it feels really important although on the inverse i feel like this song would not have as bad of a reputation especially well at least in this circle i don't know how the majority of the world feels about this track in these circles though uh it has been presented to me as a bad song but it is catchy it is well produced obviously people like it 20 million views or whatever i had but it doesn't feel like art to me and music that isn't art feels like an abomination i don't enjoy corporate music i really don't and this is my bias coming into it even you know even in this conversation right here i don't know that i can completely say objectively this is a bad song i'm sure there are people who enjoy it it's their favorite song best thing they've ever heard in that case it's a good song to them but as for me and what i believe music is and can do and should be utilized for selling a brand is not something i enjoy hearing music created for and that's what i feel listening to this and that makes me feel like it's a bad song it was not created with art in mind it was created with business and mind but also i mean it's just really creepy that this 30 year old 35 36 40 maybe even year old dude sitting around a college party like the whole music video just screams creep vibes i don't i don't like the music video at all it is just really really weird i don't know man Outro those are my thoughts on toby keith's red solo cup this for you guys come in let me know how you feel about it right i mean like i said it's not i already said what i said let me know in the comments let me know how you all feel about this one if you agree with me if you disagree with me anything you'd like to add that maybe i didn't touch on above the comment section is a description box and there is a link for linktree take you to this menu right here has everything related to the channel you can follow me on twitter join the discord server join the patreon pick up some merch submit some special selections a bunch of stuff in there go ahead and check it out above that if you could like subscribe and ring the bell i greatly appreciate all three of those we have one more video coming out came out three minutes ago it is our creator request for the day there is going to be a giveaway associated with this so make sure you watch and uh you know follow the instructions if you'd like to pick up a digital copy of the album that the song comes off of it's a black metal band they're up and coming they hit me up with a couple of keys uh to give away their albums so i'm pretty excited to work with them on that all right if not saturday we have our uh tomorrow we have our album reaction sunday there is no patreon live stream and we'll be back monday checking out our next theme all right until next time remember to be critical but not cynical of the music you listen to and have a fantastic morning afternoon or evening whenever you choose to watch my videos [Music] [Music] you