Sometimes a headline is so transfixing that it haunts your speech patterns, becomes something that you want to slip into conversation or just show to your friends with a “WTF??” appended. Today, that honor belongs to the New York Post, which headlined a review of Usher’s Monday night show in New York City with the all-caps screamer USHER UPS THE PANTY. That headline has been playing around in my head for the past hour (I wish I was kidding). Is it genius? Is it awful? Does it fall somewhere in between? Come with me as I debate myself over whether or not this headline is a stroke of genius or a sign that someone on the Post’s copy desk needs to maybe get an updated edition of Get Thee To A Punnery.

Pro: From the review: “The women in the front rows needed no encouragement to ditch their underwear and lob them at the singer.” And don’t forget, dude has a lingerie line on the way.
Con: Fair points. But! When a woman takes her panties off, she’s generally lowering them, not raising them, unless she’s a contortionist of some sort.

Pro: Right, but it’s a play on “upping the ante.” What would you have rather seen, something like USHER LOWERS THE BRA?
Con: This is the paper that brought us HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. Shouldn’t we demand higher standards?

Pro: Well, expecting “higher standards” from any journalism product these days is a battle that you’re only going to lose.
Con: You–er, I–have a point.

Pro: I mean, given that the current climate has been worse for both music and the written word than pretty much any other time during the last century or so, shouldn’t you be happy that there are still papers out there that are devoting space–and copyeditors!–to concert reviews in the first place?
Con: …

USHER UPS THE PANTY [NYP]