The Trollgaze Index

Farrah Abraham: The Salem Of Teen Mom?

By Maura Johnston Tue., Aug. 7 2012 at 2:00 PM
Categories: Maura Johnston, Teen Mom, The Trollgaze Index

farrahabraham.jpg
via MTV
This week's candidate for The Internet's Worst Song Ever (At Least Until The Next One) is the inaugural musical offering from an MTV reality star: Teen Mom's Farrah Abraham. The young mother released the more-processed-than-Velveeta "Getting Up From Rock Bottom" on Friday, and before you could say "recapping culture," the Internet had stabbed a thousand downward-pointed thumbs in its direction. But does Abraham actually know what she's doing? Time to fire up The Trollgaze Index, in which we attempt to figure out whether or not people are deliberately getting caught up in the Internet's seemingly endless cycle of hate.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

Is Muse's Song For The Olympics The Most Ridiculous Piece Of Music 2012 Has To Offer?

By Maura Johnston Thu., Jun. 28 2012 at 2:00 PM
Categories: Maura Johnston, Muse, The Trollgaze Index

muse_2012.jpg
You're in the British pomp-rock act Muse, and you've been charged with writing the official song for the 2012 Olympics, which will be held in London and which will be a massive event for your home country. How do you respond to this honor, especially in the wake of creating outrage among your loyalists by releasing a trailer for your upcoming record that hints a flirtation with dubstep? By crafting a five-minute epic that sounds like a mash-up of film scores and Billy Joel records, of course!

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

In Honor Of National Donut Day, The Trollgaze Index Sizes Up Krispy Kreme (The Rapper, That Is)

By Maura Johnston Fri., Jun. 1 2012 at 2:00 PM
Categories: Krispy Kreme, Maura Johnston, The Trollgaze Index, Trollgaze

krispykreme_518.jpg
Yesterday the Alabama rapper Krispy Kreme—think a 21-year-old Paul Wall lookalike who sounds like a Yelawolf impersonator whose tricks are performing with a mouth full of marbles and rhyming "back" with "back," streamed over a super-slow Internet connection"—released the song "Best Friends," a charming little ditty about his best friend (of course) being hooded and hustled into a van as he's kidnapped by a 17-year-old drug dealer. It's dedicated to Tupac; it features clothing fashioned by the popular-slash-loathed MC Mac Miller. All of this, of course, means that it's time to break out The Trollgaze Index, in which we gauge the media-manipulation skills of today's musical artists.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

Brian McKnight Would Like To Teach You A Thing Or Two (About Getting The Internet Hot & Bothered)

By Maura Johnston Fri., Apr. 27 2012 at 12:00 PM
Categories: Brian McKnight, The Trollgaze Index

Brian-McKnight1.jpeg
Brian McKnight, the R&B singer known for sultry songs like "Back At One," will perform with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Blue Note next month, with two shows each night from May 16 to 18. For some reason, though, the press release heralding this engagement doesn't mention the song he released this week to much fanfare—"If You're Ready To Learn," in which McKnight offers to show a woman how to use her genitalia to its fullest potential. The track burned up TMZ and its also-rans, which were positiviely scandalized by the idea that an R&B singer would use the word "pussy" in one of his songs. Which is making me wonder if McKnight knew exactly what he was doing when he released it! Time to break out The Trollgaze Index, in which we gauge the media-manipulation skills of today's musical artists.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

Rihanna And Chris Brown Find Headlines In A Hopeless Place

By Maura Johnston Tue., Feb. 21 2012 at 11:00 AM
Categories: Arguing On The Internet, Chris Brown, Events In Popular Music, Maura Johnston, Rihanna, The Trollgaze Index

rihannachrisbrown2007.jpg
Last night, Rihanna and Chris Brown leaked two collaborations, a remix of her dessert-fetish track "Birthday Cake" and a rework of his Generic Club Banger No. 86 "Turn Up The Music." The releases inspired much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, but how do they fit into the pantheon of trollgaze? A subjective yet scientific analysis below.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

Lana Del Rey Takes Her Place On The Internet's Sacrificial Altar With "Born To Die"

By Maura Johnston Fri., Dec. 2 2011 at 10:00 AM
Categories: Lana Del Rey, The Trollgaze Index, Trollgaze

lanadelrey_borntodie.jpg
In another era, Lana Del Rey would just be another pretty pop singer with a second-rate voice and big, unrealized ambitions, a major-label footnote maybe worth a page or two in a book about the foibles of the early-'10s music industry. But this is The Age Of Trollgaze, and so her "mysterious" origins and melted-cover-girl looks get fetishized and obsessed over by members of the peanut gallery who fancy themselves as "indie," but who are just as into the notion of hatefucking unavailable women as their brethren who read The Superficial and its ilk—even the most anodyne mentions of her music on any site with a comment section will devolve into incoherent referenda on her physical self, an inevitability almost as concrete as debates on political blogs turning into arguments over whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama ruined the country more irrevocably. The songs are often overtaken by these tussles enough that they are merely termed "fine," or "shitty," or somewhere in between those two on the one-word-judgment spectrum.

Del Rey's debut album Born To Die comes out, finally, early next year, and the ready-for-radio version of its title track appeared on her YouTube channel last night after being performed in Europe a few times over the past month. How does it fit into this debased, hashtag-riddled age that we are currently living in? Our mathematical analysis, below.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

Rebecca Black Is In Need Of A Good Defense In "Person Of Interest"

By Maura Johnston Wed., Nov. 16 2011 at 11:00 AM
Categories: Oh, Internet, Rebecca Black, The Trollgaze Index, Trollgaze

rebeccablack.jpg
For better or worse one of 2011's most notable music stars is Rebecca Black, the California tween whose warbling of the inanity-filled ode to weekends "Friday" lit up the Internet—and nearly resulted in a slight recalibration of the formula for a "successful" pop song. (Awkwardly pronouncing a common word over the simplest sing-song melody = a sorely underexploited recipe for brain glue. Watch out for this tactic to be used over and over again in 2012, probably over thudding Eurohouse beats.) Her new video "Person Of Interest" has weird crime-scene imagery, a romantic counterpart who resembles a mirror-image Black, and lots of skee-ball shots. But is it designed for the express purpose of profiting off the Internet's negative attention? Our mathematical analysis below.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

Lulu: Lou Reed, Metallica, And The Sound Of Comment Sections Howling In Protest

By Maura Johnston Fri., Nov. 4 2011 at 12:00 PM
Categories: Lou Reed, Metallica, The Trollgaze Index, Trollgaze

lulu_cover.jpg
The ever-evolving microgenre of "trollgaze" isn't just limited to whippersnapper up-and-comers. Today we look at one of this week's most chattered-about albums, the Metallica/Lou Reed collaboration Lulu, to try and deduce one thing: Can a 90-minute double album based off German Expressionist theater and performed by a bunch of dudes who decided they really, really liked each other after jamming in honor of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame actually be an Internet con? Sound of the City's highly mathematical analysis, below.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
The Trollgaze Index

Introducing The Trollgaze Index With An Analysis Of The Internet's "Cocaine" Video

By Maura Johnston Tue., Nov. 1 2011 at 1:00 PM
Categories: Odd Future, The Internet, The Trollgaze Index, Trollgaze

theinternet_cocainevideo.jpg
Don't get spun out—eat spun sugar instead!
2011 has been the year of "trollgaze," a media-agnostic genre name for those pieces of pop culture as designed for maximum Internet attention as they are pieces of art that can stand (or at least wobble) on their own. The ways to get inducted into the trollgaze pantheon are as plentiful as self-congratulatory Lil B retweets; in music alone, they can involve dropping songs chock-full of easy ways to laugh at them (extra points if you're being dead serious about doing so), acting like an entitled punkass brat, complaining about people saying that you're acting like an e.p.b., or somewhat ineptly playing on the already-existent prejudices possessed by critical-mass online audiences, among other things. With so many things these days vying for the masses' increasingly divided attention, though, it's becoming tougher and tougher to gauge whether or not a piece of cultural ephemera is actually trying to double as its social-media strategy.

To help all the overwhelmed online music consumers out there figure out if a piece of music is trollgaze or not—it's kind of difficult!—Sound of the City is establishing The Trollgaze Index, a scientific method by which we deduce just how hard musicians are trying to play their listeners for the fool. We'll measure on a 50-point scale; a score of 35 or more means that, yes, if you're paying attention to the video or the song or the "viral" campaign, you—and we—have been trolled. Installment one (from, appropriately enough, an Odd Future-affiliated act that calls itself "The Internet") after the jump.

More »
Email to Friend
Print Article
VOICE Daily Deals

From the Vault

 

Slideshows»

Links

©2013 Village Voice, LLC, All rights reserved.
Browse Voice Nation
  • Voice Places New York

    Voice Places

    Find everything you're looking for in your city

  • Happy Hour App

    Happy Hour App

    Find the best happy hour deals in your city

  • Daily Deals

    Daily Deals

    Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%

  • Best Of

    Best Of...

    Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city