It's time to let Yeah! by Usher die

Hey friends! Come and take a trip down memory lane with me!

Hop in my time machine for a moment so I can take you alllll the way back to 20 years ago. Back to a simpler time. A time of hope and progress. A time before our trademark cynicism. A time where if you wanted to take a picture of someone - you'd use a camera. Texting was slow, inefficient, and we watched our music videos on TV.

The year was 2004.

An unknown Harvard grad named Mark Zuckerberg had just launched TheFacebook. Originally a dating site, Zuckerberg had dreams that TheFacebook would one day revolutionize social media and the way we use the internet.

While video-game-giant Nintendo was debuting the cutting-edge DS, a relatively new gaming console called Xbox was surging in popularity due to exhilarating releases like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Halo 2.

In the music world, an obscure hip-hop producer named Kanye West had just released his premiere studio album The College Dropout, while another up-and-coming rapper named Lil Wayne had just put out the first in his anthology; Tha Carter.

In the 20 years since these historic landmarks of pop culture, so much has changed. We've fallen in love with these domains, then out of love, then back in love, then out of love again, and now we all kind of lie somewhere in the middle. Everyone has an opinion on everything - when things were good, what things are good, and why things are good.

But there is a one, single consistent through-line in these last 20 years of media that everyone agrees is:

1. Awesome

2. Was always awesome

3. Will forever be awesome

No, it's not Facebook. Our generation gave that up long ago. It has since been bequeathed to the withering Baby Boomers - so they may circulate their infinite fake news articles, solidify the walls of their echo chambers, and also, leave us alone.

It's not Xbox nor Nintendo, who have now each distributed at least three more generations of gaming consoles with varying success.

And it's definitely not Kanye West - whose legacy now has less to do with making good music - and more to do with public perversions, inept political statements, and making bad music.

The singular 20-year mainstay in our pop culture is not even 2004's album of the year Confessions, or Usher himself. It is one song... a song that I can guarantee has played on every night, amongst thousands of bars and nightclubs all over the world. A song that has been enjoyed unironically by millions for the last two decades without stop. A phenomenal, groundbreaking song that has, at last, run it's course.

Yeah! must die.

Yeah, that's right. It's me, the No-Fun Police. It's been TWENTY YEARS. You've HAD your fun. And now your permit is expired, motherfuckers.

I'm sick and tired of hearing this song every night I go out. Twenty years, man. I remember seeing the music video debut on VH1 when I was eight years old. It was sick. And still was... for a decade after that. I am not denying it is a good song worthy of its popularity. Don't get it twisted - if you hold the head steady - I'ma milk the cow.

But this cow has been milked. Over and over and over and over again for so long that as soon as I hear "Peace up, A down" in any public place, I'm immediately beelining to the bar to drink away the pain of realizing nothing ever changes. Are we really so stagnant as a society we must consistently pick this rotten, low-hanging fruit? I challenge disc jockeys to do better. I'm booing any motherfucker collecting a paycheck with this lowest-common-denominator-ass club hit in 2024. I don't even go to clubs. But in the name of vigilante justice I will PULL UP just to smack a skinny buff Jawzrsize-lookin-ass frat boy back to kingdom come for having the audacity to play this plain, watery, unappetizing Greek yogurt track in my immediate five-mile radius.

Let this be a lesson. Time moves on and so must we.

Now take that, and rewind it back.