You all know the “Rock Me Tonite” video, right?

In 1986, Billy Squier was on top of the world. He was riding high off a string of hits including “The Stroke” and “My Kinda Lover.” And with the release of his new album Signs of Life and its lead single, “Rock Me Tonite,” he was tearing up the charts again and threatening to have Squier’s biggest hit yet. But then he had to release a music video for the song.

After two directors rejected offers to direct the video, Squier was desperate to get the video out by the time of his MTV premiere date, so he and his management team brought in Kenny Ortega, the future choreographer for Dirty Dancing and High School Musical. The resulting video was a nightmare featuring Squier wearing a pink tank top, and dancing in overly flamboyant fashion, which involved exaggeratingly flailing his body and awkwardly air guitaring in ways only Tommy Wiseau and Neil Breen would approve of as masterful acting. His career immediately collapsed, to the point that he no longer sold out shows and promptly fired his managers. “Rock Me Tonite” has become a total joke among music fans everywhere for its unbelievably bad music video, to the point that when the anthology book I Want My MTV was released, all interviewees listed “Rock Me Tonite” as the worst music video of all time.

Well… some records were made to be broken.

“Living The Dream” – Five Finger Death Punch

Rock
#1 peak (February 6, 2021)
#12 year-end, 19 weeks on chart in 2021

Full disclosure to everyone: this will likely be the first time I will be discussing more about a phenomena regarding a song rather than the actual song itself. Since its release late last year, “Living The Dream” has gained significantly more notoriety for its unbelievably offensive music video than for its lyrics or music. Given that the music video is so bad, why does the song deserve to be here? Let’s recap.

In October 2020, after the success of their previous singles “Inside Out” and “A Little Bit Off,” Five Finger Death Punch released “Living The Dream” as the third single from F8, their incorrectly titled seventh album (I consider the two parts of The Wrong Side Of Heaven And The Righteous Side Of Hell as two parts of the same album). Since this song was released right at the end of the Billboard year, it didn’t chart enough in the 2020 Billboard year and had to settle for making the list this year. Pretty much everyone has already torn into the music video and its themes, so I’ll just be discussing how much I hate this video in my own way.

The music video for “Living The Dream,” which has been entitled “Rules For Thee But Not For Me,” centers on a sinister-looking female leader (apparently based on Nancy Pelosi) who forces her citizens to wear masks in The People’s Republic Of America. Ha ha. Those who wear a mask receive a pin reading “Compliant,” complete with a hammer and sickle logo clearly resembling the Soviet Union’s. Oh my God, how clever. At the climax of the video, the citizens she “oppresses” – including the members of Five Finger Death Punch – remove their masks and rebel against the leader for forcing them to wear masks. Let me elaborate. THE WOMAN WHO MAKES HER CITIZENS WEAR THINGS THAT SAVE PEOPLE FROM GETTING COVID IS PORTRAYED AS EVIL AND THOSE WHO ARE RISKING THEIR OWN LIVES AND THE LIVES OF OTHERS ARE PORTRAYED AS HEROIC.

(ANGER METER INTENSIFIES)

Guys… I’ll admit, I am a liberal, and I will try to keep my political beliefs out of this blog as much as possible. But I have to say this. I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll say it again. Wearing masks and engaging in social distancing is not a political issue, it’s a health issue. With that in mind, HOW ON EARTH CAN YOU DEFEND THIS VIDEO?! This video is so ignorant and so mind-bogglingly offensive not just to common sense, but to the 279 million who have been killed by COVID-19 to date. The message of the video is that you don’t have to follow anything you don’t want to, regardless of how necessary and how important said rule is. Gee, Five Finger Death By COVID-19, I can’t wait for you guys to release your next music video where you drive around Las Vegas at 100 miles per hour with no seatbelts on!

In the aftermath of the mainstream and internet music circles rightfully nuking the music video, 5FDP rhythm guitarist Zoltan Bathory came out and said that the video wasn’t anti-mask, but rather anti-hypocrisy. He posted in an Instagram story, “99% of you understood the metaphor and got the point about hypocrisy, but for those who asked, no… it’s not a mask debate. Instead, think in the direction of: equal rules and equal justice under the law.” Zoltan… do you really expect me to believe all that crap? In order to supposedly make your point about “hypocrisy,” you made it about the worst possible thing you could – a very relevant issue involving mandates that are intended to save lives. Additionally, you want to talk about hypocrisy when you make a video about how evil it is to wear a mask and follow a mandate when YOU SELL MASKS ON YOUR WEBSITE, A FACT YOU HAVE ADMITTED TO YOURSELF?! You want to talk about rules for thee, but not for me? Well, there you go! You’re selling masks when you’re making a music video where you’re ridiculing people wearing masks to stop the spread of the deadliest pandemic in 100 years! To Zoltan, the other members of the band, and to director Nick Peterson and everyone who worked on and otherwise supported this video: YOU. SUCK.

So there. That is why I think the “Living The Dream” video is now the worst music video of all time. Say what you want about Billy Squier’s… dancing is too strong a word for his “performance” in the “Rock Me Tonite” video. Moving? I’ll call it moving. At least his moving wasn’t hurting anybody. The “Living The Dream” video is a threat to anyone who sees it, attempting to convince them we are being oppressed when in actuality we are being protected by health care professionals put tirelessly at work to save lives under risk of COVID-19. With all that said, what about the actual song itself? Why does the song itself deserve a slot on the worst list?

Well, on paper, this song shouldn’t be here. Last year, I put 5FDP on blast not for offending everyone who has died of COVID or who knows someone who has died of COVID, but for putting out the same boring, bland, angry songs relying on the open B chord as their tonic. Last year, I highlighted “Inside Out,” which was hardly any different from “Under And Over It” or “Lift Me Up.” Well, this time out, they actually change up the chords and switch to a different chord as their tonic. They actually tried on their instrumental work this time. But the song has a bit of a problem.

This song is supposed to be uplifting. Granted, the song is about those with good intentions being oppressed by the government, but take a look at the lyrics to the song. It’s filled with imagery of superheroes and royal figures that represent heroic acts of justice.

Captain America, are you off to fight the bad guys?
Hey, mighty Superman, can you save us from ourselves?
Hey, Mr. Universe, can you lift us up above this?
‘Cause I’m just Iron Man, I’m a ghost within a shell

These are ever-popular figures whose acts, while fictional, inspire in us to work for the common good, and bring to mind fantasies of good people being saved from oppression. Figures like this should be symbolized in song with heroic guitar riffs, or sweeping strings like on John Williams’s Superman theme. But there is no music like this on “Living The Dream.” Sure, there have been dark or metal-inspired riffs for Sin City or the Watchmen, but those worked because those were for flawed, darker, more human comic book characters. Not so when you’re talking about Superman and Captain America. The only way I can describe this song is…

This song is ugly.

In a song with so much comic book and heroic imagery, we’re left with 5FDP’s standard angry and sludgy guitar tones. Then in the solo, which is quite simple by his standards (he at least shredded in his “Inside Out” solo, the now-departed Jason Hook finishes with an ascending figure that just sounds hideous. I mean, maybe that was the point. It’s Five Finger Death Punch, the military-obsessed, Monster Energy-chugging metalheads, for crying out loud. Well, for some reason, this comes off as way uglier than the Drop B chord fests 5FDP are known for. Say what you want about those (they deserve it), but at least those songs are intended to be angry and violent. And also, you may think that I am wrong since the song is about the bullying leaders who crush innocent people with their hypocrisy. Well, part of the reason I am focusing so much on the Captain America and Lady Amnesty lyrics is because honestly, the lyrics about oppressive leaders are pretty vague.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Why did they never mention, what’s real and in between?
It seems the path we’re on was paved with blood and sorrow
No thought about tomorrow
Just part of the machine, or so it seems

I’m not really getting the whole “people in charge are hypocritical” meaning from these lyrics, other than maybe the “what’s real and in between” part. More than anything, the lyrics in the chorus just seem like they could be applied to any oppressive leader. The citizens are “part of the machine,” which just sounds like what people are under any dictator. I would understand it more if there were examples of “what’s real and in between,” but there aren’t any. In terms of getting their point across, 5FDP failed.

And as a final nail into why this song deserves to make the worst list, this song has what I like to call the “Trapt Problem.” The reason I call it the “Trapt Problem” is because of how I now view the band’s lone hit song, “Headstrong,” in the wake of frontman The Human Piece Of Garbage Known As Chris Taylor Brown’s rampages on Twitter towards anyone who disagreed with him, his politics, or his insane views on underage relations. For years, I gave “Headstrong” a pass as a dumb rock song. The past two years, I have finally turned on the song because I cannot listen to lyrics like “Back off, I’ll take you on” and “I know that you are wrong” without thinking about Brown’s political views and Twitter meltdowns. Similarly, it is impossible to listen to “Living The Dream” without thinking about that evil video. It may have been written and recorded before the first COVID-19 case was reported in America, but once you learn about the meaning of the song, it becomes impossible to think about how 5FDP used this song to oppose a necessary restriction. How they used “Living The Dream” as their stand against true justice.

“Living The Dream” is not the worst 5FDP song, but it shows that even when they get out of their stupid habits regarding playing the same drop B chord over and over, their songwriting flaws and presentation remain key problems for the band. Pair it with the worst music video of all time and you are left with no reason to return to it in the future. WEAR A MASK YOU IMBECILES!

UP NEXT: One of the biggest streaming songs of all time randomly decided to cross over to Alternative radio this year. Find out which song did at #8.

SOURCES

DiVita, Joe. “Zoltan Bathory: New Five Finger Death Punch Video Does Not Have Anti-Mask Message.” LoudWire 17 October 2020. Web. 24 December 2021 https://loudwire.com/zoltan-bathory-statement-five-finger-death-punch-living-the-dream-video-not-anti-mask/.

IMAGE SOURCES

F8 album cover from Wikimedia
Shot of “Living The Dream” music video from MetalSucks: https://www.metalsucks.net/2020/10/16/five-finger-death-punch-take-anti-masker-stance-with-video-for-living-the-dream/
Ugly animal from List25