Presidents’ sixth album perfect for tween movies
These Are the Good Times People is sure to make anyone smile.
Published March 11, 2008
You might remember hearing of Presidents of the United States way back in 1995. They had a big hit with the song “Peaches,” which is about a guy that eats a lot of the sweet fruit from a can.
Or perhaps you saw them on VH1’s best songs of the nineties. The lead singer said he wrote that song under the peach tree in the yard of a girl he had a crush on but never mustered up the courage to knock on her door.
Presidents are back with their sixth album entitled These Are the Good Times People. Their only hit was on their first album, but hey, maybe the sixth time will be the charm.
Though these guys are now older, their music has a young vibe to it. It’s not pretentious and is pretty simple. Most of the songs seem like they’d be great on the soundtrack of your run of the mill teen romantic comedy.
The album opens up with “Mixed Up S.O.B.,” and it really could have come straight out of the classic “10 Things I Hate About You.” It’s about a girl who is mixed up, angry and crazy, which pretty much describes Kat in “10 Things I Hate About You.” This song could have been played during a montage of Heath’s failed attempts to win the heart of the misunderstood ice queen and would have stopped when he has the epiphany that she’s a person and should be treated as one.
Another song that could have been taken out of a movie is “French Girl.” It’s a song that warns everyone to never date a French girl. The singer always falls in love with French ladies and they always make him miserable. So this song could be played during any one of the movies that feature a very sexy nerd walking down the school hallway with his hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground, sad because he just asked the foreign exchange student out and she shot him down for the quarterback. Lucky for bookworm, there’s always been a girl that lives across the street who has lusted over him ever since they were sandbox mates.
“More Bad Times” is perhaps one of the sweetest songs on the album, even with its dark humor. It’s about a guy who would be with his lover through all of the bad things that could ever happen to her. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t think that she’s suffered through enough bad times for him to prove his love. The song is pretty much just a list of bad things he wished had happened to the girl, such as she never had measles, got the gout, never been mauled by a mad baboon, never got poked in the eye by a spork and never ate tin foil. This song could be played during the credits of a film where it took the couple a long time to overcome weird and unlikely obstacles to finally get together, which pretty much describes every chick flick. The song is pretty good and has a nice beat. It kind of sounds like “I Got You Babe,” and it even has the same message.
This album is perfect to listen to if you were having a bad day, because you have to smile at these songs.
They’re just so simple and quirky, that if you don’t get a chuckle out of them it’s probably because you’re a spawn of the devil.