1.
Reminding
everyone that Jack Johnson continues to exist. Mars’s appropriation of
Johnson’s twee, syncopated sound calls to mind a surfer dude trying to impress
girls round a beach campfire by strumming ‘Wonderful Tonight’ while topless. If
the mental image of that opportunistic berk stealing your girlfriend by playing
‘Just the Way You Are’ and rippling his abs doesn’t make you want to kick Mars
in his ill-deserved balls, then you probably are that opportunistic berk.
2.
He would
lie to your face and feel no guilt. Mars’s glassy, pacifying smile is the
smile of an experienced conman, grinning encouragingly as he explains how his
pyramid scheme is a chance you can’t afford to miss. It is the smile of an
adulterer explaining away those late nights and suspect stains to his adoring
wife while his kids play behind them. It is the smile a deranged killer would wear
as he slid a knife between your ribs.
3.
The
video for ‘The Lazy Song’. When a song contains the line, “Throw my hand in
my pants/’Cause no-one’s gonna tell me I can’t”, and the phrase, “really nice
sex”, it’s probably best to write it off as a bad job, put it in the bottom of
a drawer full of other bad things and then throw that drawer into a disused
quarry. What you should not do is release it as a single, then compound the
wrongness with a video which includes dancers wearing monkey masks. This kind
of self-consciously ‘wacky’ nonsense suggests Mars is the kind of man who would
laugh uproariously at “You don’t have to be mad to work here...BUT IT
HELPS!!!!” signs. Later, a man whom I can only assume Mars keeps as some sort
of pet wanders in and mucks about. One gets the impression Mars is taking
advantage of this poor man’s diminished mental capacity. The effect is deeply troubling
and depressing.
4.
His
hats. Hats in pop have a long and divisive history. The good include the
Specials’ trilbies, Noddy Holder’s mirrored top hat and Pet Shop Boys’ stripey
cones. The bad include the new Razorlight bass player’s enormous floppy brown
affair which makes him look like Worzel Gummidge. The god-awful include the
kind of brimless straw things perpetrated by Olly Murs and Mars. WHAT IS THE
POINT OF A HAT WHICH DOESN’T EVEN KEEP THE SUN OUT OF YOUR EYES. THAT IS SURELY
A HAT’S RAISON D’ETRE. What makes his be-hatted nature even more unforgivable
is that he has a genuinely amazing pompadour quiff. Unconfirmed reports suggest
government plans are being drawn up to reassign it to more deserving and
grateful celebrities. The shortlist includes Neil Tennant, Matt Lucas, Greg
Wallace, and Lulu.
5.
Giving
girls unrealistic expectations of boys’ levels of devotion. It’s hard
enough trying to get a girlfriend without downright liars like Mars spouting
nonsense about taking grenades for them.
Although on the up-side if Mars ever was in a combat situation, he’d
explosively disembowel himself almost immediately, saving me the bother.
This is the Five Reasons Why... music blog. It exists to point out why various pop stars are great/stupid in an easily digestible format. In future, there might be diagrams to illustrate things further which might be "fun".
Overall, this blog aims to put the 'laughter' back into 'slaughtering pop stars for their follies and misdemeanours and praising them in a similarly disproportionate fashion'.
