2007: #6 - "Thnks fr th Mmrs"

After saturating the R&B airwaves in the late 80's and early 90's with his lush soft-soul productions, and then overexposing himself (amidst many copycats) and his sound in the mid-90's, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds popped up on Top 40 radio again in an unlikely place - "Thnks fr the Mmrs" by Fll t By.

He infused their chunky hook-laden mall-punk with the same mature, overdone instrumentation of his past works, and the band actually ended up sounding better than they ever had. Too bad this new sound also got co-opted by a whole slew of awful artists, this time not by faux-soul singers, but by faux-emo pop bands like Panic! At the Disco and All American Rejects, and even Kelly Clarkson and The Jonas Brothers.

Because of that, the whole thing seemed dated and passe before it was even 6 months old, so it's lost some luster in the last couple of years. But while the others sound like 4th rate punk crassly injected with lame, superficial "pop" cliches, this is actually sort of well done, and we stand by this song as a good example of why Fall Out Boy is head and shoulders above their imitators. With its dense production, hyper-bombastic choruses and idiotically paranoid lyrics, "Thnks fr the Mmrs" is kind of like if George Michael had done "Living On A Prayer", which to me is not a bad thing at all.