20 for ’15 – Bad Guys – Crime

Part 10 of a 20 part rundown of my favourite tracks of 2015

Crime is the track everyone who talks about Bad Guys talks about. When it came to picking a track for this I kinda wanted to give some love to Zoltan: Snake Hunter or Reaper for a change. But this is my 20 tracks of 2015. I’d be lying to all of you. Could I look myself in the mirror after such brazen deceit? Could I sleep at night knowing the rightful Bad Guys song was sitting left off of this hallowed playlist?

No. I couldn’t. It would be wrong.

Crime is the gruffly spoken word tale of a boy who wants a Tonka truck and is forced to resort to desperate measures to get one. It’s funny and it rocks. People usually dismiss music with an overtly comedic bent as not being worthy of genuine praise, as if getting a laugh negates everything else about it. But the key difference between musical comedy and music that just happens to be comedic is what happens when the joke stops being funny. I’m not sure when it comes to Crime as yelling, “you should have bought me the truck you fuck!” hasn’t stopped being amusing to me. I suspect it never will.

But even if it did I’m pretty sure it would still be a good song. Without the comedy the chugging guitars at the start might not work but as they grow increasingly more intense, with phased riffs oscillating wildly in a manner reminiscent of Fucked Up, it becomes something of what the kids colloquially call “a banger.” Or at least they did last I checked. Alright I admit it: I’ve no idea.