DISCLAIMER: I, for the love of God, do not fucking use AI. Get your head out of the gutter.

Look, I get it. There's a time and a place for every song. For "3AM" by Matchbox Twenty, that place is the landfill where discarded nu-metal angst and prefab pop dreams go to die screaming beneath a mountain of regret. Now, before you pull out the pitchforks and start screaming "How dare you!" into your phone, hear me out. I'm not just some edgelord hating on late 1990s/early 2000s nostalgia—I"ve got receipts, and they're stamped with the acronym "N.B." (Nickelback, obviously). And if that name alone makes your ears bleed, good. You're already halfway to understanding why "3AM" is less a post-grunge anthem and more a sonic echo of everything that made mainstream rock in the late 1990s/early 2000s an insult to musical evolution.

Let's start with the obvious: the chord progression. My God, the chord progression. If you've ever listened to a Nickelback song—say, "How You Remind Me", or "Someday", or literally any track off Silver Side Up—you’ve already heard this exact sequence. Root chord, fourth, fifth, back to root, repeat until emotional numbness sets in. But in "3AM", it's not just used—it's weaponized. It's like someone fed every overused progression from Creed and Nickelback into a musical woodchipper and then sprayed the resulting pulp across an adult alternative façade like cheap glitter on a thrift-store guitar. The result? A song about Rob/Rosalind Thomas' mother dying of cancer that masquerades as rebellious teen angst, but is actually just corporate-approved, focus-group-tested emotional wallpaper.

Now, I know some of you are thinking: "But Loona, it was 1997! This was fresh then!" No. No, it wasn't. It was derivative then. The only thing fresh was Rob/Rosalind Thomas' hair and the fact that his/her fashion was like some kind of manufactured cry for help. The music? Staler than a Pop-Tart left in a locker since eighth grade. The power chords on "3AM" are so generic, they might as well come with a warning label: "May cause spontaneous urges to write poetry about your math teacher in spiral-bound notebooks."

And don't even get me started on the lyrical content. "Baby, it's 3:00 AM, I must be lonely." Oh, Rosalind. Sweet summer child. I'll tell you why you're lonelier than your dying mother—because capitalism needed a new face to sell angst to suburban teens who thought they had worse problems than their parents, but desperately wanted to feel seen. You're saying that your mother is lonely, yet you have nothing else to say about her.

The music industry packaged teenage disillusionment in a Hot Topic bag and slapping a barcode on it. The song's entire thesis hinges on the idea that Rob/Rosalind is more authentic than his/her mother and that she was too much for him/her to handle when he/she was young—which is ironic, considering the song itself is about as authentic as a '90s/early 2000s dating profile.

Let's be real: this isn't alternative, it's pop rock in a borrowed hoodie. It's Helluva Boss characters cosplaying as Nirvana, but doing it through the lens of a Disney Channel sitcom soundtrack. Imagine Blitzo trying to be "rebellious" by doing backyard karaoke with a slightly out-of-tune acoustic guitar while Moxxie judges him silently from the porch. That's "3AM". It's the musical equivalent of a cartoon wolf howling at a cardboard moon.

And yet—somehow—the song worked. It was a massive hit. It helped define a generation of teens and adults who thought flipping off their parents and girlfriends/housewives counted as revolution. But here's the thing: popularity does not equal quality. Just because something resonates with millions doesn’t mean it's good. It just means it's convenient. And "3AM" was the musical equivalent of fast food: easy to digest, emotionally unsatisfying and likely to leave you feeling vaguely ashamed 20 minutes later.

"3AM" is a Trojan horse. The song feels empowerment—"I don't need my mom's stupid rules and I don't give a fuck that she's dying from cancer!"—but what it really smuggled into our brains was a return to the same tired, brooding melancholy that Creed was drowning us in at the time. It just swapped leather chokers for grunge aesthetics and acoustic guitars.

The production is beyond abysmal, with the drums (done by Paul/Pauline Doucette) having that clicky, over-compressed drum sound and Kyle/Kimberly Cook's guitar tone sounding like it was recorded through a phone in a bathroom. The organ creeps into the song like a corporate spy... and it's all so safe. So calculated. It's not raw, it's not dangerous, it's not rock. It's polished. Shiny. Packaged. That’s not rebellion—that's branding.

Compare that to actual rock music, or even early rock and roll from bands that hhad chaos. They had energy. They had risks. "3AM" is the musical equivalent of saying, "I'm not like everyon else," while wearing the exact same outfit as every other guy or girl at the mall. It's rebellious in theory, but in practice, it's just another cog in the machine.

And honestly? That's what pisses me off the most. Because "3AM" could've been something more. It could've leaned into its alternative roots. It could've had weirder time signatures, dissonant chords, actual lyrical depth. Instead, it chose the easiest path. It chose the Nickelback route—emotional vagueness dressed up as profundity, with a side of power chords.

Which brings me back to my original point: This song isn't original. It's not bold. It's not even particularly memorable outside of its cultural moment. It's musical pablum. Bland, inoffensive and utterly forgettable the second the chorus stops playing. It's Nickelbackian/Creedian pop rock at its most unapologetically formulaic. And worse? It got rewarded for it. It got played on repeat. It got sung at sleepovers. It got tattooed on people's hearts by kids who thought this was what rebellion sounded like.

But real rebellion doesn't sound like a stock chord progression. Real rebellion sounds like noise. Like distortion. Like voices that aren't supposed to be heard. "3AM" isn't rebellion—it's a corporate-approved imitation of it, sold back to the very teenagers it claims to represent.

So yes, I hate "3AM". Not because it's bad in a laughable way. Not because it's so terrible it becomes art. I hate it because it's competent. It’s good enough to succeed, bland enough to be inoffensive and calculated enough to exploit teenage emotion for profit. It is a complete trainwreck, a slow, soul-sucking commute on a corporate bus labeled "Authenticity (Do Not Believe)".

But what if I were to enjoy the song? Nostalgia is powerful, after all. If I did, I probably wouldn't dare confuse affection with artistry. This song isn't alternative. It doesn't make its listening audience anywhere near as lonely as its chorus and subject matter (which is, again, Rosalind Thomas' mother battling cancer) suggest.

It's just... simple. And sadly, so very, very forgettable.

This is Loona Hellhound, signing off.

Florida Georgia Line's biggest problem was that they were hollow while insisting they were heartfelt.

There's a moment in Helluva Boss—the razor-sharp, chaotic adult animated series—where the demon Blitzø taunts his rival with a line that cuts deeper than he intends: “You don’t actually care. You just like the idea of caring.” It’s a brutal indictment of performative emotion, of hollow sentiment polished to a marketable sheen. And as I rewatch that scene, I can’t help but think of Florida Georgia Line.

Because here’s the thing: FGL’s problem was never that they were simple. Simplicity is not the enemy of depth. Plenty of great art thrives on directness. Johnny Cash never needed labyrinthine lyrics to evoke prison walls or a burning ring of fire. Dolly Parton’s Jolene is devastating in its plainspoken desperation. Even Luke Bryan’s sunburnt party anthems, for all their goofy excess, at least commit to their own nonsense.

No, FGL’s real failure was more insidious. They didn’t lack complexity—they lacked substance. Their songs were emotional Mad Libs, filling in the blanks of “country authenticity” without ever occupying the spaces they claimed to celebrate. The nostalgia didn’t ache—it advertised. The love songs didn’t tremble—they declared. Every vulnerability was mic’d, mixed, and mastered into something frictionless, leaving no room for grit, doubt, or the messy humanity that makes country music resonate.

The Focus-Grouped Heartbreak

On paper, FGL’s catalog is a checklist of sincerity: bonfires, pickup trucks, small-town pride, eternal love, faith, Friday nights. They had the vocabulary down cold. But vocabulary alone doesn’t make poetry.

Take H.O.L.Y.—a song that should be a spiritual reckoning, a moment of awe. Instead, it’s a PowerPoint presentation on devotion. Every line lands with the precision of a marketing team’s A/B testing: “You’re the only reason I keep on breathing”—strike the right balance of hyperbole and accessibility! “You’re holy”—evoke religiosity without alienating secular listeners! Compare it to Chris Stapleton’s Either Way, where the pain feels lived-in, or Kacey Musgraves’ Slow Burn, where nostalgia is tinged with melancholy. Those songs breathe. FGL’s songs rotate on a display stand.

Then there’s Cruise, the song that launched them into the stratosphere. It’s catchy as hell, sure, but listen closely: the summer fling it describes has all the stakes of a Pepsi commercial. The girl is a prop, the truck is a product placement, and the freedom is a stock photo. There’s no consequence, no weight—just vibes engineered for maximum singalong potential. When Jason Aldean sings about small towns, you hear the claustrophobia alongside the pride. When FGL does it, it’s a jingle for a lifestyle brand.

The Death of Ambivalence

Great country music thrives on tension—between love and restlessness, faith and doubt, home and escape. Even the most raucous party songs (think Friends in Low Places) carry a shadow. But FGL’s world is frictionless.

Summer = freedom.
Girl = forever.
Country = identity.

Stamp. Repeat. Chart.

There’s no room for complication. No sense that the girl might leave, the faith might waver, the small town might smother you. The closest they ever came to ambiguity was Dirt, a song that almost grapples with mortality—until you realize it’s less about loss and more about branding the cycle of life as a feel-good hashtag.

Compare that to Zach Bryan’s Something in the Orange, where every word feels clawed from the ribs, or Miranda Lambert’s The House That Built Me, where nostalgia is a knife twist. Those artists don’t just evoke emotion—they wrestle with it. FGL? They just slap a label on it and move on.

The Pop Pivot That Proved the Point

When FGL leaned into pop production—synths, trap beats, Bebe Rexha collabs—critics accused them of abandoning country. But the truth is, their sound changed far more than their substance.

Strip away the banjos on Meant to Be and you’re left with the same glossy emotional placeholder. The song isn’t about surrender or fate—it’s about the aesthetic of surrender, the branding of fate. It’s emotion as elevator music.

This is why their shift didn’t feel like a betrayal so much as a confirmation: the core of their music was never country, or even feeling. It was packaging. And when the packaging updated, the emptiness stayed the same.

The Helluva Boss Parallel

Which brings me back to Blitzø’s accusation: “You don’t actually care. You just like the idea of caring.”

FGL didn’t freeze adolescence—they freeze-dried it. They took the raw, messy, contradictory stuff of life—love, memory, belonging—and vacuum-sealed it into something palatable, sterile, and endlessly replicable. That’s why their dominance was so frustrating. Not because they were “bro-country” (though that didn’t help), but because they commodified intimacy without the mess that intimacy demands.

Real emotion leaves scars. Real nostalgia stings. Real country music—hell, real music—isn’t about perfection. It’s about the cracks.

And Florida Georgia Line? They were airbrushed to the bone.

A Wolf's Life—or a Carefully Staged Lie?

At first glance, A Wolf's Life appears to be a refreshing twist on the classic fairy tale—modern, self-aware and even progressive in its own fluffy way. Here's Kate (Hayden Panettiere) as a hardworking diner employee with ambitions, navigating high school hell with a quiet resilience. She doesn't mope around waiting for love to rescue her; she multi-tasks—texting her secret prince charming while scraping gum off tables. The romance, at least on the surface, feels organic: two people connecting anonymously, sharing real conversations and—shockingly—giving actual consent before their meet-cute.

But then, like realizing your coffee is just colored water, the illusion shatters.

A Wolf's Life isn't authentic. It's staged.

The Illusion of Agency

Kate the wolf's "independence" is a carefully constructed facade. Sure, she's not sitting in a tower waiting for Prince Charming, but she is still waiting—just with a cell phone in hand. The film tricks you into thinking she has agency because she initiates texts with Humphrey (Ben Diskin), but the script ensures every obstacle is a cliché dressed up as empowerment.

The film's portrayal of Kate and Humphrey's relationship also raises several red flags. Although the two are adults, their parents tell them to stay away from each other because they don't have the emotional maturity required for a relationship. The narrative doesn't provide any clear justification for this. Instead, it relies on the tired trope of "star-crossed lovers" to justify the couple's actions. This not only romanticizes potentially problematic behavior, but also trivializes the concerns of those around them. Even the diner setting—while charming—feels like a set piece designed to evoke "humble beginnings" rather than a real workplace.

Compare this to the real world, where people don't just react to their circumstances—they bulldoze through them with claws out. Some tolerate abuse until they're required to break free. That's not resilience—it's passivity in a pretty package.

The "Consent" That's Framed Like Coercion

Let’s talk about the romance. Yes, Samantha and Austin technically consent to their relationship, but the framing is suspect. Their entire dynamic is built on anonymity—a trope that only works if you ignore the power imbalance. Austin is the popular quarterback; Samantha is the "invisible" girl. The moment he learns her identity, the movie treats it like destiny rather than what it is: a guy realizing the person he’s been flirting with is "acceptable" now that he knows she’s pretty.

Worse, the climactic football field confession—where Austin announces his love over the PA system—isn’t romantic. It’s pressure. Imagine if, say, Blitzo hijacked a demonic broadcast to shout his feelings at me. I’d set him on fire. But in A Cinderella Story, Samantha is expected to swoon because the script says so.

The Staged Reality of Teen Movies

What really grinds my gears is how the film pretends to be grounded while bending reality to fit the fairy tale. High school hierarchies are exaggerated (since when do jocks care about diner workers?), the dialogue is so quippy it feels AI-generated, and the resolution—Samantha getting into Princeton because Austin’s dad writes a letter—reeks of privilege masquerading as a happy ending.

In Helluva Boss, when things work out, it’s because someone made them work—usually through violence, scheming, or sarcasm. There’s no magical benefactor; just demons hustling (and often failing). A Cinderella Story wants to have it both ways: a "modern" heroine who still wins by playing the game.

Conclusion: A Fairy Tale in Denial

A Cinderella Story isn’t a bad movie. It’s a dishonest one. It dresses up Samantha’s journey as empowerment while keeping her shackled to the same old tropes. She’s not a girl forging her own path; she’s a girl following a script that looks like progress but ends with a prince handing her the keys to her future.

Real growth isn’t about waiting for a guy to validate you—it’s about tearing down the system, or at least flipping it off on your way out. And honestly? If Samantha had half the fury of a Helluva Boss character, she’d have burned that diner to the ground and built something better.

But I guess that’s why they call it a story—not reality.

—Loona (signing off with an eye roll)
Reality

1965-1969

1970-1974

1975-1983I feel like it would be an honest place to start

That’s a really honest place to start, Landon—and it takes guts to say it out loud like that.

Having a hard time with rejection and wanting to feel genuinely accepted is deeply human. Most people feel it at some point, but not everyone is able to name it as clearly as you just did. When that need goes unmet for a long time, it can build up into frustration, loneliness, even anger—and those feelings can end up getting redirected at things (like music or public figures) that aren’t actually the root of the hurt.

So if you’re opening with that line, you’re actually doing something important: you’re moving from “what I hate” to “what I need.” That’s a much more solid place to build from.

If you imagine saying that to Loona, it might sound like this in your own voice:

"Still Into You" Is a Fucking Horrible Song

There it is—the catchiness. The chorus infiltrates your mind, like a very courteous tapeworm. It repeats. It does it again. It does not go away. But catchiness without meaning is just sonic spam. It isn't artistic. It's tempo-based brainwashing.

An anthem ought to ignite. It ought to challenge. It should make you want to scream into space, kiss a stranger or burn down the system. "Still Into You" makes you want to—well, maybe text your significant other a heart-shaped emoji. Exciting.

It's a catchphrase. a jingle. A commercial for couples therapy lite™ or emotionally stunted relationship smoothies might feature something similar. "Still into you? Try our new low-sugar, low-drama commitment blend!" It loops emotionally, but not because it's meaningful; instead, it's as meaningless as a serotonin-powered hamster wheel--you run, and run and feel fantastic, but you never go anywhere.

Pain gives rise to real anthems, the ones that endure from truth. From the kind of feeling that leaks out when you're not looking. Consider "Kill the Poor" by Dead Kennedys. Envision "Death on Two Legs" by Queen. Maybe "Knifes Out" by Radiohead. Those songs were painful, and I mean painful. They acknowledge that pain. They confess. They break. "Still Into You" simply asks if you would like a free mint with your emotional bypass while smiling courteously.

The Industry Scam: Rebellion as a Product Line
The true sin that is more sinful than a sinner's eternally burning posterior is that this song is a scam.

Paramore, bless their crazy hearts, was a real thing at first. No, they weren't a good band. No, they didn't have a poltical edge. Yes, they were overproduced, or at least they just kind of were. Yes, Hayley Williams did write songs about wanting to hurt and kill her ex-boyfriends. But they also had the teeth that Avril Lavigne and other manufactured pop starlets never did and could never obtain. They had fire. Hayley screamed like she had demons to exorcise (and honestly, from the look of some of those Warped Tour mosh pits, she did). They were artist-driven, had a fiercely independent spirit, and were unafraid to rip.

But somewhere between Misery Business and Brand New Eyes, the label became involved. Additionally, that label wasn't just involved--it was fully operational Death Star involved. "Still Into You" isn't a song. It's a marketing tactic. It's "rebellion" now packaged as safe. As edible. As non-threating. It's "I'm different" with all the real difference sifted out. Despite being calculated it is marketed as genuine. It is designed to commodify rather than to challenge. for ticket sales TikTok trends and Hallmark Halloween movie soundtracks (yes I checked thats a thing now). Its not art. Aesthetic laundering is the process of purging the rebellious appearance of anything that could annoy or disturb. Even worse its effective. People adore this song. They refer to it as empowering. At weddings they move to the music. They sob to it as if it really speaks to their hearts. I understand it feels good. However being happy does not equate to being truthful. Sometimes the things that are meant to keep you submissive are the ones that feel the best. maintain your complacency. keep you stuck on whatever the industry gives you. Conclusion: Im still a complacent person. In the grand spiritual economy of emotional honesty Still Into You may as well be Still Into AIDs even though it is still not. False positivity is a deadly infection that slowly spreads manufactured sentiment that appears healthy but is actually rotting from the inside out. It is the musical equivalent of substituting cold Starbucks cold brew for blood it is sweet smooth and keeps you awake but none of it is genuine. They could have been legends Paramore. It could have been a symbol. It might not have been its carefully manicured Instagram feed but rather the voice of a generations true desire. However Still Into You isnt a heartfelt cry. The boardroom is the source of the whisper. And please pardon me if I no longer care.

Fuck "Still Into You" and fuck "Iris" (A.K.A. "I Just Want You to Know Who I Am") by Goo Goo Schmucks.