For reasons that remain unclear to me personally, the internet has decided that 2016 was a golden age worth yearning for. I, on the other hand, remember it as a never-ending humiliation ritual, but, well, to each their own. But even I have to admit that there was one beacon of light amidst the constant terrors: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, The Lonely Island’s egregiously underrated celeb mockumentary (think Spinal Tap, but about a Bieber-core megastar whose meteoric rise and catastrophic meltdown play out as a fever dream of pop hubris, tabloid excess, and brilliant stupidity). It skewers everything from Behind the Music tragedy porn to TMZ slime to the self-importance baked into every DJ Khaled “motivational” ad lib, while also churning out ridiculous banger after ridiculous banger—and to this day, it remains the only thing that makes 2016 worth thinking about.
The task that lies before me has been called impossible by lesser men. After all, how can one rank 23 perfect songs? But, luckily for us all, I am a greater woman—a greater woman who, crucially, has watched Popstar enough to have fully memorized the movie, meaning no one will watch it with her anymore because apparently “it’s not fun to watch something when the person you’re watching it with says all the lines out loud while they’re happening, Casey” (incorrect). One of its songs even ranked third in my 2019 Spotify Wrapped.
But while I am, of course, a Style Boy 4 Life, I am also a music critic. As regular Paste readers might know, I, Casey Epstein-Gross, do not fuck around with rankings, whether they concern horses, Pauls, cities, or anything else—and I do not plan to start now. Thus, each song will be subject to an extensive dissection, its merits comprehensively analyzed and explained. As readers, you all deserve better than some half-hearted, arbitrarily-devised ranking. And let it be known that this will not be some paltry list of the snippets of songs that we’re shown in the movie. The Lonely Island was generous enough to bestow upon us a full soundtrack with full-length versions of each and every track (plus a few extra), and I would rather gruesomely and publicly kill myself than besmirch their gift by only providing a bit of measly commentary on the mere thirty-second clips included in the film. These songs simply bang too hard to not be judged in full; anything else would be criminal. And I may be a bitch, but I’m a law-abiding one.
So, with all of that out of the way, strap in, grab your AquaSpin refrigerators and shit-filled pancakes and wooden sculptures titled “Government in Crisis” (for obvious reasons), and come along for the ride. Doink-de-motherfucking-doink, everyone.
23. “Ashley Wednesday” (ft. Seal)
Look, some song was going to have to be last. I don’t like it, but it’s true. And while Seal is as suave and smooth as ever in “Ashley Wednesday,” the song itself isn’t the greatest. Which, to be fair, is the point; it’s the cheesy, bad love song Seal sings while Conner proposes to his girlfriend (Ashley Wednesday, obviously), at least until Seal’s dulcet tones make the wolves Conner rented from partywolves.com burst into simultaneous fits of rage and attack everyone present at the proposal, Seal himself included. So, sad as I am to do it, I think I need to follow the precedent set by the wolves and put this one last. Sorry, Seal. I hope your wolf-induced scars heal soon.
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22. Bonus Track: “Should I Move!” (ft. Akon)
“Should I Move” is a perfectly funny song, but I see why it was relegated to bonus track status. Tongue placed firmly in cheek, Samberg-as-Conner and frequent Lonely Island collaborator Akon rap sincerely about the deeply traumatizing experience of struggling to decide whether to buy another house after just buying a first one. It’s a great, synth-heavy parody of the #struggles of the rich, but it’s rather familiar both sonically and thematically, and while Lonely Island does as good a job of it as they do everything, it’s simply less exciting than the rest.
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21. Bonus Track: “Fuck Off”
An obvious send-up of pseudo-rebellious pop anthems like Miley’s “We Can’t Stop,” except here, anti-authority posturing gets taken to its logical extreme. It’s funny, undoubtedly, to hear lines like “Fuck off, you can’t teach me shit / And if I was you, I’d slit my wrist” and “I hope you get butt-fucked in prison” set to a song that’s cheesy, cheery, and insufferably twee-pop enough to be mistaken for a little-known Owl City deep cut. But it’s also not particularly memorable, nor is it something I take a great amount of pleasure in listening to (I have wished death upon the Owl City sound since I was a tween). Once again, I can see why this one was left on the cutting room floor.
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20. “Ibitha”
In an album of intentionally stupid songs, “Ibitha” might just be the stupideth. Conner’s premise is literally: Spaniards say “thpain,” so I wrote a “thong” about it. That conceit, predictably, cannot carry an entire track—and that’s the bit. What you get is a mid-2010s club anthem delivered with an aggressive lisp, plus a vague haze of celebrity xenophobia that isn’t quite as sharp or distinctive as the album’s other parodies. “Ibitha” is probably my least favorite song from the movie proper—although I do deeply enjoy the sheer stupidity of the part where Conner sings “Our tummies are full of Paella / Here’s a recipe of the Paella” and then lists the ingredients of Paella.
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19. Bonus Track: “I’m a Weirdo”
Another bonus song, and while I do enjoy it as a riff on, like, “Thrift Shop” and Watsky and other mid-2010s “weird” rap, I can once again see why this one was sidelined. I like the production and beat here a lot more than the synth-pop of “Should I Move?” and the Owl City tweetronica of “Fuck Off,” but overall, “I’m A Weirdo” doesn’t really do anything that other Popstar songs don’t already do—and do better. There’s a bit of early Tyler in its DNA, with Samberg trying his best at a more abrasive flow, but it sounds, in all honesty, like a song that was written for Popstar before the writers came up with Hunter the Hungry, whose tracks take everything “I’m A Weirdo” does then quadruples down. Conner’s “I use a Mach10 razor down here / Seven more blades cuz I like it sheer” walked so Hunter’s “Shaved my balls (kept the hair) / Knit that shit into a sweater (motherfucker’s itchy as shit)” could sprint.
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18. “Legalize It”
Have you ever wondered what Peter Tosh’s “Legalize It” would sound like if it were written by three white guys in their mid-20s and about crack instead of weed? Unfortunately, you no longer have to wonder. Style Boyz’ “Legalize It” begins with Conner smoking a spliff from “the wisest rasta I ever saw” (“Roots and culture seeped from his bones,” in case the cringe wasn’t clear yet), loving it, realizing it was crack, and then immediately committing to the lifestyle, a la Always Sunny’s Dennis Reynolds: “I love crack (Holy shit) / And now I am invincible (Fuck yeah).” It’s very stupid and very funny, and a genuinely successful parody of white-boy reggae posturing—but Popstar’s best songs don’t just work as jokes; they slap. And there is no universe in which I am voluntarily listening to Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer go full rasta outside of the end credits.
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17. “Rock Roll Skate”
Early on in Popstar, Conner claims the rise of the Style Boyz was in large part due to people noticing that “our lyrics were beautiful and insightful, poetic even.” The film then immediately cuts to a shot of an underattended dive bar concert where all three Style Boyz jump around with reckless abandon while screaming: “You’re a motherfucking, titty-sucking, two-balled bitch with a popcorn pussy and a full-on dick! / Style Boyz in the house and we give a fuck, / So whip out ya nuts and shut the fuck up!” That’s “Rock Roll Skate.” Poetic, indeed. The song in full is somewhat less effective than that perfectly-slotted verse, in large part because excess is best in moderation—and, perhaps, in smaller part because the soundtrack version is a lot more produced and restrained than the balls-to-the-wall chaos we get onscreen. Let the boyz off the leash! God knows this song in particular calls for it.
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16. “Donkey Roll”
“Donkey Roll” is Popstar’s in-universe answer to “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” and “Crank That”: a song that exists primarily to sell a dance. And like its real-world counterparts, the dance is iconic while the song itself is…serviceable. This is not a flaw—if anything, it’s the entire point—but it does mean that divorced from the choreography, “Donkey Roll” isn’t something I feel particularly compelled to revisit. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Donkey Roll! It took the world by storm! It’s the reason Usher started dancing! But, well, that’s the dance. This is the song.
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15. “Me Likey Dat”
Alright, y’all. Lock in. From here on out, things start getting genuinely difficult; we’ve gotten rid of all the duds and dud-adjacents, and now some hard choices have to be made. Thus, “Me Likey Dat” lands here—not because it’s bad, but because it lacks a singular, defining moment that separates it from the tracks above it. One of the Style Boyz’ earliest in-universe songs, it’s lo-fi, communal, and built around call-and-response goofing more than punchlines: “When [something good happens]” / “Me likey dat!” It sounds exactly like three friends fucking around before fame calcifies their instincts, which is both its greatest strength and its limitation. Dumb, charming, and fun—just not essential.
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14. “Owen’s Song”
Considering this song’s only lyrics are “Birds, wind and birds / They fill my heart up with darkness so cold”—and that, in the film, they’re sung intentionally terribly—it might be surprising that “Owen’s Song” wasn’t just a shoo-in for the bottom five. To you. Yes, the lyrics here sound like a Charlie Kelly original, but at least in my world, that’s a plus, not a minus. And, more importantly, the beat fucking rips. That’s the reason this song exists in the film, anyways: to show both Conner and the audience how good a DJ Kid Contact actually is when Kid Conner isn’t there to clip his wings, and yeah, man, he’s fucking good. Put this on in any club, and people will lose their shit, especially if the people are me. Really, it’s only this low because I actually prefer the horrifically shitty vocals in the movie version (again: in my personal ideal world, all songs would remind me of Charlie Kelly), and I resent the fact that they were yassified to hell and back. Give us the OG tapes! Let Owen suck!
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13. Bonus Track: “Maximus”
We’ve arrived at the final bonus track—and, in my expert opinion, the only one that truly deserved to make it into the film. “Maximus” was clearly meant to accompany the scene in which Conner discovers his beloved pet turtle has succumbed to his lifelong battle with SBS (soggy bone syndrome), and you know what? It absolutely should have. Over reverb-soaked harmonies and mournful organ, a heavily-autotuned Conner grieves Maximus with lines like “Do you remember we dressed like Ninja Turtles on Halloween / Then they put you on their firing line and shot you down / Your blood stains the pages of my magazine”—which is, honest-to-god, some appallingly good lyricism. I am being completely serious when I say I would praise this writing even if it appeared on a non-parody album. I mean, the mundanity of the Halloween memory, the hyperbolic symbolism of the firing line, the imagery transforming grief into something small and tangible and visceral?! They’ll kill me for this, but I have to say it anyways: that one-two-three punch contains better songwriting than the entirety of Life of a Showgirl (and, crazily enough, that is a comparison I have made before). Then Conner’s vocals dissolve into gurgles and sobs, still filtered through intense autotune as if to convince us they’re just runs, and it’s legitimately, like, a little bit affecting. It’s not one of the soundtrack’s best jokes or its best standalone songs, but it is absolutely perfect for what it is. I’d even argue that Popstar’s greatest (and possibly only) sin might be cutting it. Justice for Maximus.
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12. “Sick Glenda”
In the film, “Sick Glenda” only exists as a half-remembered relic, with the Style Boyz—high as hell—trying and failing to recall how it even went. Somehow, the full version captures that exact energy without overproducing it into oblivion. The beat is bouncy and stupid, the crowd laughs along, and everything is kept just lo-fi enough to preserve the feeling of three friends riffing before fame rotted their brains. Lyrically, it’s about a girl named Glenda who was always sick when the speaker called her: “Glenda are you dying, or just avoiding me? / Either way’s a bummer but I hope you’re dying.” It’s simple, it’s dumb, and it feels perfectly in line with the early, pre-mythologized Style Boyz we only ever get glimpses of. Slight, sure—but deeply charming. Sometimes you just wanna know if your situationship is ditching you or not, and “Sick Glenda” is an awfully endearing way to do it.
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11. “Hey Ya Ho” (ft. Chris Redd)
There is not a Hunter the Hungry song in Popstar that doesn’t go hard as hell. Hell, I maybe like them more than the early Tyler, the Creator tracks they’re sending up, which is hugely embarrassing to admit as a music critic, but I need to speak my truth. Hear me out: it’s like listening to Bastard or Goblin (complete with intentional fuck-you-I’m-edgy provocations a la “My grandmama is hot it makes me sick / It makes me wanna make out with her and suck on her tits”) without any of the cringe, because it’s not actually being edgy or crude or violent for the hurr-durr-shock-value, it’s satirizing that mindset. All the fun, (almost) none of the aging like milk. It just rules, man. The only reason this lands outside the top ten is simple: it serves the same purpose as another Hunter track that I just happen to like a little bit better.
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10. “Things In My Jeep” (ft. Linkin Park)
I am obsessed with this song in both theory and practice. In-universe, “Things In My Jeep” is Lawrence “Kid Brain” Dunn’s desperate solo bid for relevance after being iced out of the Style Boyz—a bid that fails spectacularly, for reasons best enumerated by a sheepish Nas in a talking head I think about on the daily: “I didn’t really relate to that song, because, you know, I had different things in my Jeep than he had in his Jeep.” Unfortunately, I can’t fault Nas for his take, because holy shit does Lawrence have a lot of weird shit in his Jeep—by my count, Lawrence Dunn has 63 unique items in his Jeep, ranging from the small and feasible (Tic Tacs, condoms, exactly three quarters) to the overlarge (a whole American flag, a laundry heap, a surfboard). And every 20 or so items, we’re treated to Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington (?!?!) screaming “THESE ARE THE THINGS IN MY JEEP!!!” like his life depends on it, and if you haven’t experienced it at least once in your life, you are not living. Does it work as a song? I mean, no, man, it’s a list of things one guy has in his Jeep with no commentary save for “Prepare for adventure inside my Jeep / These are the things in my Jeep.” Do I care? Not even remotely. If this list was purely subjective, this song would rocket up into the top 5, because I fucking adore it—but I do understand Nas’s critique, so here it falls. But Lawrence, my sweet prince, please know that if I were in the Popstar universe, I would have streamed this into platinum, items in my own Jeep be damned.
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9. “Mona Lisa”
If we were only ranking the snippets as they appear in the film, “Mona Lisa” wouldn’t stand a chance. But man, the song in full… I see the vision. I really do. It’s an absolute earworm: glossy synths, falsetto hooks, a soulful bridge, and even a bizarre swerve into patriotism at the end, with Conner solemnly declaring, “I’m an American man, this is my native land / Where no one lies about paintings / But that’s not the case in France.” (Damn right. ‘Murica, baby!) We get a whole verse of Conner shitting on none other than the Great Pyramid of Giza (“What did I find there? A dirty pile of bricks”), but the punchline doesn’t come until the next chorus: “Mona Lisa, you’re worse than the pyramids.” Other highlights include “Da Vinci must have sucked an art historian’s dick,” accusing Mona Lisa of looking like uncooked bread (true) and needing some Rogaine (admittedly, also true), and the revelation that she resembles Dennis Franz—which, after looking it up, I regret to inform you is accurate. “Mona Lisa” is ridiculous, it’s catchy, and once it’s in your head, it will stay there, mocking you, as the image of Mona Lisa as NYPD Detective Andy Sipowicz now mocks me.
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8. “2 Banditos” (ft. Chris Redd)
Much like “Mona Lisa,” this is a song I didn’t realize would end up so high before I actually sat down and thought about it. While it works well in Popstar itself—as the backdrop for Conner4Real and Hunter the Hungry becoming BFFs4Life—the snippets in the film do not do justice to how much of a banger it really is. With riotous sax, maximalist production, an effervescently jaunty beat, and genuinely fun, spiky flows from both Chris Redd and Andy Samberg, “2 Banditos” is, against all odds, a legitimate bop (and by the “odds” it’s against I am of course referring to lines like “Fucked your first cousin with a didgeridoo / And when she came, it sounded like ‘Wowowowowowowoowow’”). Samberg isn’t as naturally sharp a rapper as Redd, but here it’s like mere proximity juices his game; after Hunter spits “I’m on some white boy shit man, tryna stack a mil,” Conner jumps right in with “Yeah I’m also on my white boy shit, that’s my birth right,” then follows it with “Call my dick the shooting star”—cue Hunter’s quickfire interjection of “why?”—“’cause it burns right.” Killer Mike and El-P who? Also, the delivery of “do a little dance and drink a little WATAH” lives rent-free in my head and frequently reappears to guilt me into hydrating, and I appreciate the benefits to my health.
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7. “Karate Guy”
To once again quote beloved rapper Nas, “‘Karate Guy’? Are you kidding me, man? That song changed my life.” Look, I genuinely don’t know what, exactly, “Karate Guy” could possibly be parodying, but you couldn’t pay me to care. It’s stupid to the point of being downright baffling, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. The song is ostensibly about two things: liking to “kick it” while wearing cowboy hats, and painstakingly overexplaining extremely common slang. But you know what? Both of those things are utterly foundational to the human experience, and never have either been distilled into song as simply and beautifully as they are in “Karate Guy.” Like, fuck it, they’re right; I am a karate guy! I don’t care what temperature it is when I hang out with my friends, so long as it’s “60° or 80° / There just has to be friends”! I do like to kick it—and when I say I like to kick it, I do mean “hanging out, dude, not kicking something with my foot”—and when I say anything, I do unnecessarily clarify my meaning out loud and at length because I live in constant fear of being misunderstood! Nas has never been more correct. “Karate Guy” is the song of my generation—nay, perhaps the song of the human race.
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6. “I’m So Humble” (ft. Adam Levine)
The first (almost) full song we hear in the film, “I’m So Humble” is introduced by a little monologue from Conner4Real himself: “My fans and me, we’re in love. My songs are love letters, and the arena is our bedroom. The stage… The stage is where we fuck.” Then the opening sample from The Marcels’ 1961 “Heartaches” busts in, and reader, I gotta tell you—to continue Conner4Real’s apt metaphor—I bust too. The concept is simple (a celebrity brags about how humble they are, and irony abounds) but, god, is it executed perfectly: “I guess in a way, bein’ gracious is my weakness,” Conner shrugs, cheeky, “People say I’m so unpretentious for a genius.” The production is phenomenal, the hook is irresistibly sticky, and the song uses Dikembe Mutombo getting covered in a big pot of gumbo as a baseline measurement for humility—what’s not to love? Even Mariah Carey adores it. It’s a perfect thesis statement for Conner as a character and an unbeatable introduction to his solo career, and arguably one of the best pop parodies The Lonely Island has written, beautiful in its simplicity. It is also, by a wide margin, the best thing Adam Levine has ever done, and he should be sending The Lonely Island handwritten thank-you notes for the rest of his life.
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5. “Turn Up The Beef” (ft. Emma Stone)
Look me in the eyes and tell me this song doesn’t fuck. You simply can’t. This hit single from Claudia Cantrell (a fictional Katy-Perry-type played by a perfectly-cast Emma Stone) opens with a brutal, addictive beat that just screams early-2010s, The E.N.D-era pop, followed by Stone sexily whispering nonsense in Spanish before immediately translating said nonsense to English for all us idiot anglophiles (my favorite being “El burro es grande / That’s a really big donkey!”), and then the chorus kicks us into a new stratosphere. The lyrics are aggressively stupid and rather gross (“Turn up the beef / Throw your body on the flame / Let your meat release / Juices dripping down like rain”) but Stone sells them. I would have played the absolute shit out of this in 2010. But none of that is why it’s here. The Catchphrase Verse—“as it’s now known”—is “Turn Up the Beef”’s raison d’etre. In-universe, it’s Conner4Real’s big post-Style Boyz breakout moment, but it is iconic in every universe.
Of the 24 catchphrases here, not one makes sense—and not one misses. Sorry, Dad! Inky nuts! Squirrel jam! HATS! Balancing my checkbook! 100 gift baskets! You’re now rocking with the Tesla boys! Baby Benjamin Franklin! Moped music! Costco samples like a mothafucka! Patrick Stewart money! I mean, need I go on? Every single one of these catchphrases is earthshattering, groundbreaking, history-making. To quote DJ Khaled, “When you have a catch phrase, the world is catched by your phrase.” And when you have 24 catch phrases, the world instantly detonates in sheer awe. I’m so catched by these phrases it’s crazy.
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4. “Incredible Thoughts”
Every movie-musical needs its grand conclusion, and Popstar does not disappoint. “Incredible Thoughts” pulls out all the stops, and by “stops” I mean Michael Bolton, a fish-costume-wearing Justin Timberlake (in-character as chef Tyrus Quash), the open ocean, a mid-song sax solo, ballet dancers, and gorgeously maximalist production. I particularly appreciate that The Lonely Island did not take the coward’s way out and make the Style Boyz’ triumphant reunion—Conner’s stage presence finally buoyed by Owen’s beats and Lawrence’s lyrics once more—an actually good song with actually good lyrics. No, man, it’s dumb as hell—but it’s performed like it’s the greatest piece of art ever created, and that sincerity is what makes it work.
We’re told Lawrence has spent his exile on a bumfuck-nowhere weed farm writing poetry, spinning beauty into truth with questions like: What if a garbage man was secretly smart? What if a man’s ears were so big it demanded an apology? What if a house cat was addicted to “THA COCAINE”? Conner and Owen hear these revelations and, naturally, react like they’ve discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. And because the film commits to that premise with a straight face—because everyone in the Popstar universe, talking heads included, treats the song as genuinely world-altering—a little part of you does, too. It’s just so sweet! So grand! So wondrous! The Style Boyz are back and they’re making a fish sing and they’re doing the Donkey Roll onstage with Usher and they’re singing a song that is ending all evil and everything is right and good in the world and nothing will ever be bad again! The boyz are right: “[their] minds blow my mind.” Incredible thoughts, indeed. How did their brain conceive them?
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3. “Hunter the Hungry is Gon’ Eat”
I mentioned earlier that a Popstar song landed in my 2019 Spotify Wrapped, and I am proud to announce it was none other than dark horse contender “Hunter the Hungry is Gon’ Eat.” Yes, really. Look. This track just fucking rules. Like “Hey Ya Ho,” it’s a perfect Odd Future parody, but it’s also just a great song—meaner, grimier, catchier, stupider. The beat is unforgiving. The vocal pitch shifts are phenomenal. The chorus is monotone and hard as shit: “One round, head down, eyes up, nose down / Hunter the Hungry is gonna eat.” Chris Redd’s harsh snarl is simultaneously furiously emotive and deeply indifferent, which is basically the exact sweet spot those early Tyler records were always trying to hit—and holy fuck, does he murder the flow throughout. The lyrics win the IDGAF championships every time: “Fuck a chorus, fuck my moms, fuck your dad, fuck this song / Seriously though, fuck this song, I can’t stand it man, fuck this song, yo” (a line that, frankly, does a hell of a lot more for gay marriage than Conner’s own “Equal Rights”; shoutout Hunter’s gay moms, I guess!).
My only gripe—aside from the use of the r-word, which, yes, unfortunately comes with the Tyler territory—is that I wish it were longer. Give me more of Hunter “eating beefcakes in the back of a Ford Taurus”! Give me more Dada nonsense about Campbell’s Soup! Give me more grotesque little images about rabies babies and dick warts and itchy-as-shit pubic hair sweaters! Are the lyrics mostly gibberish? But I understand them. (“Blah blah, rap rap rap rap rap / You get it, you get it, everybody gets it”—and we do!). I wish I could put into words why this song rules as hard as it does, but there’s something ineffable about it; I simply feel divinely compelled to replay it over and over. But to quote 2026’s first meme, the newly-famous Tamara, “Hey so it actually only has to make sense to me and I don’t feel like explaining it to anyone else.” And if that’s not the most Hunter the Hungry mindset I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is. Chris Redd, I insist you enter the rap game post-haste. The people (me) need you.
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2. “Finest Girl (Bin Laden)”
In his 2013 hit “Talk Dirty,” Jason Derulo sang about hooking up with girls whose native languages he couldn’t understand. “Finest Girl” is Conner4Real’s take on the “Talk Dirty” genre of mid-2010s pop (and looking at how stupid Derulo’s is, it’s a concerningly good one)—except this time the girl’s dirty talk is perfectly intelligible on a linguistic level, just baffling on every other one: “Knew she was a freak when she started talking,” Conner croons, “She said… ‘Fuck me like we fucked Bin Laden.’” Perhaps this is what Derulo’s girls were saying all along and he simply never knew.
As all “freaky kind of girls” are wont to do, Conner’s girl keeps up with world events—or, “More specifically, one event / The time Osama Bin Laden got shot in the head.” And when she requests “intercourse to bring her to climax / With the clinical efficiency of the assassination of Bin Laden,” she means it: turban, tunic, full roleplay. The song is, perhaps, the best showing of The Lonely Island’s talent for ridiculously brilliant and brilliantly ridiculous lyricism in the entirety of Popstar, which is saying something. It’s so fucking dumb (“She said ‘Invade my cave with your special unit’ / I said ‘He wasn’t in a cave’ but there was no stopping’”), yet it’s also a pitch-perfect ridiculing of not only Derulo’s inanity (“You’re harboring a fugitive / Dat ass! / And my justice will be punitive / Imma smash”), but, oh, you know, the entirety of the “merciless and exact” American geopolitical self-mythology—and yes, that part lands even harder now that our godawful President would absolutely call Conner up and be like, “Come give me the deets in the White House Garden / I gots to know how you fucked her like we fucked Bin Laden.” Also, the song—not unlike the gun that shot Osama Bin Laden—simply bangs. It just bangs, and it’s important for me that you know that.
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1. “Equal Rights” (ft. P!nk)
This is—and I do not say this lightly—a perfect song. A merciless parody of Macklemore’s painfully earnest 2012 anthem “Same Love” (which spent an impressive amount of time clarifying that Macklemore himself does not share the affliction commonly known as homosexuality), “Equal Rights” doesn’t just satirize ally-pop, but takes Macklemore out back and shoots him in the head. Conner’s not gay, guys, but if he was, he would want equal rights. He’s not gay, but if he was, he would marry who he likes. “It’s not fair,” he bemoans—”I’m not gay!” he cuts in—”that the government has a say in who can love who (I’m not gay!), or to which god you can pray (I’m not gay!!!)”
But the song’s real genius is structural. Each verse escalates the same joke, with Conner’s parenthetical asides growing longer, louder, stranger, and more desperate: first a simple “not gay,” then a reassuring “titties,” then a flurry of heterosexual signifiers (“beers, hoagies, sweatpants, not gay!”), until the final verse collapses into a panicked game of full-blown free association from the mind of a man in the midst of a homophobic psychotic break. For every one “gay is okay!” affirmation, there are about four “I have no qualms about calling you a slur” phrases (“Predator, flying kicks, not gay, big watch, not gay, missionary” goes the string following “true love trumps all,” for instance).
Not only is it hilarious to see the cultural signifiers Conner believes to be the pinnacle of heterosexuality—lighter fluid, HD television, nunchucks, gym socks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, one-armed push-ups, and many more—Samberg’s machine-gun delivery transforms all of it into gibberish run-on sentences, making it impossible to tell which phrases are meant as support and which are denial without further examination. By the end, Conner is frenzied and chanting “I’m not not not not not not not gay,” and the song’s original message is long since obliterated. P!nk begrudgingly swoops in on a rainbow unicorn to sing about self-love, Conner keeps interrupting her with “I’m straight!” and “You’re gay!” while she side-eyes him with disgust, and the whole thing lands in perfect, catastrophic form. Tragically, the final punchline only exists in the film itself, but it’s too good not to include here: a talking head cameo from Ringo Starr, of all people, pops up just afterward, with Starr noting in mild confusion, “He’s writing a song for gay marriage. You know, like it’s not allowed. It’s allowed now.” Absolute cinema.
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Casey Epstein-Gross is Associate Editor at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her on X (@epsteingross) or email her at [email protected].
