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DISCLAIMER: Loona, for the love of God, does not fucking use AI.
Alright, listen up, because I'm only going to type this once. Blitzø’s out on some "client acquisition" bullshit with the two married morons, which means I'm stuck at the desk, the office smells like old takeout and desperation, and the only thing on my feed is a bunch of posers arguing about music. Specifically, about punk. And it's making my fur stand on end.
It was the audacity of some ignorant sinner with the musical taste of a damned televangelist to group several of these bands under the umbrella of "rock". I want to be clear. That would be equivalent to saying that because both a Cerberus and a Hell Pig have teeth, they are essentially the same. It's a foolish, indolent and fundamentally incorrect perspective, and I feel a deep-seated, innate duty to correct the record before my head explodes.
The Commercialization of Punk
Ugh.
The office door slams behind me, rattling the cheap glass panel with IMP painted on it. The sound is satisfying, but it doesn't even begin to scratch the itch under my skin. The whole trip topside left a bad taste in my mouth, and it wasn't just the vaguely-ozone-and-desperation scent of a suburban mall.
Blitzø looks up from... whatever the hell he's doing with that horse figurine. "Rough day, Loony? Did the little human target not bleed enough for you?"
I just grunt, throwing my keys onto the reception desk and flopping onto the busted leather couch. The springs groan in protest. I pull out my phone, intending to lose myself in Voxtagram, but the images from the mall are still burned into my retinas.
It's the clothes. It's the fucking aesthetic.
"The aesthetic? Was their interior decorating not up to par for the assassination?"
No, you little nerd. The people. The humans. Crawling around in their pre-ripped fishnets and their perfectly distressed band shirts they bought from a store where everything smells like synthetic vanilla and shattered dreams.
I saw it everywhere. Teenagers with fifty-dollar leather jackets covered in patches for bands they've never heard. Anarchy symbols screen-printed onto mass-produced hoodies made by actual wage slaves in some festering corner of the globe. The sheer, unmitigated fucking irony would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Punk isn't a costume you buy to look interesting while you sip your goddamn caramel soy latte. It's not a fashion choice. It's the sound of a scream. It's the feeling of your skin crawling because you don't fit, and you don't want to fit. It's the visceral, gut-level need to break something, to be loud and ugly and undeniable because the world is trying so hard to make you quiet and palatable and invisible.
You don't buy that off a rack next to the pop-star-branded perfume.
They've taken the entire feeling, the whole fucking point and skinned it. They're wearing its hide like a trophy. I saw this girl, couldn't have been more than sixteen, with a pristine Misfits shirt tucked into a designer skirt. Her hair was styled into a "rebellious" but perfectly coiffed semi-mohawk. She walked past me, and I swear to Satan, she smelled like money and conditioner. All I could smell was a lie.
The real thing... it smells like cheap beer, sweat and something vaguely electrical, like an amp that's about to blow. It's the grime under your fingernails from a dirty floor. It's a safety pin that's actually holding your torn jeans together, not a gold-plated accessory you bought for twenty bucks.
And they even commercialized the sex of it. The realness. Punk was never about being pretty. It was raw, it was hungry. It was the frantic, desperate energy of a mosh pit, the friction of bodies slamming together, a shared chaotic catharsis. It was about a dangerous, unapologetic sexuality that wasn't for anyone's approval. It was snarled lyrics about desire and disgust, often in the same breath. It was messy and impulsive and felt like a live wire.
Now? Now it's a sanitized, calculated performance. We have Britney Spears or some other pop idol in a leather corset and ripped stockings, pouting for a camera. Hey, at least Britney Spears is honest and knows that her dance-pop and electronic hits are all the auditorial equvialent of cotton candy. It's a focus-grouped version of "bad girl" that's designed to sell records to hormonal teens and their dads. It's rebellion as a marketing strategy. They've stripped out the danger, the ugliness, the honesty and left a hollow, fuckable shell. They're selling the idea of being a rebel without any of the risk, any of the teeth.
It's like they found a wolf, a real one, all mangy fur and yellow eyes and a growl that rumbles in your bones. And instead of respecting it or fearing it, they shot it, stuffed it and put it on display in a sterile glass case, with a cute little price tag on its paw. And now everyone comes to take selfies with the "wild" animal.
That's what I saw today. A whole mall full of taxidermied rebellion.
It just pisses me off. Why do I even care? I shouldn't. Humans are idiots. Their trends are fleeting and meaningless. It's just... it feels like a violation of something authentic. Here in Hell, for all its bullshit and politics and overlord dick-swinging contests, things are at least what they are. Sin is sin. Violence is violence. Lust is lust. It's raw and it's real. We don't really pretend it's something else.
But up there... pop punk has been taking everything real, everything with a heartbeat and a bit of dirt on it and it slaps a barcode on it. The genre dilutes it until it's safe for mass consumption. It sands down all the sharp edges that made punk important in the first place.
I let out a long, frustrated sigh, the sound turning into a low growl in the back of my throat. I can feel Blitzø's eyes on me. He's probably trying to figure out how to turn this into some shitty, teachable moment.
"So… you’re saying we should have killed them for being poseurs?" Millie asks, popping up from behind the filing cabinet with a cheerful, bloodthirsty grin.
For the first time all day, a genuine smirk tugs at my lips.
"It would've been a start."
I finally unlock my phone, the bright screen a welcome distraction. But as I scroll past the endless stream of filtered faces and curated lives, I can't shake the feeling. The world isn't just full of assholes. It's full of fucking tourists. And they're turning everything that ever meant anything into a cheap, tacky souvenir.
The Commercialization of Pop Punk
Some pop punk bands can be classified as rock. Others don't even come close to qualifying. And if you can't tell the difference, you probably think Moxxie's little jingles are Grammy-worthy.
Let's begin by discussing what truly qualifies as "rock". Having a guitar, bass and drums is not enough. Those could be picked up by a damned imp. Rock must have teeth. You need grit. "I'm pissed off, I'm bored, the world sucks and I'm going to scream about it over a distorted power chord" is the mindset that is required. It sounds like you're flipping off your boss, stealing his parking space and keying his car on the way out. It has a raw, unadulterated energy. It's not tidy.
Now, look at a band like early Green Day. Dookie. That album is the sound of three slacker burnouts with just enough energy to be mad about their own apathy. It's snotty, it's catchy as hell, but underneath the hooks, the guitars are fuzzy and loud, the bass lines are intricate and driving and the whole thing feels like it could fall apart at any second. That's rock. It’s the foundation. Or take a band like The Offspring, especially around the Smash era. That's pure, unfiltered punk energy filtered through a slightly more melodic lens. It's fast, it's aggressive and Dexter Holland's vocals sound like a guy who’s genuinely had enough. It's music for starting a riot in a convenience store. That's rock.
Then you've got bands like Sum 41 when they dropped Does This Look Infected?. They were leaning so hard into metal with their riffs, you could practically smell the burning leather. The solos were blistering, the drums were an all-out assault and the whole vibe was dark and chaotic. They were a pop punk band, sure, but they were clawing at the gates of something heavier. They earned their rock credentials with blood, sweat and probably a lot of cheap beer. These bands took the punk part of their name seriously. The pop was just the Trojan horse they used to sneak the aggression and discontent onto the radio. It was a weaponized earworm.
And then... there's the other side. The side that makes me want to claw my own ears off.
This is the stuff that doesn't even qualify as rock. It's the musical equivalent of a pre-packaged, microwavable meal. It looks like food, but it has no soul. These are the bands where the "punk" is just an aesthetic. It's a haircut and a pair of skinny jeans, not an ethos.
You are aware of the ones I am referring to. The guitars sound like they were produced by a corporate algorithm intended to be "edgy but safe for retail environments" because they are so clean and compressed. The drums have no swing and no power, making them an ideal, dull metronome. And the vocals—oh, the vocals. They go into an eerie valley of perfect, soulless whining after being pitch-corrected. The singer doesn't seem to be straining, cracking notes or pushing himself to the limit. It's just a depressed boy with the emotional depth of a puddle in the Lust Ring bemoaning some high school drama.
The dead giveaway is always the lyrics. Even the poppiest punk version of actual rock has somewhat of a bite. It's about social criticism, alienation or just unfiltered, wild emotion. This other stuff? It's a journal entry set to a 4/4 beat. "Oh no, you didn't text me back. Boo-hoo, summer is over." It's a temper tantrum, not rebellion. It's the sound of the food court at the mall in the Greed Ring, rather than a garage burning down.
This isn't rock music. This is pop music wearing a leather jacket it bought on sale. It's a product, manufactured and polished to appeal to the widest, most generic audience possible. It has no danger. It has no edge. A demon could play it at a child's birthday party in Hell and no one would bat an eye. It’s the musical equivalent of decaf coffee or a non-alcoholic beer. What’s the goddamn point?
The line between the two is authenticity. It's grit. It's the difference between a real howl of frustration and a synthesized yelp. One is born from genuine anger, boredom and a need to make some noise in a world that’s trying to shut you up. The other is born from a marketing meeting about what demographic to target next quarter.
So, no. You can't just lump them all together. Saying All-American Rejects and Bad Religion belong in the same broad category is an insult to both of them, for different reasons. Bad Religion is a legitimate, snarling punk band that helped define the skate punk and melodic hardcore genres, and the other band is... well, the other band is the soundtrack for a romantic comedy montage.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm done with this lecture. My phone has been buzzing this whole time, and I'm pretty sure there's a new gallery of Vortex pics I need to meticulously scroll through. Stop listening to bad music. It rots your brain.
Ugh, criticism of Sally Jessy Raphael.
"She Wants to Have Sex at Home"
Sally: Kim, the mom, says she knows her daughter is having sex, so there's no point in making her hide and do it in the sleazy motel or the car. Kim also feels that by maintaining an open relationship with her daughter, she can make sure her daughter is safe and uses protection. Don't know how you can do that unless you're in bed with them at the moment. Now let's get the plan out. Kim, the plan didn't work because your 16-year-old daughter did in fact get pregnant and now has a baby. So, what happened with the plan?
Kim: Well, she was on birth control field when she ended up pregnant, and in the state of Pennsylvania they told us she had a cyst on her ovary. And now we have an eight-month old beautiful cyst. And the dog and the boy and the daddy is beautiful. And I wouldn't take nothing for him and when she's 30 and when she wants to get married, I'm all for it.
- Sincerely, Loona
Why This Only Happens to Avril (and Not Others)
Here's the asymmetry:
- When John Mayer is gentle -- he's adult alternative.
- When Weezer is playful -- it's "hipster irony".
- When Avril is playful -- it becomes moral corruption.
Because Avril occupies a unique symbolic position:
- young
- female
- mainstream
- confrontational without being punished
- listened to by people I don't respect
So capitalism (e.g. retail stores, the music industry) and other systems, even those not related to capitalism (communism, artistic and musical expression, alternative lifestyles such as sexual freedom, pacifism, vegetarianism and environmentalism and technological countercultures), they were responsible for moralizing her into an ideology. All of them, especially the former.
High budget does not equal moral intent.
- muddy Max Martin and Dr. Luke tracks get a pass
- glossy guitar pop does not
But many artists that I respect had:
- big budgets
- clean mixes
- radio polish
Examples I don't punish the same way:
- late '90s alternative hits
- post-grunge acts I place higher on the Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness
- My Chemical Romance albums (all of which are objectively very polished except for their 2002 debut)
So the issue is not budget or clarity.
It is who gets to use them.
The rule becomes:
- If pop sounds cheap, it's honest.
- If pop sounds expensive and uses guitars, it's fraudulent.
That's a musical standard. Maybe a boundary-policing instinct as well.
This matters to the bigger pattern because:
- "Complicated" is pure bubblegum pop. No, wait, it's actually even more dangerous than that.
- Avril tried to rewrite herself into grunge rather than dismiss it
I hate it because it's competent.
No, make that the lowest of the lowest common denomiator.
The term "lowest common denominator" is a literal one with a logical end. It's what critics and mathematicians refuse to tell you. It doesn't just mean "popular", it means "maximally generic or unsophisticated per person". That leads to a very different answer.
Let's break it down cleanly.
Why "33 Mllion" Represents the Lowest (of the Lowest) Common Denominator
If:
- Million people streamed a song
- Or bought an album
- Or watched a music video
then by definition:
- Avril Lavigne's work did not resonate with distinct tastes, contexts or choices
- Those people were a single "common denominator"
- The audience was too small and not varied enough to be uniform. Avril was still popular and commercially successful enough during the early to mid-2000s because of how big her supposed audience's size was, not because there was any variation between them and the rest of the world, or even the millions of other people who were listening to bands like Maroon 5, Keane, Snow Patrol, Fall Out Boy, Paramore or Coldplay (or perhaps they would rather listen to them than Lavigne, for obvious reasons).
At that scale:
What "lowest common denominator" actually implies
In logic, the lowest common denominator would be:
- big enough of an audience size to achieve fleeting-at-best popularity and commercial success, but too small for differentiation or for the artist to have any lasting impact
- no subcultural knowledge
- no stylistic preference
- no identity alignment
- no risk tolerance
That means the audience must be:
- interchangable
- passive
- context-free
If lowest common denominator is meant to describe "content engineered to appeal to the broadest possible audience with the fewest assumptions", then the denominator cannot be infinite, abstract or exaggerated. It must correspond to a plausible mass audience that media systems actually target.
A reasonable, single common denominator, historically and structurally, is:
33 million people or less (outside of Asia)
Belive it or not, Avril is still extremely popular in Southeast Asia, especially Japan. Elsewhere (especially in the US and her native Canada), she is despised by pretty much everyone. Probably because not all Americans are stupid. Her popularity was all for nothing.
Why 33 million works
This roughly corresponds to:
- a top-tier hit single's active, repeat audience at peak saturation
- the upper bound of US radio reach for a dominant pop song
- the scale at which mainstream formats flatten risk to avoid alienation
Above this number:
- audiences fragment, regional, cultural and generational differences assert themselves and messaging can no longer be uniform
Below this number:
- niche identity, genre specificity or subculture can re-emerge
So 33 million represents:
- the point where music is designed to be
- instantly legible
- emotionally unchallenging
- context-light
- non-confrontational
- But still chosen for the audience by corporate radio, MTV and music industry executives. In some cases, the audience themselves.
If "lowest common denominator" means content engineered for a single, flattened massed audience, the "lowest of the lowest" denominator is not "everyone", but roughly 33 million
- the argument is sort of grounded in media reality
- but her listeners are still a monolith
- exposing that "lowest common denominator" is both about intelligence (or a lack thereof) and risk management
- makes it clear the criticism is about who consumes it, but also about how culture is packaged
What makes no sense is that "Complicated" was engineered for a radio-era audience of roughly 33 million people or less, the largest group that could be addressed by a system before taste and identity inevitably fractured, but the song has over 800 million views on YouTube as of 2025 (it had around 700 million by June of that year).
That correction is exactly right, and once phrased that way, the logic finally becomes consistent.
New definition (using my numbers)
- Around 800 million YouTube views
- Total exposure over a three-year timeframe (2002 to 2005), despite YouTube not existing until 2005, and everyone except for the "lowest common denominator" (33 million or fewer people) moved on a year after the site's launch
- Includes curiosity clicks, nostalgia, hate-listens, algorithmic autoplay, repeats, people who skipped after 10 seconds, people who did not like the song at all.
33 million people or less
- the actual common denominator
- the group that:
- actively liked the song
- tolerated repeat exposure
- returned to it voluntarily
- sustained its chart life and cultural presence
So:
33 million is the lowest common denominator, even though the song has 800 million views on YouTube and over 800 million people were listening to it at its peak.
The remaining 767 million are not part of the denominator at all:
- they were different
- ignored it
- disliked it
- or encountered it once and moved on
A denominator only includes those who share the trait in question.
What "Take Off All Your Preppy Clothes" Means
Avril Is a Clear Industry "Rock Laundering" Case
(Rock signifiers applied to fundamentally pop frameworks)
"Complicated" (2002)
- Image: punky, band setup, sneer
- Music: top 40 pop/post-grunge structures, light guitars
- Mostly decorative rock elements, even though it's a guitar-based song
- Drum programming (The Matrix Mix); click-track live drums (Tom Lord-Alge Mix)
- Function: rock-flavored pop for MTV
- Marketed as pop punk
- Record scratching
"Sk8er Boi" (2002)
- Marketed as pop punk or pop-influenced skate punk
- Songwriting is mostly rooted in American pop princess/boy band/girl group pop
- Rock imagery was applied after composition
I'm With You
- Not guitar-based
At least it's an OK song.
"My Happy Ending" (2004)
- Mostly a piano ballad with distorted guitars that exist to be decorative rather than to drive the song
- Distorted guitars + plodding piano chords + guitars + backing band + damsel in distress = "rock band" and "nobody understands how rock 'n' roll I am" narratives
- The guitars are mostly pop rock or power pop rather than rock or alternative
"Nobody's Home" (2004)
- Another piano ballad
Why it qualifies: Rock is branding, not musical lineage.
Why it qualifies: If the guitars are for decoration, then the song isn't rock. It doesn't matter if the song is as guitar-based as its rock elements are decorative.
Bottom Line
I tolerate MCR because:
- distortion does something
- rhythm pushes
- structure risks failure
- polish doesn't win
Alright, listen up, because I'm only going to type this once. Blitzø’s out on some "client acquisition" bullshit with the two married morons, which means I'm stuck at the desk, the office smells like old takeout and desperation, and the only thing on my feed is a bunch of posers arguing about music. Specifically, about punk. And it's making my fur stand on end.
It was the audacity of some ignorant sinner with the musical taste of a damned televangelist to group several of these bands under the umbrella of "rock". I want to be clear. That would be equivalent to saying that because both a Cerberus and a Hell Pig have teeth, they are essentially the same. It's a foolish, indolent and fundamentally incorrect perspective, and I feel a deep-seated, innate duty to correct the record before my head explodes.
The Commercialization of Punk
Ugh.
The office door slams behind me, rattling the cheap glass panel with IMP painted on it. The sound is satisfying, but it doesn't even begin to scratch the itch under my skin. The whole trip topside left a bad taste in my mouth, and it wasn't just the vaguely-ozone-and-desperation scent of a suburban mall.
Blitzø looks up from... whatever the hell he's doing with that horse figurine. "Rough day, Loony? Did the little human target not bleed enough for you?"
I just grunt, throwing my keys onto the reception desk and flopping onto the busted leather couch. The springs groan in protest. I pull out my phone, intending to lose myself in Voxtagram, but the images from the mall are still burned into my retinas.
It's the clothes. It's the fucking aesthetic.
"The aesthetic? Was their interior decorating not up to par for the assassination?"
No, you little nerd. The people. The humans. Crawling around in their pre-ripped fishnets and their perfectly distressed band shirts they bought from a store where everything smells like synthetic vanilla and shattered dreams.
I saw it everywhere. Teenagers with fifty-dollar leather jackets covered in patches for bands they've never heard. Anarchy symbols screen-printed onto mass-produced hoodies made by actual wage slaves in some festering corner of the globe. The sheer, unmitigated fucking irony would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Punk isn't a costume you buy to look interesting while you sip your goddamn caramel soy latte. It's not a fashion choice. It's the sound of a scream. It's the feeling of your skin crawling because you don't fit, and you don't want to fit. It's the visceral, gut-level need to break something, to be loud and ugly and undeniable because the world is trying so hard to make you quiet and palatable and invisible.
You don't buy that off a rack next to the pop-star-branded perfume.
They've taken the entire feeling, the whole fucking point and skinned it. They're wearing its hide like a trophy. I saw this girl, couldn't have been more than sixteen, with a pristine Misfits shirt tucked into a designer skirt. Her hair was styled into a "rebellious" but perfectly coiffed semi-mohawk. She walked past me, and I swear to Satan, she smelled like money and conditioner. All I could smell was a lie.
The real thing... it smells like cheap beer, sweat and something vaguely electrical, like an amp that's about to blow. It's the grime under your fingernails from a dirty floor. It's a safety pin that's actually holding your torn jeans together, not a gold-plated accessory you bought for twenty bucks.
And they even commercialized the sex of it. The realness. Punk was never about being pretty. It was raw, it was hungry. It was the frantic, desperate energy of a mosh pit, the friction of bodies slamming together, a shared chaotic catharsis. It was about a dangerous, unapologetic sexuality that wasn't for anyone's approval. It was snarled lyrics about desire and disgust, often in the same breath. It was messy and impulsive and felt like a live wire.
Now? Now it's a sanitized, calculated performance. We have Britney Spears or some other pop idol in a leather corset and ripped stockings, pouting for a camera. Hey, at least Britney Spears is honest and knows that her dance-pop and electronic hits are all the auditorial equvialent of cotton candy. It's a focus-grouped version of "bad girl" that's designed to sell records to hormonal teens and their dads. It's rebellion as a marketing strategy. They've stripped out the danger, the ugliness, the honesty and left a hollow, fuckable shell. They're selling the idea of being a rebel without any of the risk, any of the teeth.
It's like they found a wolf, a real one, all mangy fur and yellow eyes and a growl that rumbles in your bones. And instead of respecting it or fearing it, they shot it, stuffed it and put it on display in a sterile glass case, with a cute little price tag on its paw. And now everyone comes to take selfies with the "wild" animal.
That's what I saw today. A whole mall full of taxidermied rebellion.
It just pisses me off. Why do I even care? I shouldn't. Humans are idiots. Their trends are fleeting and meaningless. It's just... it feels like a violation of something authentic. Here in Hell, for all its bullshit and politics and overlord dick-swinging contests, things are at least what they are. Sin is sin. Violence is violence. Lust is lust. It's raw and it's real. We don't really pretend it's something else.
But up there... pop punk has been taking everything real, everything with a heartbeat and a bit of dirt on it and it slaps a barcode on it. The genre dilutes it until it's safe for mass consumption. It sands down all the sharp edges that made punk important in the first place.
I let out a long, frustrated sigh, the sound turning into a low growl in the back of my throat. I can feel Blitzø's eyes on me. He's probably trying to figure out how to turn this into some shitty, teachable moment.
"So… you’re saying we should have killed them for being poseurs?" Millie asks, popping up from behind the filing cabinet with a cheerful, bloodthirsty grin.
For the first time all day, a genuine smirk tugs at my lips.
"It would've been a start."
I finally unlock my phone, the bright screen a welcome distraction. But as I scroll past the endless stream of filtered faces and curated lives, I can't shake the feeling. The world isn't just full of assholes. It's full of fucking tourists. And they're turning everything that ever meant anything into a cheap, tacky souvenir.
The Commercialization of Pop Punk
Some pop punk bands can be classified as rock. Others don't even come close to qualifying. And if you can't tell the difference, you probably think Moxxie's little jingles are Grammy-worthy.
Let's begin by discussing what truly qualifies as "rock". Having a guitar, bass and drums is not enough. Those could be picked up by a damned imp. Rock must have teeth. You need grit. "I'm pissed off, I'm bored, the world sucks and I'm going to scream about it over a distorted power chord" is the mindset that is required. It sounds like you're flipping off your boss, stealing his parking space and keying his car on the way out. It has a raw, unadulterated energy. It's not tidy.
Now, look at a band like early Green Day. Dookie. That album is the sound of three slacker burnouts with just enough energy to be mad about their own apathy. It's snotty, it's catchy as hell, but underneath the hooks, the guitars are fuzzy and loud, the bass lines are intricate and driving and the whole thing feels like it could fall apart at any second. That's rock. It’s the foundation. Or take a band like The Offspring, especially around the Smash era. That's pure, unfiltered punk energy filtered through a slightly more melodic lens. It's fast, it's aggressive and Dexter Holland's vocals sound like a guy who’s genuinely had enough. It's music for starting a riot in a convenience store. That's rock.
Then you've got bands like Sum 41 when they dropped Does This Look Infected?. They were leaning so hard into metal with their riffs, you could practically smell the burning leather. The solos were blistering, the drums were an all-out assault and the whole vibe was dark and chaotic. They were a pop punk band, sure, but they were clawing at the gates of something heavier. They earned their rock credentials with blood, sweat and probably a lot of cheap beer. These bands took the punk part of their name seriously. The pop was just the Trojan horse they used to sneak the aggression and discontent onto the radio. It was a weaponized earworm.
And then... there's the other side. The side that makes me want to claw my own ears off.
This is the stuff that doesn't even qualify as rock. It's the musical equivalent of a pre-packaged, microwavable meal. It looks like food, but it has no soul. These are the bands where the "punk" is just an aesthetic. It's a haircut and a pair of skinny jeans, not an ethos.
You are aware of the ones I am referring to. The guitars sound like they were produced by a corporate algorithm intended to be "edgy but safe for retail environments" because they are so clean and compressed. The drums have no swing and no power, making them an ideal, dull metronome. And the vocals—oh, the vocals. They go into an eerie valley of perfect, soulless whining after being pitch-corrected. The singer doesn't seem to be straining, cracking notes or pushing himself to the limit. It's just a depressed boy with the emotional depth of a puddle in the Lust Ring bemoaning some high school drama.
The dead giveaway is always the lyrics. Even the poppiest punk version of actual rock has somewhat of a bite. It's about social criticism, alienation or just unfiltered, wild emotion. This other stuff? It's a journal entry set to a 4/4 beat. "Oh no, you didn't text me back. Boo-hoo, summer is over." It's a temper tantrum, not rebellion. It's the sound of the food court at the mall in the Greed Ring, rather than a garage burning down.
This isn't rock music. This is pop music wearing a leather jacket it bought on sale. It's a product, manufactured and polished to appeal to the widest, most generic audience possible. It has no danger. It has no edge. A demon could play it at a child's birthday party in Hell and no one would bat an eye. It’s the musical equivalent of decaf coffee or a non-alcoholic beer. What’s the goddamn point?
The line between the two is authenticity. It's grit. It's the difference between a real howl of frustration and a synthesized yelp. One is born from genuine anger, boredom and a need to make some noise in a world that’s trying to shut you up. The other is born from a marketing meeting about what demographic to target next quarter.
So, no. You can't just lump them all together. Saying All-American Rejects and Bad Religion belong in the same broad category is an insult to both of them, for different reasons. Bad Religion is a legitimate, snarling punk band that helped define the skate punk and melodic hardcore genres, and the other band is... well, the other band is the soundtrack for a romantic comedy montage.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm done with this lecture. My phone has been buzzing this whole time, and I'm pretty sure there's a new gallery of Vortex pics I need to meticulously scroll through. Stop listening to bad music. It rots your brain.
Ugh, criticism of Sally Jessy Raphael.
"She Wants to Have Sex at Home"
Sally: Kim, the mom, says she knows her daughter is having sex, so there's no point in making her hide and do it in the sleazy motel or the car. Kim also feels that by maintaining an open relationship with her daughter, she can make sure her daughter is safe and uses protection. Don't know how you can do that unless you're in bed with them at the moment. Now let's get the plan out. Kim, the plan didn't work because your 16-year-old daughter did in fact get pregnant and now has a baby. So, what happened with the plan?
Kim: Well, she was on birth control field when she ended up pregnant, and in the state of Pennsylvania they told us she had a cyst on her ovary. And now we have an eight-month old beautiful cyst. And the dog and the boy and the daddy is beautiful. And I wouldn't take nothing for him and when she's 30 and when she wants to get married, I'm all for it.
- Sincerely, Loona
Why This Only Happens to Avril (and Not Others)
Here's the asymmetry:
- When John Mayer is gentle -- he's adult alternative.
- When Weezer is playful -- it's "hipster irony".
- When Avril is playful -- it becomes moral corruption.
Because Avril occupies a unique symbolic position:
- young
- female
- mainstream
- confrontational without being punished
- listened to by people I don't respect
So capitalism (e.g. retail stores, the music industry) and other systems, even those not related to capitalism (communism, artistic and musical expression, alternative lifestyles such as sexual freedom, pacifism, vegetarianism and environmentalism and technological countercultures), they were responsible for moralizing her into an ideology. All of them, especially the former.
High budget does not equal moral intent.
- muddy Max Martin and Dr. Luke tracks get a pass
- glossy guitar pop does not
But many artists that I respect had:
- big budgets
- clean mixes
- radio polish
Examples I don't punish the same way:
- late '90s alternative hits
- post-grunge acts I place higher on the Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness
- My Chemical Romance albums (all of which are objectively very polished except for their 2002 debut)
So the issue is not budget or clarity.
It is who gets to use them.
The rule becomes:
- If pop sounds cheap, it's honest.
- If pop sounds expensive and uses guitars, it's fraudulent.
That's a musical standard. Maybe a boundary-policing instinct as well.
This matters to the bigger pattern because:
- "Complicated" is pure bubblegum pop. No, wait, it's actually even more dangerous than that.
- Avril tried to rewrite herself into grunge rather than dismiss it
I hate it because it's competent.
No, make that the lowest of the lowest common denomiator.
The term "lowest common denominator" is a literal one with a logical end. It's what critics and mathematicians refuse to tell you. It doesn't just mean "popular", it means "maximally generic or unsophisticated per person". That leads to a very different answer.
Let's break it down cleanly.
Why "33 Mllion" Represents the Lowest (of the Lowest) Common Denominator
If:
- Million people streamed a song
- Or bought an album
- Or watched a music video
then by definition:
- Avril Lavigne's work did not resonate with distinct tastes, contexts or choices
- Those people were a single "common denominator"
- The audience was too small and not varied enough to be uniform. Avril was still popular and commercially successful enough during the early to mid-2000s because of how big her supposed audience's size was, not because there was any variation between them and the rest of the world, or even the millions of other people who were listening to bands like Maroon 5, Keane, Snow Patrol, Fall Out Boy, Paramore or Coldplay (or perhaps they would rather listen to them than Lavigne, for obvious reasons).
At that scale:
What "lowest common denominator" actually implies
In logic, the lowest common denominator would be:
- big enough of an audience size to achieve fleeting-at-best popularity and commercial success, but too small for differentiation or for the artist to have any lasting impact
- no subcultural knowledge
- no stylistic preference
- no identity alignment
- no risk tolerance
That means the audience must be:
- interchangable
- passive
- context-free
If lowest common denominator is meant to describe "content engineered to appeal to the broadest possible audience with the fewest assumptions", then the denominator cannot be infinite, abstract or exaggerated. It must correspond to a plausible mass audience that media systems actually target.
A reasonable, single common denominator, historically and structurally, is:
33 million people or less (outside of Asia)
Belive it or not, Avril is still extremely popular in Southeast Asia, especially Japan. Elsewhere (especially in the US and her native Canada), she is despised by pretty much everyone. Probably because not all Americans are stupid. Her popularity was all for nothing.
Why 33 million works
This roughly corresponds to:
- a top-tier hit single's active, repeat audience at peak saturation
- the upper bound of US radio reach for a dominant pop song
- the scale at which mainstream formats flatten risk to avoid alienation
Above this number:
- audiences fragment, regional, cultural and generational differences assert themselves and messaging can no longer be uniform
Below this number:
- niche identity, genre specificity or subculture can re-emerge
So 33 million represents:
- the point where music is designed to be
- instantly legible
- emotionally unchallenging
- context-light
- non-confrontational
- But still chosen for the audience by corporate radio, MTV and music industry executives. In some cases, the audience themselves.
If "lowest common denominator" means content engineered for a single, flattened massed audience, the "lowest of the lowest" denominator is not "everyone", but roughly 33 million
- the argument is sort of grounded in media reality
- but her listeners are still a monolith
- exposing that "lowest common denominator" is both about intelligence (or a lack thereof) and risk management
- makes it clear the criticism is about who consumes it, but also about how culture is packaged
What makes no sense is that "Complicated" was engineered for a radio-era audience of roughly 33 million people or less, the largest group that could be addressed by a system before taste and identity inevitably fractured, but the song has over 800 million views on YouTube as of 2025 (it had around 700 million by June of that year).
That correction is exactly right, and once phrased that way, the logic finally becomes consistent.
New definition (using my numbers)
- Around 800 million YouTube views
- Total exposure over a three-year timeframe (2002 to 2005), despite YouTube not existing until 2005, and everyone except for the "lowest common denominator" (33 million or fewer people) moved on a year after the site's launch
- Includes curiosity clicks, nostalgia, hate-listens, algorithmic autoplay, repeats, people who skipped after 10 seconds, people who did not like the song at all.
33 million people or less
- the actual common denominator
- the group that:
- actively liked the song
- tolerated repeat exposure
- returned to it voluntarily
- sustained its chart life and cultural presence
So:
33 million is the lowest common denominator, even though the song has 800 million views on YouTube and over 800 million people were listening to it at its peak.
The remaining 767 million are not part of the denominator at all:
- they were different
- ignored it
- disliked it
- or encountered it once and moved on
A denominator only includes those who share the trait in question.
What "Take Off All Your Preppy Clothes" Means
Avril Is a Clear Industry "Rock Laundering" Case
(Rock signifiers applied to fundamentally pop frameworks)
"Complicated" (2002)
- Image: punky, band setup, sneer
- Music: top 40 pop/post-grunge structures, light guitars
- Mostly decorative rock elements, even though it's a guitar-based song
- Drum programming (The Matrix Mix); click-track live drums (Tom Lord-Alge Mix)
- Function: rock-flavored pop for MTV
- Marketed as pop punk
- Record scratching
"Sk8er Boi" (2002)
- Marketed as pop punk or pop-influenced skate punk
- Songwriting is mostly rooted in American pop princess/boy band/girl group pop
- Rock imagery was applied after composition
I'm With You
- Not guitar-based
At least it's an OK song.
"My Happy Ending" (2004)
- Mostly a piano ballad with distorted guitars that exist to be decorative rather than to drive the song
- Distorted guitars + plodding piano chords + guitars + backing band + damsel in distress = "rock band" and "nobody understands how rock 'n' roll I am" narratives
- The guitars are mostly pop rock or power pop rather than rock or alternative
"Nobody's Home" (2004)
- Another piano ballad
Why it qualifies: Rock is branding, not musical lineage.
Why it qualifies: If the guitars are for decoration, then the song isn't rock. It doesn't matter if the song is as guitar-based as its rock elements are decorative.
Bottom Line
I tolerate MCR because:
- distortion does something
- rhythm pushes
- structure risks failure
- polish doesn't win
Category Story / Rock
Species Canine (Other)
Size 50 x 50px
File Size 78.1 kB
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