The More You Know…

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[3.62]Anthony Easton: I keep thinking that the recent attempts to fix bullying (the new Weinstein doc, Glee, It Gets Better, etc) are fundamentally wrong headed for a bunch of reasons: they tend to make money or status for adults, they have no real cultural memory of what it means to be bullied, they refuse in a lot of ways to treat assault like assault, and they force the victim to take responsibility for their own safety. That said, I remember high school, and I don’t think that there is anything anyone could have done to make me feel better about those three years. So, the problem is, do we judge the politics of the track, the aesthetics, the failures of both, or try to figure out what kids these days actually want? I am not sure it’s a question I feel comfortable answering.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Aw, they’re trying. And take out the pre-chorus and they make a decent fist of a song that the jocks can love for its bludgeoning mindlessness and the bullies can love for its message. Not saying it’s particularly great as a rock song or a message but it’s certainly adequate at both, and that’s a neat guitar solo. The aforementioned pre-chorus is a bit of a shit “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” though, and adding the kids chanting the words over the end is not so much clarifying the point as bashing the listener repeatedly in the face with a brick marked “message.”
[6]

Jer Fairall: It Gets Better for lunkheads, too.
[2]

Iain Mew: I enjoy the start-stop intro with its slicing guitars, but after that things flatten out and they proceed to stomp away any space in an oppressive way. Nuance-free and humour-free anger as a response to the same doesn’t provide any kind of revenge that it’s possible to get behind.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: Oh, I get it. When someone’s fucking with you in ways that leave you utterly powerless to respond, you don’t always need to hear what a firework you are or that you R how you R. A lot of the time you just feel pissed off and want some way to make yourself believe that you’re powerful instead of weak. If you like thick slabs of hard rock guitar and thwacking drums, you might even find “Bully” serves well in that capacity. I’m not entirely uninterested in what Shinedown has to offer; its buffed crunch isn’t dissimilar to that of Grinspoon, an Australian band that helped test the limits of my bedroom stereo when I was in high school. But Grinspoon, if they had ever wanted to do this kind of song, would never have come up with a chorus lyric as soggy as the one here; Brent Smith pouts “No one’s gonna cry on the very day you die” like he’s stifling furious tears. (That’s when your tormentors laugh and needle you harder.)
[2]

Brad Shoup: Peeking at Taylor Swift’s playbook, Shinedown takes the long view on their tormentors, foreseeing a grim future for ’em. Though it’s yet another drop-D post-grunge song, they summon a warm, STP-type feel on the verses (mostly due to Zach Myers’ hanging chords). The pre-chorus is positively hair metal, which is great, but it reveals the refrain’s poor posture. Obviously they’re aiming for the kids, but the Pied Piper is a better look than the Guidance Counselor. Everyone from the Ramones to Twisted Sister to Manson got that it’s more fun to be a cartoon than a self-portrait. Still, tight is tight, and Shinedown take the lead in the Best Jukebox Solo 2012 stakes practically by default.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Cool — someone’s gotta pick up that “Another Brick in the Wall” motif after Collective Soul surrendered it and Nickleback’s in the studio. Expect to hear it this in future ABC News clips describing the Dharun Ravi trial.
[3]

Zach Lyon: “We don’t have to take this/we can end it all.” Look, I’m as skeptical of It Gets Better as anyone, but, er, there are some phrases you might want to avoid in songs like these…
[2]