Are you kidding me? Look at what happens at (0:03), I mean come on—does she find her groove very hard right then?

Putting aside the off-the-charts-breaking-the-needle adorableness factor, one of the reasons I love this woman and want her to join my traveling band of Friday Face-Offs champions is because she completely ignores the bridge and doesn’t sing along—because, let’s be honest, this song has no kind of bridge. (Remember earlier when I was comparing “Use Somebody” to “Beautiful Day?” The biggest difference between them is that U2 actually wrote a pretty hot bridge, whereas Kings of Leon probably woke up from some kind of sex-and-drugs binge and was like, “Oh yeah, we need a bridge, record label says we gotta have a bridge, okay let’s spend all of nine seconds writing a bridge.”)

By the way, the comments to this video are GREAT. Because everyone hates her and is rooting against her, LOL—yeah, people are really hating on her:

“Man oh man”. I love your voice! Whachuknow about Kings of Leon???

Speaking of that comment, I gotta say: Yeah, why are black people so into this song? I was not expecting to find so many black folks representing this song. I guess it’s because the lead vocal lends itself to melisma and “black singing?” Much more so then the lead vocal to, say, “You Belong With Me.” Anyway, people are killing this vocal left and right on youtube, and this is a hot fuckin’ Friday Face-Offs and you love it and I love it.

HONORABLE MENTION:

This video compliments the Jandek, Jr. video from a couple weeks ago. Beautiful composition as only accidental web-cam placement can provide. Look at those blues. Look at her face balanced by the mask. Just a nice, clean composition. Singing is okay, too.

I should go into Robert Christgau mode and give this an A-. You know how he gives 90% of the records he reviews an A-, until it doesn’t mean anything anymore? He’ll write some inscrutable esoteric shit where you can’t tell if he’s describing Finnegan’s Wake or the new Nickelback CD and then he’ll just give it an A-.

Here’s how Robert Christgau would describe this video:

“Contra Clapton, it’s in blue rooms where shadows run from themselves. Less “Use Somebody” than “Blues Somebody,” she knows to make allowances for tones between tones. Then again, if Miles Davis hadn’t dropped “Kind of Blue,” the Kings of Leon would be 50% less Kinks and 10% more Leon Redbone and we’d spread Aquafresh in our eyelashes. Village Blue Preservation Society, anyone? Sympatico, natch. Wooden masks rarely sing along . . . it’s a prog thing. GRADE: A-“

And you’re like, “Dude, what the hell are you talking about? It’s a goddamn 3-minute song. Should I listen to it 100 times in a row, or not?”

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!!! You know that I could use some Fridaaayyyy!

I. LOVE. THIS.

(I think that’s the first time I’ve ever done the “ALL CAPS-PERIOD-ALL CAPS-PERIOD” internet-writing technique.)

Anyway, yeah: I. LOVE. THIS.

Just listen to it two or three times and then get back to me and we’ll discuss it …

1. When did I know this was the jump-off? At precisely (0:29), when he says “Listen–” That’s when I rang the “this-guy-knows-what-he’s-doing” alarm. No looking back.

2. How about two seconds later (0:31) when the beatbox kicks in, with the fist pumping? That works for me.

3. When it gets to (0:45), I need you to focus on the hand motions he’s making in the rightmost square/quadrant/sector. That’s how you make hand motions while you’re singing.

4. Also, is it just me, or did he freakin’ double the lead vocal? That’s really bad-ass. It sounds thick like he doubled it, but there’s only one video of him singing the lead, so if he did double it, he’s being sly about it, which I love.

5. Mainly, this guy can just sing. It’s nice.

6. Overall, it’s not a bad way to show off your hat collection.

These guys are trouble, right? They must be. You don’t play the claves like that unless you’re the biggest bad-ass in town, and also? Mark Ruffalo is totally holding it down on guitar.

I like to imagine they were watching their soccer match and all of a sudden one of them was like, “Hey let’s record a version of ‘Use Somebody’ real quick! Everyone pick an instrument they barely know how to play and let’s just rip this and get famous. And by the way leather jackets are MANDATORY.”

I love the final soul-moan at the end (1:47), where he sounds like a Luther Vandross balloon that’s being deflated.

By the way: if you’re having trouble following the lyrics, somebody was kind enough to transcribe them in the comments section to this video:

I was rapping the black in the other down before my beat,
And the place to place do you want to ??? (“rob”? –ed.) the one I see,
You know you last to please my body
You know you was to please somebody
CHORUS:
Someone like you ( x 2)
I was black in the ??? (“broom”? –ed.) bless in now the door the moon I stay,
In the lost today you want the break you want my stay,
I know you last to please my body
I know you last to breast my body
CHORUS:
The breast like you, someone like you.
Oh …

Why is this so funny to me? Reading transcripts of half-remembered lyrics sung in strange accents always makes me giggle. Am I a child, or a man? Only the Kings of Leon know …

This is how you start a hot Friday Face-Offs. First ten seconds of this video? So exciting. Whetting your appetite. Getting you pumped. Getting you ready. Eric Stanley is about to rip it up.

Eyeglasses? ENGAGED. Violin? ACTIVATED. Viewers? READY TO ROCK.

My favorite moment is 0:15, where he’s trying not to betray how much he loves “Use Somebody” and how psyched he is to lay down some fat vio-riffage over the track. Look at him trying not to smile! Love it!

Friday Face-Offs is back! Get yr rosin ready!

If it’s Friday, it must be time for

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!

Welcome to the 22nd installment of an internet legend.

This week’s song is “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon. Watch the original here:

This is a pretty good pop song. I think it won a Grammy a couple years ago, which is interesting, because so did “Beautiful Day” by U2, which has many rhythmic and structural and tonal similarities to “Use Somebody,” so what I’m saying is, if you’re really dead-set on winning a Grammy, you should write a song in this style (and if you win you have to thank MNFTIU in your acceptance speech), but the cool thing is, we don’t really care about winning Grammys, we care about watching Friday Face-Offs, so let’s get down to it, because this is gonna be one of the all-time hottest Friday Face-Offs!

Friday Face-Offs! Faces fallin’ off every which way.

PS: I need to warn you guys—this song will be stuck in your head like a muhr-fuhr-kuhr by the end of the day.

TIME TO ROCK.

Get in your car and CRANK THIS and roll down the street and get more respect than you know what to do with.

Dude, did you hear that keyboard??? WHAT.

I promise if you listen to this from beginning to end, you will feel illegally high.

“Can’t you see / you belong with Friday Face-Offs!” FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!

And now, let us never speak of Taylor Swift again.

Have a great weekend.

Can I be serious for a second? One of my favorite things about Friday Face-Offs (this incredible internet thing I do every so often, like as in right now) is finding videos, where, I’m like, “Man, these people are great. The people in this video just seem soooo cool and awesome.” It makes me feel so happy! I’m not even kidding, guys! I know sometimes I come across as a grump (one of my 2010 goals is to smile more and look friendly instead of existentially constipated) but deep down I really like people and it makes me excited when people decide to get awesome.

Like, have you ever stayed out late with a good friend drinking and people-watching and suddenly you get this charged feeling, like “Holy shit everyone at this bar/cafe/club is JAMMING right now, everyone within my purview is fuckin’ COLD CHILLIN’ and having a GREAT time … everything’s gonna be okay, humanity is not destined to destroy itself, we just might make it!”

I had this feeling once at a bus station in Virginia in the middle of the night and it was AMAZING.

Also I had it with a good friend at that bar “Tryst” in Washington, D.C. (Famous cafe/bar where everyone’s updating their blogs all the time.) We were sitting at the window watching all the other bars let out and it was one of those scenes where nobody was mad at anyone and everyone was just holding it down like 5,000%.

All this to say, I get a real nice vibe from these two:

I LOVE YOU GUYS. I have rented us a van and I am going to drive you around the country and you will perform Taylor Swift songs for the people of this great nation while sitting on your sofa and I will sell t-shirts that say “WE’RE DOING THIS” and we will make lots of money and at the end of every song you will hold your head in your hands like you do in this video in that special way that makes me so happy so if you’re ready to execute this amazing plan text “MNFTIU TOUR BEGINS ASAP” to 2350926094641123.

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!!! “I’m on the bleachers.”

I’m loving the bassist pretty hard. Are you kidding? (0:50)– game face is ON.

And notice how sad the drummer is after nailing the fill at (2:09). Yeah, she’s basically pretty sad.

But really? Watch this whole video and maintain your focus on the bassist and then get to (3:17) and tell me you’re not feeling irie.

My one criticism is the extreme disparity between the guitar amp and the bass amp. Poor kid is running his “thunderbroom” through some 1X12 Peavey while she’s got like a Marshall cab or something? C’mon, guys. FAIR IS FAIR.

EXACTLY. (0:50) BRING IT HARD OR GO HOME THIS IS FRIDAY FACE-OFFS!!! (2:20)

I like this video because it’s basically how I sing along to any song released after 1995 — with an inarticulate mixture of crushing boredom and flashes of rage.

Friday Face-Offs! WE THROW GUITARS