Funny / Todd In The Shadows 2023 Episodes

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Specials

The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2022

• He starts out #10 by facetiously saying that he changed his mind with "Fancy Like" and put it on the proper place in the best list this year.
  Todd: Nah, I'm kidding. God, 2021 was a bad year for country music!
  • When getting to his actual #10, "Son of A Sinner" by Jelly Roll, he talks about the artist proper and realizes that it's making him a tough sell for most unknown audiences in mind, with him describing him like he's either a deep-fried Post Malone or a jumbo-sized Kid Rock.
  • Todd normally doesn't speak highly of Christian/religious music, and brings up examples such as "Higher" by Creed, "Jesus Take the Wheel" by Carrie Underwood, and... "Godzilla" by Blue Öyster Cult, with an added underline emphasizing the "God" part.
    Todd: Yeah, don't try to convert me, Blue Öyster Cult! Stick your pamphlets somewhere else!
• Todd jokingly claims "F.N.F." by Hitkidd & GloRilla stands for "Five Nights at Freddy's", since he does not have the N-Word Privileges required to say the actual full title.
  • Todd completely relates to the song even though him enjoying being single involves a lot more video games and a lot less twerking.
• His increasingly defensive meltdowns at having three country songs on the list, which he knows a decent chunk of his audience will turn up their noses up at on pure principle, get more and more self-deprecating with each passing entry, especially when the first was made by a rapper outside the Nashville system, the second is a song country fans themselves reject as too rock to be properly considered country, and the last (and highest ranked, even above the entry for a Kendrick Lamar song) is by an artist (and former college quarterback) many country fans consider bastardizing the genre he's in altogether, as noted by the fact that he made one of the worst country songs of the last decade, "Body Like a Back Road". As a result, as presented by him, they are songs he thinks that not even the country fans in his audience will be happy about.^note It gets even funnier for fans of Todd outside the U.S., who have stated in the comments that American country music in general isn't really played that much in their respective countries, meaning that Todd's lists are probably the only time they'll hear them.
  • When actually discussing his #5 pick—"23" by Sam Hunt—Todd imagines Sam's ex-girlfriend looking back awkwardly at the relationship and describing Sam as "a meathead who kept comparing [her] body to a back road".
    • And then, Todd realizes what a horrible thing he's done:
      Todd: I put this higher than Kendrick^note Todd's #6 pick was "The Heart Part 5" by Kendrick Lamar, which was widely acclaimed, unlike "23". You are free to stop watching, I never said I had good taste. I have repeatedly said the opposite, alright? [sighs] Well, that was humiliating.
  • It's even funnier in hindsight when every single modern pop song he covered on the show for the entirety of 2023 was country.
• Todd notes that his #4 pick, Beyoncé's "Break My Soul", managed to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 even with virtually no promotion.
  Todd: Queen Bey has no need to pander to you peasants. You'll probably get something this year from her, but maybe you won't. You'll get whatever scrap she gives you and you'll like it.
• Todd's #3 pick is a song by an artist he also put on the 2022 Worst list:
  Todd: Okay, fine. Come on, Harry. We wanna say good night to you. [song begins, followed by text on screen: "#3: 'As It Was', Harry Styles"]
• In an attempt to label Steve Lacy's style, Todd brings up the latter's Wikipedia page, which lists off a whole bunch of genres that he falls into.
  Todd: It's alternative. It's R&B. It's neo-soul. It's indie rock. It's jazz. It's funk. It's biscuits. It's gravy.^note "It's biscuits, it's gravy" is a lyric in Lacy's song "Bad Habit", which is Todd's #2 entry.
• Todd puts "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" by Kate Bush in his honorable mentions section, saying that it doesn't count as a hit song from 2022 due to the small complication that it came out in 1985^note the song became Bush's first top 5 US hit in 2022 (peaking at No. 3 on the Hot 100) due to its use in a pivotal scene from the popular show Stranger Things.
  Todd: And if I did count it, it would have crushed the competition. That's just not fair.
• Todd's #1 pick is "Anti-Hero" by Taylor Swift, largely because he relates to the song's themes of loneliness, regret, and self-loathing. It's mainly a very touching and vulnerable moment for Todd to express his own feelings, struggles, and personal connection to the song, but there's something a little amusing about how he praises the song's lyricism:
  Todd: I respect Taylor so much for presenting her insane midnight ramblings with no rewrites to make it more accessible.
  Taylor Swift: ♫ Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/And I'm a monster on the hill...♫
  Todd: "Sexy baby" is the lyric of the goddamn year. And if you think it's a bad line, you are not listening to it right.

Morgan Wallen - "Last Night"

• Early on in the video, Todd plays the infamous clip of Wallen saying the n-word... and immediately segues into him singing "Looks like I'm learnin' the hard away again."
• Just the brief acknowledgment that Todd is the only source of music news for some of his viewers. He sums that up with, "I don't know how that happened, but okay."
• Pointing out how the song is the first country song in ages to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, "unless you count 'Old Town Road', which...we're not having that argument again."
• Describing Wallen's apology tour as "Living through the 'Naggers' episode of South Park for a good year".
• When discussing how Wallen was defended by Black musicians Lil Durk, Kane Brown, and Jimmie Allen during his year-long apology tour, Todd notes that his views on the incident are affected by the fact that "I'm not Black." A caption then pops up saying "As far as YOU know," which is immediately followed up with a smaller caption reading "(But why would I lie about this)."
  • During the same section, Todd makes it a point to refer to Allen as "country singer-slash-Dancing with the Stars contestant Jimmie Allen."
• Todd tries to contextualize the weight of Wallen's n-word incident by comparing it with similar incidents by Eric Clapton, Ben Folds, Elvis Costello, Michael Richards^note also nodding back to the South Park reference in the process, as "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" was inspired by Richards' on-stage racist meltdown, and Hulk Hogan before immediately cringing at how much of these he knows off the top of his head.
• Todd brings up how many fans were right-wingers who would gladly say the n-word to offend, and shows a clip from a concert where the crowd does the infamous "Let's go Brandon" chant; Morgan, clearly a little nervous at this happening in the middle of an apology tour, tries to joke it off with a sheepish "My name ain't Brandon!"
• Todd briefly mentions "Don't Think Jesus", a previous Morgan Wallen single that seems to indirectly reference and apologize for the aforementioned incident — he says that the title is funny because if you add exclamation points it's what Todd would have wanted to say to Morgan at the time: "DON'T! THINK! JESUS!"
• The bulk of the video is actually dedicated to the fallout from Wallen's n-word incident. Todd repeatedly tries to put that out of his mind and actually review the song, only to keep talking about it because it's simply very hard to ignore. About two-thirds of the way through, he finally gets down to reviewing the song and plays a short clip of it before immediately judging it as "dogshit."
• When negatively comparing "Last Night" to Maroon 5, Todd makes his point by singing an excerpt of the song in an Adam Levine impression atop footage of "Memories".
  • Another hilarious comparison in this vein comes from a comment liked by Todd which refers to the song as "Saloon 5"
• As he emphasizes the song's inauthenticity, Todd even highlights that, by country music standards, a lyric like "last night can't be our last night" is far too clever wordplay. For comparison, he cites another song of Wallen's, "Days That End in Why", to canned audience groan sound effects.
• The ending music is "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" from Avenue Q.

Luke Combs - "Fast Car"

• When mentioning how interest for new music seems to be declining in favor of rediscovering old music, Todd comments on Taylor Swift's re-recorded "Taylor's Version" albums, describing them as "Taylor Swift continuing to George Lucas her way through her back catalog."
• Todd points out that Morgan Wallen, paradoxically, is both trying to be a superstar, while not trying to "step in it again."
• On Tracy Chapman's music:
  Todd: If [her songs] don't pull at your heartstrings, what are you, a fucking serial killer or something?
• He sums of his feelings on both versions of "Fast Car" thusly:
  Todd: When Tracy Chapman sings this, I hear a homeless dropout with an alcoholic dad trying to escape poverty. And when Luke Combs sings it, I hear [with a country twang] "Hey everyone, I'm Luke Combs! Wanna hear me play 'Fast Car'?"
  chuckling I do! I like your song. I like your version of it, but it's not the same thing.

Oliver Anthony Music - "Rich Men North of Richmond"

• Just the sheer vitrol by which he starts off the video, plopping down his suitcase, sitting down at the piano and saying:
  Todd: Well, I'm back from vacation! Did I miss anything? [sigh]
  [begins playing song on piano]
• First referring to Oliver Anthony as "a goddamn Viking in a tee-shirt," "Tormund from Game of Thrones," and then by his social-media name, "Oliver Anthony Music" or "Mr. Anthony Music."
• Eventually, Todd reveals what he thinks he can contribute to the discussion around such a talked-to-death song: personal familiarity with the region of Virginia that Oliver Anthony's from, as a former substitute teacher. It's an angry little backwater so reactionary they were disputing the Civil Rights movement well after the fact. He outright says he understands how someone like Oliver Anthony might think of himself as a moderate centrist, or even somewhat liberal, when so many of the people he knows are statistically probably crazy ultra-right nutjobs.
• Transitioning from discussing the song to promoting Lindsay Ellis' Nebula-exclusive video about Guy Fieri by pointing out that both subjects are "big white guys with goofy facial hair".

The Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2023

• Todd remarks that nobody really seems to care about current hits anymore (even claiming he's gotten really into pure silence), but that he's stuck filling this niche until he can find "another serial fraud on YouTube to fact check," referencing his off-brand but popular James Somerton debunking video.
• On "K-Pop" by Travis Scott:
  • Todd highlights Scott's lack of appeal by pointing out that Travis Scott is his alias, not his given name. "He went to go pick out his cool rap name, and it's just a regular name!"
  • Todd believing that the song is called "K-Pop" so it can show up on the top of K-Pop search results "like the people who put out songs called "Today's Wordle."
  • Travis Scott's contribution to the song, according to Todd: "Engh"
• One of Todd's critiques of Olivia Rodrigo's "vampire" is that he feels like it's overdramatizing the significance of a bad relationship he doesn't read as quite so serious, or, as he puts it, she's "trying to wring an 'All Too Well' out of a situation that only deserves a 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together'".
• When the video displays subtitles of a verse of "Search & Rescue" by Drake ("That's why I American Express my love"), the second e in "Express" gets extended way too long, to show how long Drake is enunciating that letter.
  • "Yes, [Drake] called Taylor Swift the N-word. Big year for her."
• On Dylan Scott’s "Can’t Have Mine":
  • Todd has a visceral reaction to what he sees as the "evolution" of bro country — the same young meatheads who once sang about drinking, girls, and trucks are now aging into would-be paternal figures offering you condescending, pat advice like it's worldly wisdom, which in Todd's opinion is a turn for the worse because "they're not even partying anymore" and have stopped being fun. In particular, he draws attention to the lyrics of Jordan Davis's "Buy Dirt":
    Jordan Davis: Buy dirt / Find out the one you can't live without / Get a ring, let your knee hit the ground
    Todd: "Buy a house and raise a family?" Gee, thanks! I didn't think of that, I was just gonna smoke crack!
  • His summary of the chorus, where Scott tells the listener what kind of woman to find: "She’s hot, she’s fun, she’s a good girl, loves her mama, loves Jesus, and America too."
  • Todd’s reaction to the punchline, which he calls a humblebrag that "forgets the humble [part]":
    Dylan Scott: Take it from me, that’s the kind you need to find, you just can’t have mine…
    Todd: (beat) Fuck you.
  • Todd ends the section with some advice of his own:
    Todd: You know what? I'm gonna be straight with you, Dylan Scott — your girl sounds boring. Here's my advice: find yourself a fuckin' freak who's a complete and total disaster and ruins your life. Live la vida loca, baby.
  • Todd's confused reaction to the facial expression Scott makes in the end of the video.
• On Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North Of Richmond", Todd recounts how, when he originally reviewed the song, so many of Anthony's fans got mad at Todd for taking umbrage with the "fudge rounds" line, pointing out that the man released a video explaining what the line meant. Here, Todd gives his thoughts on said response:

  Todd: Well, y'know, I do try to be fair, so in the interest of having a respectful dialogue, I would ask in response: Are you fuckin' stupid? Do you not know what words mean?

• On Drake’s "Slime You Out", he remarks that streams for the song shouldn’t count if you turn it off after the first 16 seconds, because in his opinion "that’s as far as anyone should have gotten". And he demonstrates this by illustrating his experience of his first listen of the song where after hearing the first 16 seconds on Spotify on his computer, he promptly pauses the song and adds it to a "Put On Worst List" playlist.
• The first few lines of Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town" describe various crimes you apparently couldn't "try in a small town" — "Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk, carjack an old lady at a red light, pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store." Todd takes them out of context and goes, "If you insist!" before it cuts to some Grand Theft Auto gameplay with Todd's face edited onto the player character as he carjacks a random woman.
  • Todd describes Aldean as living in a fantasy world where all the cities are Death Wish 3 and all the small towns are Mayberry. He then backtracks and says that the latter isn't an apt comparison because Andy Griffith never threatened to pistol-whip anybody.
  • Among the song's many controversies, and a major factor in getting the music video pulled, was that the video was filmed in front of the site of a historic lynching, something Aldean swears was an accident. Todd lets that point slide and admits it's probable, because it's hard to find a landmark in the South where that didn't happen.
    Leslie Knope: [standing beside an almost entirely blue map of the township, save for a few white dots] This is a map of all the atrocities the Pawnee settlers inflicted upon the Wamapoke Indians. The atrocities are in blue.
  • Todd illustrates Aldean's view of the protesters (who he does not seem to understand were even protesting and thought were out to loot and burn stuff just for the sake of it) with Bender singing, "I love stealin'! I love takin' things!"
• Todd compares Morgan Wallen's "Last Night" to Maroon 5, in that it's a song that's not really about anything or has any real character. Then the other shoe drops and Todd reveals the song was co-written by one of Maroon 5's most recent producers. Even if they didn't have any hits this year, they're still on the Worst list in spirit.
• After the videos release Todd would reveal on Twitter that he almost managed to start filming when he finally realised that he forgot to put in an entry for number 4!
  • Furthermore, if the intro to the Best list is to be believed, not only did he accidentally start filming without a song for number 4, but he then had to improvise the David Guetta bit.

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