Music Video #92 (Day 1 of 2010)

Welcome to year four of our little experiment. Maybe this is the year my head will explode from being exposed to new stuff.


Today's music video is Rockin' the Suburbs by Ben Folds.





This video reminds me of Weird Al's White and Nerdy, or Offspring's Pretty Fly, but lets just say it's much closer to White and Nerdy, if you know what I mean. (I mean that it isn't garbage.)

The song is about a guy with a widow's peak who wants to be angry at stuff but can't really because he lives a comfortable life. It's hard to have righteous anger when you're well off. But righteous anger is what all the cool people have, so you'll see people like him make up how they're a victim of something too.

This video doesn't really take itself too seriously, so I'm not going to poke too much fun at it.

The song starts with the guy looking at the camera. Immediately you want to ridicule his aging white guy look, but that's what he's going for so he's way ahead of you. He presses his nose against the glass briefly to the music.

Then we see that he's in what looks to be a nice living room. Even though he's in his later 30s, he and several other hims are rocking as if they were teens in their parents home. The opening lyrics tell us that this is a lament of the suburban white guy. Oh, and buy his CD, folks. He's shows it off quickly.

Next he's outside on a skateboard riding around in the neighborhood. (A very nice neighborhood.) This guy has problems just like you! But he's not authentic enough, so you'll ignore him or mock him and that just feeds his pain. We next see him dancing with two clones, and it's as dorky as you'd expect.

We get to the chorus. He's rockin' the suburbs, yo! Just like Michael Jackson. Except the talent...oh, he said that before me. See, he's way ahead of you. Suddenly he's squatting down while the camera is looking up at him. I don't want to be down here. He sings that he takes his checks and knows that his music is fixed in post-production. He's the kind of guy who's given up and is depressed and knows what's wrong with his life yet doesn't bother to do anything.

He's also passive-aggressive. His next verse tells us about he's a wimp who gets pushed around and he blames his parents so...he's gonna say a swear! Take that, somebody! The only person this clown could ever push around is himself, though, so he asks random people for something to break. God, what's next? Maybe he won't use his turn signals! Maybe he won't leave a tip! Civilization is crumbling from his rebellious ways.

We get to the chorus again. Quiet Riot replaces Michael Jackson, but in this case we learn that they're not as talented as this guy. ZING! I'd bet I would agree so much if I knew who they were! But I'm just a ... never mind. We get a neat cameo by Weird Al when we find out that he's the producer who fixes this guy's songs.

Al slides the switches from "sucks" to "rocks". Our protagonist tells us that while driving he had this feeling. He can't really describe it but something doesn't feel right. He hears music that probably has a "screw whitey!" tone to it and it gives him terrible white guilt. Poor guy didn't need this. He was just going to the store for some hemorrhoid medicine.



Next we see him walking down a hallway trying to look like Eminem. I guess he was already popular by the time this video was released in 2001. He tries and fails to be angsty due to the previous established things that work against him.

Next up in the chorus Von Jobi* is mentioned, and is declared more talented than this guy. Then he starts jumping into a pool and grilling burgers in his big back yard. Hey, if you want a crappier life so you can feel better about yourself, I'm perfectly willing to trade for a pool and huge property. Just saying. I'll give you my email if you want.

Oh wait, this is just a character. Anyway, he finally gets to say some of those swears he threatened to do earlier. The song ends with him rocking out in a room with light coming out of several holes in the wall.


This song never takes itself seriously, and my attempts to mock it probably work against me. It's a fun, light song and I can see why Lita chose it for the first day of this year.

I'd say that the awesome part is the pool, but that's just my bias speaking. So I'll say that the white boy dancing is the awesome part of the video.




* - Or Bon Jobi if you prefer the correct way of spelling it.