Party: Is it noun or verb? Pop radio sometimes nails it as both, once in a great while, when a meaningless hit single delivers on the purest notion of the word and becomes the party anthem. People get drunk to it. They blow-dry their hair to it on Friday evenings, getting ready, and preen about in their underwear to it, then weave recklessly through traffic to it, or rambunctiously break furniture to it.
At the moment, we are blessed with two.
_____More by Hank Stuever_____
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Where the Guys Are (The Washington Post, Apr 11, 2003)
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How Green Was Our Warning (The Washington Post, Mar 30, 2003)
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I Woof New York (The Washington Post, Mar 11, 2003)
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'Joy of Sex': Back on Top? (The Washington Post, Feb 25, 2003)
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Blizzard Man Storms the Office In Buffalo Plaid (The Washington Post, Feb 8, 2003)
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Reviews and information about area concerts can be found in the Music section of our Entertainment Guide.
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One is "Get the Party Started" by Pink, which you hear everywhere -- in malls and in waiting rooms, or on three different stations at the same time.
The other you're about to hear everywhere.
It goes: "We do what we like and we like what we do / So let's get a party going . . . Now it's time to party and we'll always party hard." (Followed by a beer-can-against-the-forehead rejoinder of the song's title, which simply and perfectly goes: "Party hard, party hard, party hard, party hard!") It's a beautiful, stupid, exhilarating thing.
The man screaming "Party Hard" is Andrew W.K., a strapping 23-year-old rocker from Michigan with long, greasy hair and dirty white jeans, who is so in touch with his ironic channeling of the spirits of Quiet Riot (and Joey Ramone, with a dash of Queen, plus a hundred circa-1988 metal hair bands) that he has music critics vexed: Is Andrew W.K. the "savior of rock" (as he was dubbed last year by the English press), a brilliant pop satirist or the last loyal citizen of Wayne's World?
"Maybe there will be a dumber record this year," sniffed Time magazine, "but don't count on it."
Shaun Carney, a critic from the Age magazine, praised, or tried to praise, the song's "unlimited hedonism . . . loud and unapologetically direct. What does it sound like? Imagine a monster truck made of tungsten."
Imagine it driving right over you.
Andrew W.K.'s "Party Hard" -- from his debut album, "I Get Wet" -- is already shoving its masculine self onto the charts, while the song's video is distracting MTV from its constant devotion to oopsy-daisy midriff pop and the endless chillin' of homeys.
W.K. will perform here tomorrow night at the Black Cat (attendance was reportedly sparse at his March 23 show at the 9:30 club, but that was so three weeks ago, when nobody knew) and next, still ascendant, he'll perform on this week's "Saturday Night Live."
If America turns its back on "Party Hard" -- the song, the concept, the man singing it -- it won't be for lack of crafty marketing hype by Island Records, and it will certainly call into question the nation's credentials as a Dionysian people.
"I Get Wet," which also features the songs "Ready to Die" and "Party Til You Puke," topped the charts late last year in Britain. Same old story: Across the pond they're always hip to a new song to play while destroying soccer stands. The album's 12 tracks clock in at just 35 minutes and 37 seconds, which is perfect punk-metal speed, but smarter critics have detected "I Get Wet's" true aim: It is a dance record.
"You work all night / And when you work you don't feel all right," W.K. sings in "Party Hard," conjuring up the everyman oppression that always leads to a six-pack on a Friday, something Loverboy alluded to in its own 1981 party anthem, "Working for the Weekend."
"And we," "Party Hard" continues, "We can't stop feeling all right / And everything is all right."
Those lyrics add up to zero, but how it sounds is everything. Party anthems are wondrous abstractions and they've been absent too long. "You gotta fight for your right to party," the Beastie Boys sang in 1987, and teenagers everywhere took it to heart. ("We're not gonna take it," bellowed Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, in an assertive companion piece of roughly the same era.)
A good party anthem is about those nights you had to illegally obtain beer, and find that empty parking lot in which to drink it. Party anthems have a way of being the next to last song that gets played before the cops drive up. Party anthems foretell a butt-kicking, or an arrest, or both.
W.K.'s controversial album cover -- partly obscured in record stores by a black sticker -- shows him with a severely bloodied nose. He has either just been on the receiving or giving end of a brawl. In fact, the photographer used pig's blood. Rock is always about artifice, and so, too, when you think about it, is the puffed-up party-till-dawn stance. Is a party ever as good as they say it will be?
It takes faith to go on believing; the right song can get you most of the way there. The video for "Party Hard" is an intoxicating three-minute request for Advil. W.K., wearing a plain, dirty T-shirt and old tennis shoes and sporting an open cut on his forehead, bangs his way through one classic MTV trope after another: Drums are drenched in droplets (of sweat? of Evian?), with backup by a forceful guit-army of band mates. A neon sign flashes "PARTY" and "HARD" alternately in time to the music.
The party anthems of yore are the songs meant to do the important work of irritating parents. Houses must be trashed. Things must be thrown into the pool. Great party anthems suggest that the party is emerging soon ("For those about to rock, we salute you," preached AC/DC), or is being retold ("We were at a party / Somebody went under a dock / And there they found a rock," the B-52's rhapsodized in "Rock Lobster") or has reached its zenith ("Louie, Louie, oh no, say, we gotta go now" the Kingsmen -- and others -- slurredly sang in that frat-mentality lullaby).
"Party Hard" is about a party in progress. Right now, volume all the way up, lasting three minutes and four seconds. The party anthem, though connected with the weekend (cue Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night"), reminds one to party always. "Rock and roll all night," Kiss admonished us, but also, party every day: Raise the roof, all you party people in the house, even if the roof is on fire, we don't need no water, etc., etc.
Pink, a pop singer whose current album "Missundaztood" has sold 5 million copies, tapped into party anthemhood with "Get the Party Started." Though girlier than anything Andrew W.K. would belch forth, it's essentially the same message: "I'm coming up / So you better get the party started," she sings, laying out her plans: "Sending out the message to all of my friends / We'll be looking flashy in my Mercedes-Benz."
Such is the transformative power of the party anthem, that it makes your Honda feel like a Benz, provided you turn the radio up all the way. (In Andrew W.K.'s case, it will instantly turn your car into a Camaro.)
Finally, a party anthem makes sure you're invited. This is why so much of rap has failed to reach anthem status; those parties are exclusive.
Pink sings: "Everybody's waiting for me to arrive. . . . I can go for miles if you know what I mean." Because this is a party anthem, we know exactly what she means. In the video, we find Pink circumventing the velvet rope and sneaking into a club, where the party is happening. Some chick gives her the hairy eyeball and Pink must prove herself on the dance floor. The best part is when she asks some guy to hold her earrings while she does it.
A girl taking off her earrings means a fight is about to occur -- or it is a sign that a party is very much underway, and that the party is hard.
(To hear free Sound Bites, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8151 for Andrew W.K. and 8152 for Pink.)
