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Are Cobra Starship's gleeful Day-Glo appropriations and their unbridled enthusiasm really indications of a disparity between intention and expression? Or is their crime simply the meta-mania of their fusion of '80s retro kitsch and '00s celebrity worship? Really, it's neither.
Only a music fan obsessed with the rules of authenticity and the requirements for lyrical profundity could find fault with the 11 odes to overload that make up Hot Mess. Well, unless that hypothetical music fan is allergic to asshole frontmen: Gabe Saporta leads these tunes with a kind of Auto-Tuned dorkitude that will polarize even the least judgmental listeners.
Lucky for him, this time his band have the tunes to back up his bluster, from the strange coup that was getting Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester to guest-vocal on lead single "Good Girls Go Bad" to the quizzically titled hyperkinetic rocker "Pete Wentz Is the Only Reason We're Famous" (which steals the chorus of the Damned's "Smash It Up" — I hope Captain Sensible and crew are getting royalties).
Related:
The Big Hurt: Checking the Billboard Hot 100, Photos: 3OH!3 and Cobra Starship at House of Blues, Review: Country Strong, More 
- The Big Hurt: Checking the Billboard Hot 100
As usual, I won't be able to make it through the full 100, but seven is just as good, right?
- Photos: 3OH!3 and Cobra Starship at House of Blues
Cobra Starship and 3OH!3 in Boston
- Review: Country Strong
Too-soon-out-of-rehab country star Kelly Canter (a bronzed Gwyneth Paltrow) attempts to twang her way back from a drunken stage dive in Dallas that resulted in a miscarriage.
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There's little in this girl-gone-wild thriller directed by Christian E. Christiansen that you haven't seen before and better - in SingleWhite Female, The Crush, and even Scream, to name a few.
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If you call a film The Stepfather , then your title character should have the decency to marry into that perfect little family that he’s predisposed to butcher and kill.
- It parade
There is a moment, at the end of a beauty pageant, when the previous year’s winner is forced to place the sparkling crown on a new champion’s head.
- On the racks: August 15, 2006
. . . plus mothafuckin' snakes
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Get in the pit: From Katy Perry to Every Time I Die, an inside (and outside, and from behind) look at what went down (and up and down) at this year's Warped Tour.
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Topics:
CD Reviews
, Pete Wentz, Leighton Meester, Leighton Meester, More
, Pete Wentz, Leighton Meester, Leighton Meester, Captain Sensible, Cobra Starship, Cobra Starship, Cobra Starship, The Damned (Band), Gossip Girl, Less
