Funny / Todd In The Shadows Trainwreckords 2022

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Katy Perry - Witness (2017)

• The episode begins with footage from a 2022 Las Vegas residency concert, with Katy introducing "California Gurls" by coming out of a giant toilet, followed by Todd immediately and laconically declaring: "She's done. I'm calling time." like a doctor that just lost a dying patient. Later in the intro, he reveals that this performance also included a singing piece of poop, just to drive the point home.
• Due to how bad the album and its surrounding press cycle was, Todd notes that it was one of his most requested albums to cover only 4 months after its release, showing a tweet from October 20, 2017 as evidence. That happens to be the same day the first Trainwreckords video was released for Patrons, meaning that people were clamoring for a Trainwreckords episode about Witness before the first episode was publicly released.
• Todd mentions that the phrase "flop era" very well could have been coined to refer to Katy Perry during Witness.
• After showing the announcement trailer for the album, a graphic stating RULES FOR WRITING! 1. Stop saying cr*nge pops up as Todd states how he's trying to avoid using the word. This doesn't stop the graphic from popping back up repeatedly and Todd groaning, trying to hold his tongue as Katy makes herself look awkward throughout songs and clips relevant to the retrospective (which includes things such as Katy falling in the "Swish Swish" music video giving way to the "Shooting Stars" meme). Todd, not inaccurately, describes the truly uncomfortable monologue about herself that she gives to the camera during said trailer ("I'm vulnerable, and strong; I'm a woman, an artist; I'm liberated, goofy, and I'm not always right") as a "dating profile".
• Todd talks about how he's pissed off a lot of pop star stan communities over the years, especially shuddering when he mentions The Barbz. The KatyCats, however? Conspicuous in their silence. This could be because fans have no defense to offer, but Todd speculates that this may be because a Katy Perry stan community never actually existed. Also the sheer disinterest in Todd's voice as he rattles off the names, which start to get less creative over time. A more casual pop fan could be forgiven for thinking Todd just made up "Camilizers", but, no, it's real.
• Todd delineates the two classes of musical phenomenon by their ability to sustain themselves through rough patches: while some have a special quality and talent that always keeps their fans hooked, others live and die on the strength of their music, "and if the bops stop coming for even a second, they're gone". He then admits this isn't a perfect dichotomy, because Bruno Mars, the second kind in his estimation, can't stop putting out banger after banger these days.
• Todd couldn't help but notice The Hunger Games-inspired imagery Katy invoked in the music video for "Chained to the Rhythm", noting that she appears to style herself after Effie Trinket in particular: a flamboyant voice for the vacuous consumption of The Capitol who eventually joins the resistance — but Todd states in a bit of foreshadowing that Katy apparently missed the fact that Effie looks absolutely miserable when ripped away from her wealth and status.
• When talking about Skip Marley's feature on "Chained to the Rhythm", Todd brings up the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad, saying that he had an "extremely strange 2017 soundtracking white celebrities' journey into wokeness."
• Everything relating to "Bon Appétit", Katy's attempt at an explicitly sex-focused song that veered into Fetish Retardant due to the lyrics involving food-related entendres and the video showing her being prepared like actual food in her usual tacky, over-the-top style, leading Todd to joke that it's only arousing to Armie Hammer (who was subject to viral accusations of having a cannibal fetish), which leads to this previously used comment from the "Yummy" review:
  Todd: I don't wanna fuck a roast turkey, Katy!
  • The infamous Saturday Night Live performance with Migos featuring Katy awkwardly dancing to the rap section leads Todd to compare her to Marge Simpson dancing and says that Ashlee Simpson had a better night on SNL.
  • Todd brings up the story of Migos allegedly refusing to dance with drag queens onstage, forcing Katy to improvise a solution on the spot. While he mentions that the story has been all but debunked, he acknowledges that it's at least an explanation for why it turned out the way it did.
    Todd: Was she this lame the entire time?!?
    Caption: (Yes.)
• Todd talking about the album cover, which consists of Katy covering her eyes while an eyeball appears in her mouth, leading him to call it a "90s prog metal album cover" and talking about the comparisons to The Neon Demon, stating that Lady Gaga could get away with referencing it, while Katy was already stretching it with referencing The Hunger Games in the "Chained to the Rhythm" video.
  Todd: [deadpan] How could a Katy Perry album with this artwork have failed?
• Todd's incredulousness at the videos for "Swish Swish" and "Hey Hey Hey" coming out after the album flopped, pointing out that very few artists in the streaming age even get singles after an album's release, and leading him to call the latter video an outright vanity project since there was no hope of it succeeding.
  • Todd calls "Swish Swish" "[Maybe] the worst video of the decade" and how he was bound to hate the song thanks to the video and Katy's "YouTube thumbnail face" clogging his recommended feed.
  • He also points out that while he may not like "Bad Blood", its music video at least had celebrity cameos that would be appealing to Taylor Swift's young audience. Meanwhile, Katy had to settle for Molly Shannon, the supporting cast of GLOW, and, most derisively to Todd, Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski ("probably here to sell you some insurance").^note At the time of the music video, Gronk was still on a semi-upward trajectory with the New England Patriots, and renowned as the greatest tight end in the history of the game. Five years later, he had been traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (and nearly to the Bucs' rivals, the even more embattled Detroit Lions), had faced criticism for constantly voicing his political opinions and downplaying the dangers of CTE, and was starring in a bizarre series of ads where he was too stupid to fraudulently claim Army insurance benefits, so suffice to say his star had fallen.
    Todd: Can't imagine a lot of Katy Perry fans lighting up for Gronk.
    Caption: Helpful guide for Katy Perry fans: This is Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski. He is a famous football player.
  • Todd's reactions to Katy's nonsensical attempts at shade ("A tiger don't lose no sleep/Don't need opinions/From a shellfish or a sheep", "You're 'bout as cute as an old coupon, expired"), complete with being too baffled to make jokes about the latter line, though he sums up the former being a Lame Comeback thus:
    Todd: Wow, shots fired... directly into her own foot.
  • Todd also briefly visualizes the entirely-ridiculous outcome Katy was apparently aiming for with her disses: Taylor Swift crying under the covers (punctuated with a stock photo of a woman in the same position) because Katy called her "cute as an expired coupon".
  • In a tragicomic sense, Katy being an Unknown Rival for Taylor Swift. Not only was the the latter's #1 hit "Bad Blood" much better performing than "Swish Swish" (both diss songs about the other artist), but Taylor released the lyric video for "Look What You Made Me Do" the same day that the "Swish Swish" video dropped, which—as Todd pointed out—doesn't mention Katy once, since she'd moved on to "feuds with people that actually mattered". And, as Todd opines, Taylor's song was exponentially more successful despite being worse, meaning the song that kicked off Taylor Swift's own cringe (if not flop) era, and had a less appealing sound, still had the star power and fanbase to completely blow "Swish Swish" out of the water.
  • Katy attempting to reframe it as an "anti-bullying" song.
    Todd: [sounding genuinely exasperated] Yeah, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, Katy.
• Todd calls the "Hey Hey Hey" video, wherein she's a Marie Antoinette figure who wished she was Joan of Arc, "A level of self-hatred even I can't relate to."
• While discussing the arc of Katy Perry's career, to try to refute accusations that she needed Dr. Luke and jettisoning him was the major flaw with the album, Todd takes a moment to revisit his roots in the midst of listing all of the singles from her second album that got diminishing returns from their equivalents her first to reiterate that "Dark Horse" was considered one of the worst pop songs of the decade. This is hilarious in the context that during that year's Worst List, Todd himself was shocked to realize that he didn't even have room for it, only squeezing it in as a dishonorable mention at the end.
• For all of his criticism, Todd spares a good word for "Pendulum" (a song about bouncing back from bad times and how good times are going to come again), calling it an underrated deep cut and a solid closer for what's been an otherwise rocky album. Except it's not the album closer, but the penultimate to "Into Me You See".
  Todd: Don't think she expected Witness to be the dark times she'd have to swing back from.
• For a more lighthearted and meta bit of humor, while reading out his sponsor tag for CuriosityStream at the end of the video, Todd gets audibly caught off guard when he reads that David Byrne is a fan of color guard performances. Considering some of the stranger things Byrne did in his career (including a performance in a "skinless man" costume), the fact that the color guard enthusiasm is what Todd finds weird is certain to elicit more than a few chuckles.

Will Smith - Lost and Found (2005)

• "If you told me before the Oscars someone was gonna get up out of their seat and smack a presenter, I'd have picked Liza Minnelli before I guessed Will Smith!" With some major Crosses the Line Twice, as Minnelli was in a wheelchair and downright struggling to read a teleprompter.
• "Now this is the story all about how Will Smith got pissed and changed his sound, so I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, and I'll tell you how he became... A bitter unrecognizable buzzkill with more petty grievances than a Mean Girl's burn book!"
  Todd: Will Smith gets pissy wit' it. This is Trainwreckords.
• Todd relates that, when he was a kid, he thought Will Smith was the "single coolest human being I could possibly imagine". By the time he was a "slightly older kid" (and, as he acknowledges, not a cool one himself, either), that opinion... had not held up. Cut to the infamously gaudy 1999 MTV VMAs performance of "Wild Wild West". He even cites the film as the moment where "[he] learned the cruel lesson that people [he] loved and trusted could rip [him] off out of [his] ten dollars."
• Todd ruminates on the devastating two-line callout Will got in "The Real Slim Shady" ("Will Smith don't gotta cuss in his raps to sell records / Well I do, so fuck him and fuck you too"), and how strange it is to him that Eminem — for all his "labored" multi-syllable rhymes these days (punctuated by footage of his infamous BET Awards freestyle) — has still never written a better insult than "well I do, so fuck him and fuck you too".
  • When viewed out of the cultural context of the late-90s/early-00s, Todd acknowledges that this seemingly out-of-nowhere diss might make Eminem come across as a bit of a bully. He then clarifies the reason why that diss managed to hit as hard as it did back in the day — Will didn't just avoid cursing, he could not stop bragging about it and how it made him a more creative rapper, including at that very same MTV awards show.
• Todd talking about "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)", "which just like the movie, was way, way worse than the original."
  Todd: Okay... I'm nodding... Am I a Men in Black bobblehead, why am I doing this?
• Todd's brief aside that, as the 2000s rolled around, Will was the kind of actor who could be in Bad Boys, but not the kind of rapper who could be on the soundtrack for it.^note The most he ever came were snippets of movie dialogue used as interstitials on the Bad Boys II soundtrack album.
• Todd theorizes that "Switch" was meant to be the theme song for Hitch, but was cut because "rom-com rap theme songs are not a thing, we're not making Space Jam". Oddly enough, "Switch" is not the only song that Todd speculates was rejected Hitch soundtrack material — he points out that the lyrics from "If U Can't Dance (Slide)", a track from later in the album, seem to be an extended reference to a scene from the film in which Will's character Hitch tries to teach Albert Brennaman to dance. The track "Pump Ya Brakes" — which Todd also briefly touches on in this part — in particular seems tailor-made for the movie, literally being nothing but Will and Snoop Dogg giving you advice on how to stay cool around the ladies.
• Todd notices that "Switch" appears to be a concerted effort from Will Smith to try and distance himself at least somewhat from the tame and corny image he was commonly associated with, and prove that he could be gritty too. Will manages to completely deflate that attempt as soon as he spits the first bar:
  Will Smith: Vibe the vibe a second / It's the club, girl, why you arrive nekkid?
  Todd: Did you just tell that girl she wasn't wearing enough clothes? "It's gettin' hot in here, so put on more clothes?" What are you, her dad?
  • Todd's pleasant surprise at learning that "Switch" was produced by Kwamé Holland, of "The Man We All Know and Love" fame (who later moved to a more successful behind-the-scenes position after his rap career ended).
  • One of Will's other corny lyrics on the track is "it ain't like I like a chick on a chick or nothin'," when talking about close dancing. Todd seems more surprised that a rapper would say such a thing, especially in 2005, rather than surprised that Smith would ever make a reference like that at all.
  • Encapsulating the strange position Smith was in at the time between trying to re-establish his cred as a rapper and his obligations as a movie superstar, Todd mentions that he performed "Switch" on 106 and Park that year — and also a clean version at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.
    Will: [in a Dirty South growl] NICKELODEON, I CAN'T HEAR Y'ALL!
• Todd's reaction to the album's intro, which is a parody of the '60s Spider-Man theme song, of all things.
  Todd: [Suppressing a grin] ...This is so stupid. [With delight] I can't not enjoy this!
• "Mr. Niceguy" sets the tone for the part of the video talking about Will's "tough guy posturing", in that the track largely just leaves Todd baffled and uncomfortable. After Will mentions, and shrugs off, Eminem's diss (see above) by saying he's making more money, he briefly seems like he's going to parody his own image among white audiences as a non-threatening "good" rapper; Todd, not thinking he'd ever go there (albeit jabbing at the use of a hypothetical person), is surprised and intrigued by the venom in his delivery and wants to hear more. Will promptly devotes equal time to a far less interesting subject: attacking black radio hosts Larry Elder and Wendy Williams for criticizing and spreading rumors about him. Todd points out that Elder is hardly going to make a diss track in response, and Wendy certainly isn't going to do a drive-by shooting.
  Will Smith: People dissing Will sat on a wall/People dissing Will had a great fall/All the King's horses and all the King's men/Couldn't put none of their careers together again, you get it?
  Todd: [shrugs] ...All three of these people's careers are doing fine!
• "Ms. Holy Roller" is a thinly-veiled attack on his ex-wife ^note Who as Todd points out, is the mother of his first child Trey. finding religion after their divorce, and states in a spoken word section that her attitude towards her faith is the same mentality that lead to the Crusades and 9/11.
  Todd: Woah, slow it down, Bill Maher! Who's the preachy one, here?
• During one of Will's more uncomfortable bars where he mentions fighting the urge to murder her^note Where was Jesus when you was greedy, your lawyers was bleeding me?/Where was Jesus when every weekend, a new man was livin' with you?/Oh wait, he was with me, tryin to keep me from killing you!, Todd awkwardly imitates Will's cheery ad-libs from his past hits, which becomes a Running Gag for the more jarring moments on the album.
  [Half-heartedly] "...Wooo! Ha, HA! Unh, unh, what."
  "But I don't wanna make it sound like the entire album is just personal grievances. For example, he has one song about 9/11... yeah. [Uncomfortably long pause] ...Na, na, na na, na-na na! Unh, unh".
• "Lost and Found" has Will talking about hip hop not being "real anymore".
  Todd: Will friggin' Miami-Jiggy-Parents-Just-Don't-Understand Smith is here to talk about how hip hop isn't real anymore. What happened to the real hip hop? Rappers used to be real, and rap about the premise of their billion dollar blockbuster movie!
• Will's criticisms become ironic once Todd later points out just how derivative many other songs on the CD are — as much as the album is about Smith trying to reestablish and redefine his own sound as a cut above the rest, he's poaching a lot of styles, even Eminem's.
• Todd calls "I Wish I Made That" — Will's song where he criticizes Black radio for not playing his stuff, names the songs he's jealous of in the chorus, and complains multiple times that "Summertime" is his only song in regular rotation — "the most humiliatingly beta shit I have ever heard in my entire life."
  • When Will points out that David Letterman said he likes Smith's stuff, and he "ain't [even] a rap fan", Todd mentions that that's not an endorsement that'll help him get his cred back.
  • Todd shows a video of Will on BET's 106 & Park featuring him hopping on the beat to "How We Do" and starts rapping "I Wish I Made That" in front of an unenthusiastic black audience, essentially shaming them for not supporting him enough.
    Todd: This is like when I call home and my mom complains that I don't call home enough. It doesn't make me wanna call home more!
• In "Tell Me Why", a track where Will raps about explaining the 9/11 attacks, racial hatred, and systemic injustice to his children, he sounds righteously angry as he builds up to dropping an F-bomb for the very first time in his rap career. He bleeps it out. Todd is not impressed in the slightest.
  "C'mon, Will, it's like the PG-13 rating; you're allowed one F-word."

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - American Dream (1988)

• Todd summing up Neil Young's thoughts on the rest of the band by the end of the 70s, after a fitting clip where Young sings "Thrasher" ^note  Specifically the line "So I got bored and left them there, they were just dead weight to me." , with a pretty decent impression of Young's vocal style:
  Todd: (to the melody of "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)") ♪ You're a bunch of washed-up hippie burnouts, and I'm Neil fucking Young... ♪
• Not many people would think to describe David Crosby's drug/crime binge in the '80s as "Ol' Dirty Bastard-esque", but Todd's actually not far off with the assessment.
• Todd's devastating lead-in to the title sequence:
  Todd: The American Dream dies... 'cause these fat ol' hippies killed it. This is Trainwreckords.
• When detailing how boomer musical icons were still given the pretense of being young and vital in the '80s even as they became leathery and paunchy, Todd mentions Crosby, Stills & Nash's appearances in their middle age: Stills had gained a lot of weight, Crosby was getting bald (and a little fat himself), and — as Todd notes with special disdain — Nash had grown a "truly heinous mullet".
  Todd: Y'know, the forty-something sport-coat-and-sunglasses mullet that's all poofy on top? Ucccch. Terrible.
• While describing the Neil-penned title track:
  • Regarding its subject of 1980s sex scandals, Todd brings up a choice piece of footage used in the music video: televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's then-recent weepy public confession of infidelity with a prostitute, resulting in his defrocking and national disgrace.
    Swaggart: [sobbing] I have sinned against you, my Lord...
    Todd: [while doing an O.K. sign] Classic.
  • However, the track's pan-flute-heavy production does not match the song at all, and not in an especially ironic way, either.
    Todd: I just... don't understand what tone it's going for. "Hey, guys! I've written a song about how the American Dream is a failure and a lie, and I think it should sound like a commercial for a water park!"
    [Cut to footage of people frolicking, paddling and sliding as the flute riff plays]
• On Neil's second track, "Name of Love," Todd calls it some "flower-power bullshit" and, given it contains such dissonant lyrics as "Before another missile flies / Can you do it in the name of love?", imagines Ronald Reagan being moved by it:
  Todd!Reagan: Well, ah, gentleman, before we invade Honduras, I think we should ask: Are we doing this in the name of love?
  • In terms of what Young previously brought to CS&N, Todd cites his much-needed edge, as evidenced by a younger Neil and Stills absolutely rocking out in a live performance of "Down by the River" — and yet, the most he can offer American Dream are songs like this. Given the angry, passionate iconoclasm of This Note's For You and the later Freedom, it lends a lot of believability to the theory that Neil was using this album to offload his weaker material.
• The harmonies are so overly-loud compared to the rest of the songs that the first one in "This Old House" fades in like an honest-to-God Jump Scare: Todd even shows the waveform of that exact part to prove that the song was mixed like that. He's forced to conclude that — given how famous the quartet was for its vocal harmonies — they chose to over-layer any and all choruses and bring them right to the front of the mix, subtlety be damned, and ended up with something that sounds "like someone's vacuuming the house while you're trying to watch TV".
• Since Neil Young is the one overseeing production as per the agreement, Todd brings up where Neil himself was creatively at the time: "makin' the worst shit of his life", even as he was trying to go less experimental and more commercial. The brief clip shown of "Weight of the World", off Landing on Water, has Neil's vocals being drowned out by his own sludgy guitar riffs and programmed drums (which are placed far higher in the mix than everything else), amid the same kind of bad digital phasing effects that are all over American Dream. He further points out that the band recorded the album in Neil's house, so Neil couldn't get fed up and/or flake out and walk away mid-record, again.
• Moving on to Stephen Stills, Todd talks him up as "the engine", a fiercely talented multi-instrumentalist and gifted songwriter. Unfortunately, after David Crosby sobered up, he had also taken over the role of "band fuckup".
  Stills: [defensive] I LIKE to PARTY, all right?!
  Todd: He is drinking all the time, which...
  [Footage of a visibly bloated Stills awkwardly snapping his fingers in the "American Dream" video]
  Todd: ...Can you tell?
  Stills: [audibly slurring] Y'know, I really love fine wine and good scotch, and... and, uh, that's the enda that.
• Todd mentions that Stephen mainly came to the session with unfinished songs, which Neil then completed. This sets up a joke about one particular Stills contribution, a clichéd love song called "That Girl" ^note though as it turns out, this was evidently the one Stills-led song on the album Neil Young didn't have to finish — the songwriting is credited to Stephen Stills, Joe Vitale, and Bob Glaub, the latter two being session musicians who played on the album :
  Todd:♪ Ooh, that girl, she's so fine, dee dee dee, dah dah dah ♪ ...Hey Neil, come finish this one for me.
• Todd is genuinely repulsed by "Drivin' Thunder", a "mid-life-crisis" cock-rocker about fast cars that sounds like a beer commercial (in Todd's words, "Are you seriously trying to write your own 'I Can't Drive 55'?") and comes off "like your drunk dad dancing at a wedding". He then pulls up a quote from an interview with Graham Nash, showing that even Nash — who has tried to stay at least a little positive about Dream — called it "a piece of shit" and a complete mistake that Young only put on the album as a favor to Stills.
• On the subject of Nash, Todd is especially disappointed to find that, like so many artists in the '80s, he has become "sellout Yuppie scum" — and, worse in Todd's eyes, is attempting to be the next Peter Cetera. He tries to give a bit of credit to "Shadowland", a socially conscious pop ballad about Vietnam vets, before an out-of-place synthesizer rendition of the Oriental Riff causes him to recoil.
  Todd: ...Get the fuck out of here with this.
• On Crosby's "Nighttime for the Generals", a song about the CIA and military industrial complex:
  CSN&Y: ♪ Nighttime for the generals / And the boys at the CIA.... ♪
  Todd: This song is a powerful look at the dark specter looming over the entire '80s. And that specter... is Don Henley.
• The "instantly dated '80s crapola" continues all the way through the album closer, Stills' "Night Song":
  Todd: Hold on, I think I'm playing the wrong video footage over this.
  [shows Miami Vice's opening montage]
  Todd: There we go.
• While recounting the generally sad, bitter decline and dissolution of CSN as Neil Young soon reached new heights as a solo artist,^note Leading to a probably entirely justified suspicion that Young had been uninterested in the project from the start and kept his good material for himself. Todd brings up, as a positive, two things the four can still agree on: all of them consider American Dream a mistake, and none of them like Joe Rogan.

Mötley Crüe - Generation Swine (1997)

• This time introing a video with "Nirvana Killed My Career," Todd pretends to warm up and conduct an orchestra, only to cut to "Smells Like Teen Spirit"'s opening riff.
• Todd describing fellow-hair metal band Poison as "about as metal as New Kids on the Block".
• Todd making fun of the 1994 Self-Titled Album (although he does say it's a decent album overall), where John Corabi replaced Vince Neil as lead singer:
  Todd: We named this record after ourselves because it's our definitive statement! We're Still Relevant, Dammit! We're not on the verge of collapse!
• After Vince Neil rejoins and this record is announced, Todd sums up the feeling justly:
  Todd: This is the real Crüe, updated for The '90s. Crüe in their Attitude Era! [doing an X gesture with his fingers] X-treme!
• Todd brings up the Pam & Tommy miniseries, recent at the time of the video's release, which so happens to cover the negative reception to this album (showing a scene of it being put in the honest-to-God Clearance bin) and the public's feeling on Crüe in general. His glee is apparent:
  Todd: Oh my friends, I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that there is a prestige, Emmy-nominated TV show that has this shitty album as a plot point. I am overjoyed that they dedicated an entire episode to "Nirvana Killed My Career."
  [Tommy watches Mötley Crüe's Behind the Music episode on TV, scowling as he pets his sheepdog.]
  Todd: Look at him! He's so unhappy!
• When the band is introduced at the 1997 American Music Awards by Tommy Lee's then-wife, Pamela Anderson (or as Todd calls her, "a giant sentient hat" due to, well, the giant hat she wore while introducing them) after Anderson claims that they've always been eclectic in order to sell the new direction:
  Todd: So yeah, we're in for a pretty sudden swerve here, so get ready for the new Crüe with their brand new single... [reveals the YouTube title for the video] "Shout at the Devil '97"? Wait, really?
  • The claim Pamela makes that Crüe — one of the last decade's most prominent glam/hair metal bands, who had changed almost nothing about their sound or image since 1981 — "reinvented themselves with every album, refusing to be pigeonholed into any specific genre" is so patently false that Todd needs to pause for a second.
  • The updated 1997 version, contrary to the hype, is just the same song played a little bit "harder" and more industrial, with what Todd calls "the riff from 'More Human Than Human' over it".
    Todd: ...Seems like you guys are trying to sell me the same old shit with a thin veneer of 90's.
• Todd did point out that Nikki Sixx's own backstory did have several similarities to Kurt Cobain's, so perhaps he can make the new direction work. Upon hearing the opening track, "Find Myself", Todd seems pretty into it... then Vince Neil steps in and the feeling soon evaporates.
  Todd: Boy, these two parts of the song do not work together at all. You got Nikki Sixx on the mic trying to do his Marilyn Manson thing, and then once Vince comes in, it's like, (as Vince) "I'm a sick motherfucker! I use a lot of hairspray!"
• Lead single "Afraid" has a Surreal Music Video involving the band playing under the skirt of a giant Creepy Doll woman, "but not in like a sexy way". Todd sums up the gritty yet surreal aesthetic of this and many other mid-90s music videos as being "like Terry Gilliam directed a Saw movie".
  Todd: From the band that brought you "Dr. Feelgood", here's "Dr... Feelreallygross".
• Todd's impersonation of Vince Neil singing '90s songs.
  Todd: (as Vince) I'm a creep! I'm a weirdo! Wooo!!!
• Album track "Flush" is only touched on so that Todd can note that not only is the song a blatant imitation of Stone Temple Pilots, but the title is one letter away from STP's hit "Plush"..
• Todd has a disdain for almost all of the Crüe's ballads (with the exception of "Home Sweet Home"), and makes no exception to the album's last single "Glitter", which was co-written by Bryan Adams.
  Todd: ...and I say this with every insult intended: I wish Bryan Adams had written more of this.
  Nikki: ♪ This is fine for now, but maybe / Let's make a baby inside of you! ♪
  Todd: That line is confirmably Nikki's. Say what you want about Bryan Adams, he at least knows what a romantic lyric is.
• The final song on the album, "Brandon," becomes an entry by itself:
  • The song, written by Tommy Lee for his infant son, in and of itself, is laughable — Tommy Lee grunting out on-the-nose and Narmtastic lyrics like "YOUR MOTHER GAVE BIRTH TO YOU" and "I LOVE YOU, I LOVE HER, SHE'S YOURRRRRR MOM" underneath a thick layer of syrupy strings. Todd points out that something must have gone terribly wrong in the recording process if "Brandon" actually made it onto the final record.
    Todd: Yes. She is your mom. That is a completely factual statement.
  • Todd does give some compliments to the song, though... for a given definition of compliment.
    Todd: This is... horrifically cringey, but I guess at least it's sincere, and even if it's not good, I think we can all agree that this is a very touching portrait of a wonderful, happy family. Awww~! Incidentally, I have not finished the Pam & Tommy miniseries yet, so don't tell me how it ends!
• While Vince and Mick are pretty critical of it, Tommy and Nicky have still tried to say some nice things about the album in the years since. The reason? They got to sing on the record. Todd is flabbergasted that, even after far outstripping Vince in fame, they still have "lead singer envy," as he mocked back in Passage.
• Despite the band's claims that the album failed due to their label not promoting it well, Todd on the contrary finds several bits of promotion for the album, including performances on the shows of David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Regis Philbin, of all people. It's hard not to feel befuddled alongside Todd seeing the normally clean-cut host talking with Mötley Crüe, of all bands.^note Said clip also further disproves the band's claims, as Regis stated the album was selling out within minutes at the stores he went at, as well as it debuting at #4 on the Billboard 200, which Todd suspects was the product of more than a little astroturfing from Elektra Records.
• The end of the review has Todd discussing the band's legacy, and then saying, "Keep kicking ass, you complete swine."
  Todd: (pauses, then sighs) Seriously, I've read their book; they're all awful people.

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