Given the Wisconsin football team's incredibly successful season this year, it comes as no surprise that a number of Wisconsin fans want to express their support in song.
The most recent of these debuted this week with ""We're Smelling Roses,"" and it's clear to see why people make these songs. After all, writing a rap about your football team seems like a great idea on the surface. You get to show how much you love the Badgers, you can come up with some funny one-liners to make your fellow students laugh, you can get Professor Michael Leckrone in a sequin jacket, etc.
In theory, these are all great things (especially Leckrone in that bit of sparkly genius).
But here's the thing with making songs and music videos dedicated to the Badgers, or any team for that matter: It needs to fucking stop.
Before I launch into this rant, I first want to say I know that for many of the people who made these songs, their music is very important to them. And I'm probably going to come off as some sort of hater-jackass heckling from the crowd with no respect for what they do.
I have to admit that is partially true, in that I am going to make fun of some songs and be kind of a dick about it. But I respect any musician and fan who is puts in the amount of work those artists did, I just want to see them do it for something other than football. Moving on.
Obviously, the most successful (and best) example of one of these songs is Zooniversity's ""Teach Me How to Bucky,"" which worked because it was funny, original and made fun of a truly mindless top-40 song. Although hearing it approximately 7,000 times since the Minnesota game has taken its toll on the song, it set the gold standard of acceptability in this genre. (And those sequins, I mean come on.)
Sadly, there are plenty of songs that don't reach that level, and ""We're Smelling Roses"" is one of them.
Another was Bakerseis' ""Gatorade Shower,"" a gameday song that seems to have been written so as to mention as many traditions and clichés as possible. I counted about 15 over the course of the song, including ""it ain't over until after fifth quarter,"" ""win or lose we hit the booze"" and some that don't have anything to do with Camp Randall Stadium like ""we get down to the Nitty Gritty power hour.""
This trend of horrible music isn't limited to Madison, either. Our friends at the University of Oregon have unleashed some of the worst atrocities in just the past year.
Most recently there was the ""Teach Me How to Duckie"" video, whose YouTube description tells Wisconsin ""go DUCK YOURSELF!!!!!"" (Get it? Like ""fuck"" but they said ""duck""! What a riot.)
Last year's ""I Love My Ducks (I Smell Roses)"" by the bro-tastic group Supwitchugirl was by far the worst. Included in its priceless one-liners: ""Holy moly, is that my bro [former quarterback and alleged laptop thief Jeremiah] Masoli / Cookin' up the offense like he's cookin' ravioli,"" ""He can run, he can pass / He's sicker than e coli"" and ""Jeremiah ain't no bullfrog / More explosive than the Gaza Strip.""
Do these songs and ones like them really add to the fan experience of watching your team? Of course not, and they have little musical value as well. It seems like some of these artists are just hoping the success of their team will propel them to viral fame as people across campus spread the videos.
A lot of hard work went in to making many of these songs and their subsequent music videos, but the result is something that makes sports fans and music lovers alike cringe.
So I make this plea to Badgers everywhere: If you love your team, show up to the games and cheer, be a fan. Don't be a musician too. And to musicians – your talents have a place elsewhere; don't waste them on meaningless sports songs. Let's all come together to make these awful songs a thing of the past, starting here at UW.
We can hope for a world without ""I Love My Ducks,"" but as noted football song hater Ghandi said, we have to be the change we wish to see in the world. It all starts with us, Badgers.
Fell the need to correct Nico's misinterpretation of Ghandi? Let him know at savidgewilki@dailycardinal.com
