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Pitchfork Review – Katy Perry: Waking Up in Vegas
Score: 7.9 (Best New Hangover)

If Hunter S. Thompson had written Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a sugar-coated rom-com, Waking Up in Vegas would be the soundtrack. Katy Perry delivers a glitter-fuelled ode to bad decisions, late-stage capitalism, and the kind of hangover that makes you question both your life choices and whether you’re wearing someone else’s pants.

The production is a strange hybrid of ‘80s arena rock bombast and Disney Channel pep rally — Max Martin and co. essentially weaponise cymbal crashes and four-on-the-floor drums until you feel like you’ve just mainlined a slot machine jackpot. Perry’s vocals bounce between faux-indignant girlfriend and motivational speaker who’s had three vodka Red Bulls for breakfast.

Lyrically, it’s a manifesto for the YOLO generation before YOLO was a thing. Lines like "Why are these lights so bright?” and "That’s what you get for waking up in Vegas" feel less like pop hooks and more like your friend’s drunken Instagram captions from 2010. This is not a song about Vegas so much as it’s a song about waking up anywhere with glitter in your teeth and an inexplicable hotel charge.

When Perry shouts “Shut up and put your money where your mouth is”, it’s not just a chorus — it’s a philosophy. The song is basically a musical dare, telling you to make the bad choice, own the bad choice, and then write a three-minute pop banger about it.

By the end, you’re not sure if you’ve listened to a breakup song, a pro-gambling PSA, or a piece of subtle anti-tourism propaganda from the Nevada Health Department. But like a $4.99 all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet, it’s cheap, loud, and will haunt you for days.

Verdict: The perfect soundtrack to putting $50 on black at 3am, losing, and telling yourself it was “part of the experience.”

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Pitchfork Review – Joe Dolce: Shaddap You Face
Score: 8.7 (Best New Meme)

Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face is the kind of song that makes you question not only the nature of music, but the nature of civilisation itself. In 1980, while the rest of the world was contemplating the looming nuclear winter, Joe Dolce decided to weaponise a mandolin and a catchphrase to wage war on taste.

Dolce’s delivery—equal parts comedy uncle, regional theatre understudy, and man who’s just been told “the karaoke machine’s broken, can you sing it a cappella?”—is the song’s driving force. The accordion wheezes like a pensioner after walking up three steps, while the rhythm plods along with all the swagger of a Fiat Panda in second gear. It’s not music you dance to so much as music you gesticulate wildly to, preferably while wearing a checked tablecloth as a cape.

Lyrically, it’s a work of minimalist genius. Dolce doesn’t waste time with metaphors or subtext—every line is a conversation between him, his mama, and an imagined chorus of Australian radio listeners in 1981 who were too polite to turn it off. The repeated hook, “What’s-a matter you?” isn’t just a question—it’s an existential howl, a postmodern critique of the immigrant experience, or maybe just a man yelling at a cloud.

When it was released, Shaddap You Face dethroned John Lennon’s Woman on the UK charts. Yes, Joe Dolce beat a Beatle. That’s like if Subway released a tuna melt that outsold the Mona Lisa. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the masses don’t want enlightenment—they want an accordion, a bad accent, and a chorus that gets funnier the more you sing it.

In the end, Shaddap You Face is not a song you listen to because you want to—it’s a song you listen to because it will find you. In the supermarket. In a taxi. In your brain at 3am. And you will sing along, because resistance is futile.

Verdict: A masterpiece of cultural persistence. Like herpes, but with a mandolin.

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Simple Plan – “Shut Up!”
Lava Records; 2004
2.1/10

If teen angst were a currency, Simple Plan would be Canada’s largest export. And “Shut Up!” is perhaps their most shrill, sugar-coated contribution to the pop-punk economy: a three-minute tantrum in skinny jeans, flung onto CD like a Hot Topic receipt someone refused to recycle.

Released in 2004, a golden era when every mall had at least one screaming adolescent with gelled hair and an authority complex, “Shut Up!” captures the essence of adolescent rage with all the nuance of a fire alarm taped to a skateboard. It’s not a song—it’s an eye roll set to power chords.

Frontman Pierre Bouvier delivers each line like he’s been grounded for the weekend and just discovered Linkin Park exists. “Don’t tell me who to be!” he cries, in the tone of someone who just got told to take their shoes off in the house. It’s an anthem for misunderstood kids everywhere—by which we mean, mostly kids who got a B in maths and think that counts as oppression.

Musically, it’s the equivalent of punching drywall after being asked to do the dishes. The guitars chug dutifully, the drums go “boom-boom-tap,” and somewhere in the background, the ghost of Green Day sheds a single tear. There’s an attempt at a bridge that sounds like it was written in the back of a maths book, and it ends—mercifully—with more shouting. It's unclear whether the listener is supposed to feel empowered or just relieved it's over.

Lyrically, it’s as if every line was workshopped in an MSN chat room. “Just shut your mouth / Who do you think you are?” asks Pierre, clearly directing his ire at a very rude parent, teacher, or perhaps the concept of adulthood itself. It’s emotional depth, brought to you by a packet of Sour Skittles and a half-watched episode of Degrassi.

Still, “Shut Up!” did serve a noble purpose: it was the soundtrack to at least a dozen bedroom door slams per suburban household. And in that sense, it’s historically significant—if only to warn future generations of what happens when you give a Fender and a recording budget to five dudes who just really hate being told what to do.

Best Lyric: “There you go / You never ask why” — bold of them to claim introspection in a song called “Shut Up!”
Worst Lyric: “Don’t tell me how to live!” — accidentally sums up the entire album.
File Next To: Broken skateboards, discarded diary entries, and that hoodie you wore every day in Year 10.
RIYL: Thinking the world doesn’t understand you (it probably does, and it’s fine).

— Chaz Voxworthy, November

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Black Eyed Peas – “Shut Up”
Interscope; 2003
1.4/10

There’s a moment—roughly 43 seconds into “Shut Up”—when the listener is already wondering what unspeakable acts they committed in a past life to deserve this. This is not so much a song as it is a group therapy session that accidentally got auto-tuned, given a reggaeton-lite beat, and released to the public as punishment.

Let’s be clear: Elephunk was never OK Computer, but “Shut Up” makes even the most obnoxious BEP singles feel like nuanced art-pop by comparison. It’s a musical lovers’ quarrel, except neither party is remotely loveable, and their quarrel is written in bold font by someone who just discovered the “rhyme” setting in Microsoft Word.

Fergie and will.i.am exchange the kind of biting lyrical barbs usually reserved for year nine drama class improv exercises. “Shut up, just shut up, shut up,” they declare on loop—giving the phrase a semantic breakdown so thorough it starts to resemble a Gregorian chant written by emotionally immature robots.

The production? Imagine a MIDI file got drunk, wandered into an Apple Store, and started slapping demo keyboards. The beat clunks forward like an old washing machine—no groove, no swing, just relentless plodding. It's music to argue over a broken Xbox to.

Lyrically, “Shut Up” is relationship therapy by way of a text thread you should’ve left on read. Lines like “Why do we always gotta fight?” are delivered with all the depth of a motivational poster stapled to a dartboard.

To be fair, the song does achieve one thing: it unites people. Not through shared joy, but through a mutual desire for silence. If the title is a request, we’re happy to comply. If it’s a command, we’re still complying. The real tragedy is that it ever started talking in the first place.

Best Lyric: “We try to take it slow / But we’re still losin' control” — tragically accurate if you're referring to the state of the music industry at the time.
Worst Lyric: “Shut up, just shut up, shut up” — a phrase now echoing in the heads of innocent listeners across the globe.
File Next To: That awkward couple at the bar you pretend not to hear.
RIYL: Watching your friends argue on speakerphone.

— Chaz Voxworthy, March 2003

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🚨 It’s Shut Up Month on the podcast! 🚨

All August, we’re reviewing songs with “Shut Up” in the title — the loud, the weird, and the unintentionally hilarious. From Rihanna’s speeding metaphors to Reece Mastin’s shouty romance, nothing is safe.

New episodes every week on 1001 Songs That Make You Want To Die. Turn it up… then shut up. 🎧

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🎙️ Shut Up Month Continues on 1001 Songs That Make You Want To Die 🎙️
All month long, we're celebrating songs that open with attitude and close with confusion — all united by one shared desire: that someone, somewhere, would just shut up. This week, we swerve into the spray-tanned heart of Australian Idol aftermath with a rock-pop anthem that asks, “What if a leather wristband wrote a love song?”

Today’s offender: Shut Up & Kiss Me by Reece Mastin — a track that smells faintly of Lynx Africa and underage drinking in a council skate park.

Reece Mastin – “Shut Up & Kiss Me”
Sony Music Australia / 2012
★☆☆☆☆ (1.2)

By Scarlett Varnish

At some point in the early 2010s, a committee of sleeveless denim jackets convened to ask the question: “What if Green Day had a concussion and a crush at the same time?” The answer, apparently, was Reece Mastin’s Shut Up & Kiss Me — a hormonal three-minute tantrum that sounds like it was recorded during a sugar crash in the back of a P-plated Commodore.

Let’s begin with Mastin himself, a man-boy hybrid engineered in a lab to appeal to girls who shop exclusively at Jay Jays. His voice, perpetually caught between a raspy snarl and a GCSE drama audition, pushes through every lyric like he's trying to impress a crowd of mums at Westfield.

The song opens like it’s late for its own music video. “Shut up and kiss me / No more messing around,” he commands, firmly establishing that this is not a track about emotional maturity. No, this is 2000s pop-rock seduction — where communication is for cowards and the best foreplay is shouting.

Musically, it’s what happens when you microwave a Simple Plan song and forget to take the foil off. Overproduced guitars buzz like someone angrily mowing a lawn next to a trampoline party. The chorus lands with all the subtlety of a Monster energy drink to the face, and by the second verse, you’re genuinely concerned that your headphones might start secreting hair gel.

There’s a bridge. Of course there’s a bridge. It sounds like it was written while standing outside a girl’s house with a boombox and a restraining order. The production tries to slow down, but only so it can pretend there's a sensitive heart beneath the leather wrist cuff. There isn’t.

What’s most impressive is how aggressively Australian this whole thing feels without ever mentioning the word. It’s in the attitude. The fake swagger. The unwavering belief that a school talent show can lead to a record deal and a face tattoo. This isn’t just a song — it’s a rite of passage for anyone w

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🚨 It’s Shut Up Month on the podcast! 🚨

All August we’re reviewing songs with “Shut Up” in the title — the loud, the weird, and the unintentionally hilarious. From Rihanna’s speeding metaphors to Reece Mastin’s shouty romance, nothing is safe.

New episodes every week on 1001 Songs That Make You Want To Die. Turn it up… then shut up. 🎧

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🎙️ Welcome to “Shut Up Month” on 1001 Songs That Make You Want To Die 🎙️
This July, we’re diving headfirst into songs that told the world to pipe down — whether they meant it romantically, rebelliously, or just didn’t feel like having a conversation. Each episode, we dissect a song with “Shut Up” in the title, peeling back the layers of pop posturing, lyrical chaos, and accidental comedy.

Today’s feature: Rihanna’s Shut Up and Drive, a song that boldly asks, “What if innuendo got its license at 16 and never looked back?”

Rihanna – “Shut Up and Drive”
Def Jam / 2007
★☆☆☆☆ (1.4)

By Jasper T. Clutch

If Prince had ever walked into a Pep Boys and left with a migraine, the result might’ve sounded something like “Shut Up and Drive.” Released in the fluorescent haze of 2007, a year when pop music was desperately revving its engines to keep up with itself, this is Rihanna’s most aggressive attempt to flirt through the lens of a Top Gear episode.

“Shut Up and Drive” tries to be sexy. Instead, it sounds like a drunk Ford Focus trying to explain foreplay to a confused Nissan Leaf. Built on a recycled New Order guitar riff and a concept that should have been written in dry-erase marker on the back of a learner’s permit, it’s a track that takes double entendre and crashes it into a wall at 140 km/h.

Rihanna’s performance here is uncomfortably enthusiastic, like she’s cosplaying as a car commercial while the director yells “MORE SMIRK!” from the passenger seat. “I’ve been lookin’ for a driver who is qualified,” she purrs, presumably while failing to check her blind spot for lyrical coherence.

Let’s talk about that chorus. “So if you feel it, let me know, know, know // Come on now, what you waiting for, for, for?” It’s not clear whether she wants you to floor it or get out and push. The song begs to be used in the background of a Fast & Furious deleted scene where Vin Diesel has a romantic misunderstanding with a traffic cone.

By the bridge, the metaphors collapse entirely. She’s not just a car anymore — she might be the whole M4 motorway. There’s oil. There’s horsepower. There might be a tailpipe reference that was legally censored in three provinces. And yet, despite this vehicular smut, the song still feels like it’s stuck in neutral.

To be fair, “Shut Up and Drive” has its place: namely, in the middle of a karaoke night when the tequila has dulled your sense of shame and heightened your love of 2000s synth-pop. But as a piece of pop art, it lands somewhere between a Transformer’s funeral and a Goodyear tire ad written by ChatGPT.

In concl

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