Jump to content

Desensitized


J'net

Recommended Posts

This week's Song of the Week is Desensitized. Last week, we talked about a common theme between Macy's Day Parade and Static Age. I think this song is an interesting one to follow that chat. Please use this thread to discuss any of your thoughts and feelings about the song.

Desensitized is the second track on the Shenanigans album, which was released July 2, 2002. Shenanigans is a B-sides/covers album (containing three covers), which reached number 27 on the charts.

Personally, I love Shenanigans, and some of my favorite songs are on this album. What do you think?

I couldn't find a youtube video of the guys doing just this song (or even an audio), but I admit I didn't have much time to search today. So, if anyone's got anything, share please!

Desensitized Lyrics

Clenching my teeth tight,

My head is like a sponge.

Give it to me free.

I wanna get ripped off

And drown in the airwaves -

Another fatal wreck

On the information highway.

So go ahead and kill yourselves

It all amuses me.

For I'll be damned to spend my life in hell -

Another wise ingrate.

Bring me blood and pain

Of a stranger's fate.

Give it all away.

Gimme, gimme now!

I'm desensitized.

I wanna watch the bomb

Blow the masses high.

I wanna get ripped off

And drown in the airwaves -

Another fatal wreck

On the information highway.

So go ahead and kill yourselves

It all amuses me.

For I'll be damned to spend my life in hell -

Another wise ingrate.

Bring me blood and pain

Of a stranger's fate.

Give it all away.

I wanna get ripped off

And drown in the airwaves -

Another fatal wreck

On the information highway.

So go ahead and kill yourselves

It all amuses me.

For I'll be damned to spend my life in hell -

Another wise ingrate.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can nominate songs for discussion as Song of the Week in the Song Discussions thread, which contains links to each previous Song of the Week from 9/14/2009 forward in its original post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 122
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Ooh, some Shenanigans love!

I don't quite know when this song was written, but this lyric:

"So go ahead and kill yourselves

It all amuses me."

I think it perfectly sums up this decade, especially in regards to reality television competitions and celebrity culture. We love to hate this stuff, we bitch about technology on the information highway and the airwaves yet, we are absolutely desensitized by it all. Billie's certainly hinted towards his love/hate relationship with cable news and stuff like that (being a part of the problem and getting sucked into it), and this song certainly exemplifies this. "My head is like a sponge," we're all absorbing this useless shit, and we can't get enough, no matter how bad it is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The opening of this song used to scare me when I was younger--once I fell asleep with my iPod on and woke up just as this started. I thought there was someone in the house.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This song is now stuck in my head.

I haven't listened to it in forever! Guess I know what I'm doing when I get off of here. :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love this song! And I wonder why this song (as well as a lot of other Shenanigans songs) were just B sides and such and not on actual albums. But it is such a cool song. And I really need to listen to Shenanigans more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

YES!

i adore this song, and shenanigans is my favorite album <3

you can definately tell it was written along the time of Nimrod.

[edit] oops, i was talking about suffocate, how embarassing! i manage to associate them as a two-part song lol

"another fatal wreck on the information highway" :wub: i love how they can twist a simple statement into a work of art

Link to comment
Share on other sites

YES!

i adore this song, and shenanigans is my favorite album <3

you can definately tell it was written along the time of Nimrod.

[edit] oops, i was talking about suffocate, how embarassing! i manage to associate them as a two-part song lol

That's not surprising, as they're the first two songs on the album, and they have similar "disenchanted with life" feel to them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This world gets more and more "desensitized" as the years go on.

This song makes me think of people who get massive entertainment and "lulz" from watching people die or suffer. Though this song is referring to TV news, internet video's skyrocketed since this song was written and that morbid curiosity turned into morbid pleasure has gotten even worse.

I was in drivers ed a few years back and the instructor showed us a Red Asphalt video. The other kids in that class, instead of being horrified like I was, were eating it up.

("Oh ew, look at his brains smeared all over the highway. Sweet!")

They loved it and the next day, the teacher promised that if the class was good, as a reward she'd put on another Red Asphalt video at the end of the day like the kids were begging her to.

She actually did and I got up and told the instructor I was leaving. She told me no I wasn't, but I said I had already seen one of these, and I got the point and I didn't see it as entertainment like those other dumb asses did. I did actually walk out. Not as some moral point, but just cuz I didn't want to watch the damn snuff film. I couldn't see it as exciting and awesome like all the other people in that class did.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At first I didn't care much for this album but it's really grown onto me. I still wonder why this didn't get a lot of attention because it's pretty good. :) I've actually been on a Shenanigans kick for the past couple days. I'll get like that with stuff; I will listen to it over and over and over for a week and then flip to another record and do the same thing. XD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, the beginning of this song is fantastic.

and I love the way Billie things "another wise INGRATE!"

Definitely gotta pull out Shenanigans and give it a listen sometime soon, it's been awhile.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At first I didn't care much for this album but it's really grown onto me. I still wonder why this didn't get a lot of attention because it's pretty good. :) I've actually been on a Shenanigans kick for the past couple days. I'll get like that with stuff; I will listen to it over and over and over for a week and then flip to another record and do the same thing. XD

Same here. I've been addicted to Shenanigans for the past few days.

And yeah, Desensitized is a great song, and also very true, especially with the internet ("so go ahead and kill yourself, it all amuses me").

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love Shenanigans, and there's always this argument as to whether it's an actual album or not because it's b-sides. Whatever, it's an album to me - the songs have a kind of sense together, it's largely a punk sound, and I love the variety of it.

It's also pretty dark overall, and this is a dark song - a nightmare view of a certain kind of internet user who mindlessly gorges on violence. The other theme is 'give it to me free', which can be that this user spectates these awful things free of conscience and consequence. But I also feel that somewhere deep-down in there is a parallel with the music industry, the advent of downloading taking over from the physical purchase of cds. In a pre-21CB interview with Rolling Stone, Billie Joe talked about how people think that music 'somehow magically' turns up on their computer - the feeling that the effort it takes to produce good music could be underappreciated because it's just 'click, download, here it is on my iPod with a zillion other songs'. I feel it when it seems like a song is just this week's news and everyone is leaping forward to the next song, the next video - it feels like music is devoured without being savored, like it's just another consumer product.

Desensitized is a tad bit paranoid - it's seeing the wave of something new and powerful at its most negative extreme. When I heard Billie Joe say his 'somehow magically' thing, I thought, fuck, that's exactly how it is to me - magic. I can YouTube any song I want, from any era - I can have orchestras, I can have crappy videos of punk shows, I can have all kinds of wonderful random things that inspire me. I can have the work of an artist sent to me on a pdf that ends up as a tattoo on my arm (thank you, Beth)

Sure, we have a shitload of information coming at us - but we get to choose how we use it. We get to discriminate between what's trash and what's treasure - we get to choose whether to feed our souls on a diet of junkfood or to gravitate towards what's real and beautiful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:woot: :woot: :woot:

I fucking love Desensitized.

It's so amaaaazing. This on my Nimrod as well. :)

Question: Who/what is smashing something at the start?

I've always wanted to know...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This song sums up the entire 'internet mentality' for me.

I feel like this is the way reality tv and the internet age struck Billie as well, and the disgust he feels shows pretty clearly. It's distressing the way that we, as a society have become desensitized and the song illustrates this very well. My favorite line is 'another fatal wreck on the information highway'.

I wish I could be more articulate, but things are a little insane at my house at the moment...maybe I'll get back to this and say something intelligent when I get home from practice tonight.

(More likely I'll forget. :P )

I'm looking forward to reading the discussion on this song.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:woot: :woot: :woot:

I fucking love Desensitized.

It's so amaaaazing. This on my Nimrod as well. :)

Question: Who/what is smashing something at the start?

I've always wanted to know...

I always wondered that too. I just assumed they recorded themselves smashing shit and thought it sounded cool. :lol:

Anyway, this is defiantly one of my favorite songs off Shenanigans, and it never seems to get much love. The guys need to play more stuff from this album...my heart would go wild if that ever happened.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Question: Who/what is smashing something at the start?

I've always wanted to know...

According to GSB the sound is Mike smashing things.

It sounds like he's destroying some equipment. I hear drums going toppling all over.

... Either that or a Kitchen. Lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

According to GSB the sound is Mike smashing things.

It sounds like he's destroying some equipment. I hear drums going toppling all over.

... Either that or a Kitchen. Lol.

lol okay.

Yeah I hear the drums bouncing against the floor.

and there's definitely glass in there. :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

According to GSB the sound is Mike smashing things.

It sounds like he's destroying some equipment. I hear drums going toppling all over.

... Either that or a Kitchen. Lol.

LOL Why am I not surprised. Wasn't Mike smashing things w/ a bat for Nimrod? :huh: Or something like that . . .

I love this song, it's one of my favorites off of Shenanigans.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shenanigans is one of my favorite albums. All the songs, including Desensitized, seem to kind of be about rather unpleasant subjects ("Rotting", "Suffocate", "You Lied", "Ha Ha You're Dead") which I always found interesting.

Anyway, Desensitized is awesome and it reminds me a bit of The Judge's Daughter. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really like this song! :)

Although I always thought the first words were "Brushing my teeth tight" :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The opening of this song used to scare me when I was younger--once I fell asleep with my iPod on and woke up just as this started. I thought there was someone in the house.
:D When I heard this song for the first time I was wondering what's on my CD there. I am still wondering why they put it there. But it's funny and everytime on of my friends listen to it they ask if there is something wrong with my cd or if I started listening to weird stuff.

Desensitized is one of the songs where I (as a non-native speaker) understand the single words but need some time to figure out the whole meaning.

The only thing I did not understand correctly ist the beginning. I never hear "Clenching my teeth tight). I just hear something like "mumble mumble teeth mumble" :/ Is that just my problem?

Even though it sometimes annoy me that I don't get the meaning of a song the first time i hear it, it is kind of interesting that I have to take a closer look at the lyrics. I always discover (again) that Billie Joe is an absolutely brilliant songwriter. I love these little word-plays. For example: "to drown in the airwaves": you can't literally drown in airwaves but you can drown in waves or "another fatal wreck on the information highway". I always associate a wreck with a car accident first (maybe just me) and only then with a mental wreck. This fits very good with the highway, where the cars drive and often have very bad accidents, even though this is not the highway which is ment in the song.

Just my thoughts when I heard that song. Hope you can understand it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...