Courtesy of 8 Bit Dad

Let‰’s talk about bad music. I‰’ll set the scene. 7^th grade. You just get home from school. You‰’re wearing an Urban Outfitters graphic t-shirt. Your parents are still at work. You hop on the internet because what else would you do. And, while I cannot speak for all middle schools with access to the internet, my go to zone was music videos.

Music videos were everything. I watched them, made them, and memorized them. But now, I rarely watch them. There seemed to be this aura of forbidden information surrounding music videos. I would watch them with my middle school friends with the volume down low. I‰’m not entirely sure what this whole fear of getting caught watching a music video was, the vast majority of the ones I gravitated towards were not even sexualized. But it seemed like a somewhat shameful act, possibly due the generational divide of growing up with internet and growing up without internet.

While some of the videos were classics and actually produced, like “Chain Hang Low,” there exists a labyrinth of what I‰’ll refer to as incredible horrible videos. My personal favorite would be “Where‰’s The Chapstick?‰” which is definitely the favorite of some other nostalgic folk with 27 million views. This is followed up closely by “Sitting on The Toilet.‰” I became, and still am, infatuated with the production quality of a pink Razr cellphone and a simple catchy rhyme.

I have two theories as to why I, and so many other adolescents, developed obsessions with these incredibly horrible music videos. Over the past week, I have discovered some new gems that were influential parts of my friends‰’ middle school experiences. Such as, “Don‰’t Hug Me I‰’m Scared‰” and “Shoes.‰Û

One theory is the whole watching a train wreck situation, in which you know something is horrible but you simply cannot turn away. Humans take great pleasure in the embarrassment of other humans. It becomes a mystery you need to explore. We have this innate desire to find out where the chapstick is.

My more personal theory is that our middle school insecurities are seemingly diminished by finding people weirder than ourselves. Seeing a woman rap on the toilet makes most bizarre middle school behavior seem totally normal. While in middle school it is rather unavoidable, very few kids want to be label as weird, which I find ironic because when you‰’re older you loathe being labeled ‰basic‰’ and want the weirdness back. Perhaps watching horrible music videos is the antidote to basicness.