Pat Finnerty Rocks

The internet can be a really weird place sometimes. This morning’s post is more or less me explaining a rabbit hole I have been going down over the last few days. So some background information… I often times listen to YouTube as though it were a podcast while I do work on the other monitor… and admittedly also spend a fair amount of time reading Twitter. On the second something about MGK aka Machinegun Kelly aka Colson Baker aka Megan Fox’s boyfriend… scrolled across my Twitter feed. Now I have listened to quite a bit of music from him because at face value his newer stuff sounds like a lot of the pop-punk music that I actually dig. However the longer I have listened to it the more it has bothered me… how it is essentially this inch-deep surface-level interpretation of the 90s pop punk and emo genres.

This led to me tweeting that it sounds like the music had been generated by an AI that was trained by feeding it essentially everything from the 90s and early Oughts and having it regurgitate a song. The lyrics are bad, the emotional content is shallow, and ultimately sounds like the most generic version of the music you have already heard before. It is a recreation of a genre without understanding any of the elements that led that genre to come into being in the first place. This is where things take an interesting turn. For years I’ve known that behind the scenes everything we are saying and doing is being linked to some algorithm designed to feed us more relevant content. I cannot count the number of times my wife and I have had a conversation inside our home… and then moments later we are getting fed advertisements related to that conversation. Granted we don’t have any voice assistants but I am pretty sure that both of our phones are reporting back what we are saying.

It was shortly after writing this tweet that I turned around and hit refresh on the YouTube home feed to find the next thing to listen to… that I was served up this video. So some background that I did not know going into this adventure. Pat Finnerty is a musician from Scranton, PA, and a member of a band called Okay Paddy and has toured with other bands and projects. Based on my further journey down this rabbit hole, it seems like his moment of internet fame came during the quarantine era of this pandemic doing Instagram live concerts from his home and eventual rooftop. During one of these he staged a “Grohl-a-thon” where after 9 hours of being on air, Dave Grohl hopped on the feed and joined him for some discussion of Dire Straights of all things.

The other thing that he is known for, and the reason I now know he exists… and have subsequently torn through all of these videos… is a series called “What Makes This Song Stink”. He explains in the first video that he is a fan of a series by Rick Beato called “What Makes This Song Great?”, and wanted to essentially create the counterpoint. At face value that is a reasonable concept, but what carries it forward and makes these videos so damned entertaining is that they go some places. It is not just Pat technically breaking down what is wrong with a given song, they are this entire story journey weaving in bits of his past and a whole cast of characters that grows over the course of the series including “Blinds-to-Go Guy” and a fictitious radio station called “The Moose”.

What is even wilder is during the course of these videos… sometimes he decides he can do it better. So in the MGK video, he creates his own emo/punk pop band called “August is Falling”. During this, he goes to the Mall of America and gets fashion advice from a pair of extremely good nature people at Hot Topic. It doesn’t stop there… because apparently he actually played on stage AS the band.. after finding an Emo rock bassist on Instagram to sit in on the set. Taking the joke even further… you can now listen to Mad This Summer by August is Falling over on Bandcamp. Another video has this entire running gag about Here Comes the Hotstepper rocking… and he convinces the band he rents a studio from to release a cover… which now exists.

Then there is the whole Kravitz Bowl… which is a video parody of the classic era of the Super Bowl pitting American Woman against Fly Away in an attempt to determine which song stinks the worst. Like I said before these videos are a lot and in around 45 minutes each… they go on this wild journey while actually explaining the technical faults with each song covered. The could be a slog to get through at that length were it not for the fact that Pat is legitimately hilarious. I guess one of the traits that musicians and comedians both share are understanding how important timing is… and he nails the delivery of what would otherwise feel like purely video parody.

I think it would be unfair if I did not close by sharing one of his performances. On top of being funny as hell… he is legitimately a deeply talented musician. I’ve always loved Sultans of Swing and this rendition is most excellent. One of the things that have come up multiple times during this most recent Blaugust is whether or not you should stick to a theme with your blog. While Tales of the Aggronaut is for the most part a Video Game blog… I have to leave myself room to talk about other things that interest me. This morning is a prime example because I could not experience this ride… without sharing it with you all.

3 thoughts on “Pat Finnerty Rocks”

  1. … just wanted to add that I did stick with it and when he actualy gets to talking about the song it’s compelling stuff. Loved the call to the guy from the Chats, too. He sure didn’t sound like I imagined he would.

    • Yeah I probably would not have stuck with it as long as I did were it not for the fact I was doing something else on the other monitor, but the longer it went the funnier I found it.

  2. Machine Gun Kelly is the dictionary definition of trying too hard, I’d say. I can imagine him getting into something new and then boring his pals about it to the point where they start actively avoiding him. I wouldn’t care but he keeps cropping up in my feeds for all kinds of non-controversies that probably seem very important to someone but not to me.

    As for Pat Finnerty, I’m listening to the MGK vlog you embedded and I’m six minutes in and he’s yet to say a word about the song he’s supposed to be deconstructing. Not sure I’d have stuck with it even this long if I hadn’t been typing a comment at the same time.

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