An Ear- and an Eyeworm

[laguera25]

Why can I not stop watching this Black Veil Brides video? I'd never heard of them until this popped up on Youtube's recommended list. The music isn't terrible; it doesn't make me want to hunt down the A&R dupe who signed them and cornhole them with a blunt chainsaw, at any rate, but the video is so lame. It's a cheesetastic love letter to emo goth rock cliche. Dark setting? Check. Lots of black bunting and drapery? Check. Occult trappings? Check. Funereal imagery and arcane rites? Check. A gratuitous snake? Check. And don't forget the priestesses with fiery eyes and the shoddy, cheap CGI cleansing fire that brings justice to the thieving mourners who have desecrated the goth princeling's coffin.

And yet, the damn song is an earworm, and here I sit, mesmerized, refreshing the video repeatedly. The singer, bless him, is trying so hard to be anguished and badass and brooding, but it's all so contrived that he's resplendent in his corniness instead.

Maybe it's his teeth. They're preternatural in their perfection. Either one of his parents is a dentist, or he's got a dental fetish, because I've never seen such clean, straight teeth.

He's extraordinarily beautiful, and yet I feel no sexual attraction to him. Seventeen-year-old me would have, let me tell you, but crusty, middle-aged me wants to tell him to stop mewling like an angry kitten and wash that fake tattoo off his face.