The Singles Jukebox

Sure, you can borrow twenty bucks, dudes.

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[3.30]

Josh Langhoff: I’m confused — does he ever say what the favor is?
[2]

Anthony Easton: Grinding, aggressive, and devoted to a kind of anthemic/unironic teenage atheism (which has its own charm). The sing-along chorus reminds me of pogoing in a sweaty hall show, but in another place and time, it could be a Kelly Clarkson track. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: If there’s no Savior, how can they be scabs on the lip of the Lord? 
[1]

Ian Mathers: Somehow I got these guys mixed up with Puddle of Mudd in my head, and when your ceiling is “huh, at least it’s not as bad as Puddle of Mudd,” you’re in trouble. And you can just tell those lyrics are aching to be some kind of badass fuck-no-I-won’t-do-what-you-tell-me statement about ‘sheeple’ or something, but as always sounds more like a 16-year-old who never bothered to finish reading his Nietzsche (you’re not supposed to stop at the level of juvenile rejection of society’s bonds, guys). In any case, if you just replaced all the vocals with me making fart noises for four minutes you’d both improve the song and accurately depict my feelings about it.
[1]

Crystal Leww: Apparently Corey Taylor is an “anti-everything man,” and that really does include everything (singing, happiness, warmth, etc.) aside from anger.
[2]

Iain Mew: The words are nonsense delivered like so many dropped anvils, but check out those harmonised guitar solos!
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Kristin Hersh’s Rat Girl has a great story about how the intro to “Hate My Way” (“I could be a smack freak and hate society / I could hate God and blame dad…”) was inspired by some kid on the street (“his mohawk twitching”) pushing pamphlets about killing God: “‘If you take God out of the equation, we’re all on the side of humans again! …. Most people wanna blame the government for unemployment. But it’s your problem!’ He pointed at me. ‘You can’t blame the government, they aren’t in charge, either.’ ‘Can I blame God?’ He suddenly became agitated again. ‘There is no God!’ he yelled. Geez. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. I don’t follow. Who do you want to kill?’ ‘Our perception of a God!’ Goddamn it, I knew it…. Kill an idea of God. That is so boring.” The difference is, “Hate My Way” is sort of a parody of that. This would be taking it seriously.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Hip-hop gets the ink in this context, but rock songs are the heart of a lot of strip clubs. The arrangements are less kinetic than the p-popping stuff, which suits grind-and-sway dancers. And the lyrical content is a total afterthought: Tool, of all things, do quite well. Stone Sour’s doing some sort of Seether-meets-Heep thing: a touch of boogie, a bubbling organ (!), and riffage that takes a backseat to limited vocal oomph. Yeah, you have to sit through a “story/glory” rhyme, but you get a pissy little march that subliminally swings, and a fine Cuomoesque solo. No need to request it, the DJ’s got it cued up.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Stone Sour always felt like the radio-friendlier outlet for two-eights of Slipknot, but as Iowa’s best band not called Modern Life is War became more melodic, there seemed to be little that divided the two acts. So Stone Sour started doing concept albums and writing songs like “Do Me A Favor,” which sounds like Clutch writing a glam-grunge song with at least two potential choruses. Two things drag this down a couple of points: Corey Taylor, a great frontman with confidence and bluster who still says things like “dogmatic license,” and a guitar solo that sounds comparatively frail to the structure shifts surrounding it. For much of its running time, this is radio-friendly hard rock as it should be: adventurous, gnarled, infectious.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: I could understand why a song like this would exist ten years ago, when all the kids raging against the machine and getting into atheism had less avenues to get together and be insufferable with others. They could turn to Stone Sour to be reminded that, yes, they weren’t alone. But it’s 2013, we have Reddit for this sort of rage.
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