As a little kid, my beleaguered parents probably wanted to smash my Fisher Price record player into little tan and cream chunks of molded plastic whenever I tortured the whole house with yet another spin of some scratchy, inane kiddie 45. (Early warning sign of a lifelong, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop: a Christmas morning snapshot of me circa second grade, huddled in the corner of our living room and fiercely clutching that battered, embattled baby turntable.) As a 30 year old, my bemused pals and colleagues probably wanted to smash my iPod into little black and silver chunks of molded metal whenever I bellowed “yahhh trick yahhh!” at opportune (say, at the bar) and inopportune (say, in a crowded doctor’s waiting room) moments alike.

As good and dumb as novelty pop got this year, “Yahhh!” was Soulja Boy’s lone justification for continuing to show up in my RSS reader after America had blessedly forgotten about Supermanning hoes. (Here let us ignore the dubious/schadenfreude-y pleasures of Soulja Boy’s culturally ignorant shout-outs and the “commentary” that followed.) That I haven’t played it since July probably says more about my eight-year-old’s attention span than the song’s repeat value, but it was nice to know that there’s still a place for shouted inanities in popular music now that today’s knowingly obnoxious tweens have traded petroleum discs for digital files.

“Yahhh!” [Dailymotion]
80 ‘08 (and heartbreak)