Pair #29: "The Most Exciting Thing I Did in the Past Year Freestyle"

"THE MOST EXCITING THING I DID IN THE PAST YEAR FREESTYLE"
Original Post Date: July 12, 2005
Runtime: 0:34
Genre: Rap
Compilation Album: Pink Pants

Prompt Summary: an experimental song that's 35 seconds or less about the most exciting thing Andrew did in the past year, accompanied by instruments no one would be able to recognize

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It's the end of a year, so let's take a moment to reflect on it. Mine was stressful, how about yours?

Okay, moment over. Let's check in on Andrew, with this awkward freestyle from 2005, "The Most Exciting Thing I Did in the Past Year Freestyle."

Your first impression may be, "Was this produced by a nine-year-old?". Everything about the track screams "amateur," which was most definitely the intention here. The backing instrumentals are discordant. (I think I hear claves?) The rap delivery is very drunk-guy-at-an-open-mic-thing. And the narrative is…implausible.* But then, so are most narratives in Songs to Wear Pants To.

Andrew recorded a handful of freestyle raps over the course of Songs to Wear Pants To. He performs most of them in this awkward, nervous style. By definition, the lyrics are entirely improvised. So you can safely expect them to end up in a very different place than where they started.

"Word to your whole family!" Happy New Year, folks. Let's all do better in 2023.

*I'm not sure which STWPT narrative is less plausible: this or "The History of Stwpt.com"?

Pair #24: "It Was the World"

"IT WAS THE WORLD"
Original Post Date: May 3, 2004
Runtime: 1:05
Genre: Showtunes
Compilation Album: Green Pants

Prompt Summary: a song about a Broadway character who gets suspended above a shark tank and has to summarize all of world history in less than a minute and eleven seconds or die

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Some Songs to Wear Pants To prompts were like this one: very specific and very weird. It's like magnetic poetry, or at least how I do it. ("Has you be fluffing" is my magnum opus.*)

You can get pretty much the whole song from the prompt summary, as Andrew hits every single beat, except perhaps from making the main character more like an out-of-character performer than an actual character. We open on a rather lengthy plea for help, in which our nameless protagonist screams for mercy and lists off all the other production staff that have already been killed. Then, the freaky but nondescript villain demands to hear a summary of world history.

Then comes the most jarring 180 imaginable, with the protagonist just like, "Well, okay!"—as if his life were no longer in danger and he were actually really delighted to comply with the villain's request. I love this 180 because it comes out of nowhere and is like a slap in the face right before the actual song begins: a bouncy showtune a la Liza Minnelli.

Obviously, this isn't a deep dive into history; we're already thirty seconds into the track before the song even starts, and the whole track is just over a minute long. bill wurtz famously covered world history at breakneck speed and still produced a 19-minute video. So don't expect to learn anything new…except for Andrew's birth year. Yeah, at the end of the song, he breaks the fourth wall and ends his history "lesson" with the real Andrew's birth. Apparently, he was a "beautiful baby," if there's such a thing for humans. :D

"It Was the World" is an unexpected rollercoaster of a minute. The narrative is bizarre and leaves you wondering about the main character's fate, but at the same time, it ends with a truly fantastic line that is even funnier out of context. The song part of the track is quite catchy and also successful at evoking a Golden Age of Broadway style of musical.

"So please don't throw me into the tank of sharks."

*My other magnetic poetry hits include "purple finger juice did," "club there garden milk," "me a mean watch," and of course, "these-ing-ed-s." What? Why are you looking at me like that?

Pair #8: "Department Store vs. Predator"

"DEPARTMENT STORE VS. PREDATOR"
Original Post Date: December 15, 2004
Runtime: 0:45
Genres: Ska
Compilation Album: Blue Pants

Prompt Summary: [Paid Song] write a ska/rock song about a girl named Myssy [sic] who wears Predator armor and hunts humans in a department store, complete with gory imagery but also lighthearted

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I just saw the original Alien movie for the first time over the weekend, so…here's a song about Predators, I guess!*

Andrew stayed true to the requester's wishes: the narrative in this song is very gory. What makes the song absolutely hilarious (in a very twisted sort of way) is that, musically, it's an upbeat ska track. As Andrew lists off each horrific act of violence committed by Myssy, the titular Predator, he does so in a cheerful, almost matter-of-fact way. It's a combination straight out of Happy Tree Friends.

Yeah, I think that just about covers it. Uh, content warning for graphic, violent imagery. In case you couldn't tell.

*Yes, I know: obviously, they're two different franchises. And yes, I know there was a crossover. No, I don't care. :D

Pair #1: "The History of Stwpt.com"

"THE HISTORY OF STWPT.COM"
Original Post Date: January 20, 2009
Runtime: 2:03
Genre: Spoken word
Compilation Album: Sweat Pants 

Prompt Summary: to write a song about the history of a website called "stwpt.com" from the birth of the website "to into the future"

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What better way to begin this dive into a legendary part of Internet history than with the history of the website that this blog is about? Or at least a website that doesn't exist? Pretty sure there's no "stwpt.com."* The prompt-writer probably meant "songstowearpantsto.com" but was too lazy to spell the whole thing out.

Andrew, or Beethoven, as we learn at the end of the song, spends the whole track talking, using a very bad English accent. It's not really a song per se, although there is stirring, inspirational music playing in the background. No, the real focus of this track is the story.

I'm not going to recap the whole thing because that's not what I'm here to do. Indeed, I'm here to introduce you to these songs, not replace them. Instead, I'll just say that it starts out kind of weird and ends up making all the sense in the world. By which I mean, no sense. But nobody's ever listened to STWPT for sense.

"The History of Stwpt.com" is a classic Song to Wear Pants To, even tagged as one of Andrew's Favorites on the original site. It doesn't really answer any questions that you have going in, but it does provide many answers to questions you will undoubtedly have by the end.

 

*(Incidentally, the Wayback Machine does have a snapshot of a website with that domain from around the time Andrew released this track. It's…something.)