Ope Pardon, No. 20: Songs for the Kool-Aid Man

The other week I heard the song "Let It Rock" by Kevin Rudolf and Lil Wayne for the first time in, conservatively, a decade.

I was in the best possible headspace to receive this blast from the past, which is to say I was at the gym and the trainer had just played "Remember the Name" by Fort Minor so, mentally, I was already in the early 2000s. But in any case, leaving the class I was nothing less than compelled to play "Let It Rock" back. And I did, at least 3-4 times on repeat on my walk home, and let me just say, even post-workout, I could have run through a wall.

I call songs with this effect on me Kool-Aid Man songs, which I will allow either YouTube, SNL or Dane Cook to explain to you if it is, for cultural or generational reasons, not self-evident.

"Let It Rock" is not a good song, but like many pop songs and/or songs from the scourge that was the rap-rock era, it is an effective Kool-Aid Man song — particularly when complemented by the considerable catalyst that is nostalgia. (Is it Kevin Rudolf that empowers me to run through a wall, or momentarily feeling 18 and carefree?)

It's also, apparently, a real thought-provoking song because my mind has been racing with thoughts about it ever since — 15 of which I will share with you now.

1. I have categorized other songs as "songs that make me want to run through a wall" before and I think that while almost all Kool-Aid Man songs are good work out songs, not all work out songs are inherently Kool-Aid Man songs. Same for speeding ticket songs or classic club bangers. The BPM, wrecking-ball bass line and general energy of a good Kool-Aid Man song is certainly conducive to lead and/or dancing feet, but there are definitely songs that will get you pulled over or fill a dance floor that are missing that je-ne-sais-quoi that inspires you to bust down a brick wall.

2. Perhaps the X-factor of Kool-Aid Man songs is also what makes them a very personal category of songs. In other words, I highly doubt that "Let It Rock" is a universal Kool-Aid Man song, especially for anyone over or under a certain age and/or not from a particular milieu.

3. I think a lot of my Kool-Aid Man songs are objectively bad songs (like "Let It Rock") but they so viscerally evoke a certain feeling that I, as previously stated, feel sufficiently jacked with adrenaline to run through a wall.

4. More specific to "Let It Rock" but less related to Kool-Aid Man songs: The dramatic pause that songwriters love to throw into songs of all genres after the word "come" is simply one of the funniest things in anglophone music. I don't know if it happens in other languages but it kills me every time. Oh you think you're clever, don't you? I would love to know the first recorded use of the come pause.

5. I have recently remembered that I like music. Or rather, I have recently remembered how much I like music, which has led to two concrete developments:

   1. I have recruited a few pals here to join me on what I have dubbed Dance Dance Resolution because, to quote Jason Mendoza from whom I subconsciously stole the name, we resolve to dance. Or more specifically for my Chicago readers, to find The Holiday Club and/or Baby Atlas of Paris — though if we're keeping it strictly on DJ terms I would also accept The Hangge Uppe of Paris.

   2. I have been making a LOT of playlists. So, obviously "Songs for the Kool-Aid Man" is my latest work-in-progress. It's tricky because when I go searching for songs, I feel like I fall into the trap of adding upbeat songs that move me, but perhaps not to the degree of demolition, a feeling that can only truly be known when it takes you by surprise. You can't ask yourself, does this make me want to run into a wall? You rather need to be listening to a song and then realize, my god, I could run through a wall right now. Anyways, you may look but not judge here.

6. One of my confirmed Kool-Aid Man songs is "Club Foot" by Kasabian. I stand by this categorization, it's a great song, but I am mortified to share that instead of knowing the song, like presumably 98% of the population, because FIFA — bastion of political corruption and unreasonably good video game soundtracks — for me it's the training montage in the Ashton Kutcher Kevin Costner Coast Guard movie The Guardian. And that's something I just have to live with.

7. Another one of my Kool-Aid Man songs is "This Is Not A Game" by Chemical Brothers and Miguel from the Hunger Games: Mockingbird Part 1 soundtrack, a soundtrack I believe we simply do not talk about enough on account of the fact I have never heard anyone talk about it. There is another banger on that album that features Stromae, Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tip and Haim, which is an insane line-up, and, moreover, it rules and I have literally never heard it anywhere outside of my own headphones. What happened there? Justice for "Meltdown."

8. Speaking of soundtracks: The Fast and Furious soundtracks — pretty much wall-to-wall Kool-Aid Man songs.

9. I added "Dragostea" to the playlist at like 2:30 in the morning after we heard it in a club on the aforementioned Mission: Dance Dance Resolution and it was actually the original song, which I had kind of forgotten about because despite it being deeply imprinted in my memories of being 11, the riff also triggers college on account of what, I think we can be comfortable admitting now, is a criminally bad TI/Rihanna song.

10. "212" by Azealia Banks is another Kool-Aid Man song but it's also another song that I heard on a gym playlist here at like 10:30a.m. on a Sunday morning and it immediately reminded me of this incredible and incredibly accurate reel.

11. I don't know when the last time any of you listened to early Childish Gambino, but YIKES those lyrics do not hold up. "Bonfire" still goes on the playlist though. (I also discovered the source of the refrain "fuck you, pay me" that has run on a loop in my mind as long as I have been member of the workforce.)

12. Not going to lie, before I edited it down, half my playlist was Run the Jewels, my original Kool-Aid Man artists.

13. I think both rock and rap are extremely good sources of Kool-Aid Man songs, which is probably why, regrettably, the aforementioned rock-rap genre is quite effective at evoking this particular sensation.

14. Further on the question of genre, toward the end of this exercise I added more pop to my playlist, but with some trepidation. I feel, in this moment, that a defining difference between my running-through-walls songs and, for example, Spotify's songs to sing in the shower playlist, is ... anger and/or righteous indignation. Maybe that is the je ne sais quoi I was talking about before. You can get a speeding ticket while happy but I am not convinced you can run through a wall out of joy

15. How did I almost forget "Levels," I am a shame to my generation.