To celebrate the big weekend 100b had, thanks to all you Manic Street Preachers fans, and our first time on the top of The Hype Machine’s Popular Tracks List (well, we’ve been bumped now, but I swear we were #1 for a while there), I’m going to have a look at another great cover song.

Generally speaking, things are most Poptastic when they’re not taken too seriously. A very earnest song that’s really crappy is usually just a crappy song. But when taken with a with a sense of humor, that crappy song can sometimes go so far that it’s good. Absurdity + A Giggle = Poptasticism. If you listened to Styx’s “Come Sail Away” (possibly my all-time Poptastic favorite) literally, it would be one of the dumbest things you’d ever heard. But the ability to laugh with it makes it fantastically fun.

Many moons ago, aDawgg and I referred to this as the Fugly Scale - though it’s really more of a cycle - and it works with all kinds of different things. Jokes can be so dumb they’re funny - this applies to almost anything in the “yo’ momma” or “that’s what she said” areas. Movies can be so horrendously bad they’re hilarious (see also: The Wiz). If you don’t enjoy the dumbassness of them, they’re just crap.

So, following that totally half-baked theory through a little further: if something that isn’t Poptastic (because it takes itself too seriously) is then refurnished by someone who can have a giggle, does it then become Poptastic? Inverse Poptasticism, if you will.

I downloaded this live cover from a blog at least three years ago (I have no idea who, so I apologize for not giving proper credit), and it at least doesn’t disprove this nonsense. On its own, Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” is just an annoyingly catchy, big dumb pop song. Ben Gibbard has a laugh with it and turns it into an awesome cover version, thus embracing Poptasticism.

   Ben Gibbard - Complicated (Live)

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