Bad Song: Born For Greatness - Papa Roach

I fucking hate this song. It makes me cringe, it makes me wince, it gives me goosebumps from how despicable it is. The best one-word description for this song is lame. Everything about it is lame.

This song is a combination of Imagine Dragons and Home Depot music. One is commercial music, figuratively, the other is commercial music, literally. Born for Greatness exists in the same vein as them. It’s inoffensive music meant for the average troglodyte consumer. As in a consumer that is a troglodyte, not someone that consumes troglodytes.

The production is par for the course, nothing to really comment on there. They had to include clapping, a staple of music pretending to be badass. There’s quite a lot going on. Lots of instruments and effects layered over each other, different vocal effects are used. What’s impressive is that it still feels empty. The beat drop is *chef’s kiss* It is easily one of the worst I’ve heard, and it makes my skin crawl. It tries way too fucking hard. The deepening of the voice just before the bass drop is the cherry on top. I bet he thought it was so fucking cool when he played it back in the studio.

I haven’t listened to much of their other music, only the album Infest which is pretty good. The contrast in lyrics from any song on that album to Born for Greatness is shocking. The lead singer, Jacoby Shaddix, convinced you of the pain he was singing about. Here, he just phoned it in. Instead of sounding convincing he sounds like he huffed some Grade-A copium. I was never good at dissecting the meaning behind lyrics, but I have a feeling it’s all just bullshit in this case.

Despite trying to be an uplifting song it makes me want to commit suicide, much more so than their other songs that talk about depression and suicide. I haven’t listened to the other songs on the album (Crooked Teeth) because why would I, so I can’t judge it in the context of the album. It doesn’t matter, the song is shit and the album is probably shit too, but not shit enough to warrant listening to or creating a post about.

This song is a roach that deserves to be squashed. It is one of the worst rock/pop/home depot songs I’ve heard.

Check out (or don’t) the song on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2T3w7ohdeZNs7noXuIlHrr?si=f7bb4dc3c8cc44db