Like women? Like music? Hate Chris Brown.

Hello. Today I'm trying to become more relevant by blogging about popular culture. I am therefore going to talk about a song that was released almost a year and a half ago. I know what you're thinking: but he only posted that retrospective analysis of Cressida Dick less than two months ago! How does he manage to stay on top of the ephemeral nature of current affairs? Well, the truth is I actually have a team of bloggers and joke writers working around the clock in order to ensure that I have important things to say about very pertinent issues, like an old Chris Brown song (in my defence you still hear it in clubs). Fans of Chris Brown's music may want to stop reading this now, I genuinely don't want to belittle the music tastes of any of my friends.

Although I'm not sure fans of Chris Brown's music are capable of reading (I told you you should have stopped there).

It's easy to dismiss Chris Brown's music as banal, mindless, repetitive, unoriginal, boring and meaningless drivel, but I'm willing to look at Chris Brown's music from a professional, objective perspective. Even if the malicious, woman-beating, mentally ill (come on he must be) 'musician' does not deserve my fair-minded dissection of his popular faecal matter. I am too good to him I know. Chris Brown, if you are reading this: there's no need to thank me; an anonymous cash donation will suffice.

You may have noticed that I have alluded to the fact he beats women. It was subtle but it is there. I'm sure you all know about the fact he physically harmed his ex-girlfriend Rihanna after an argument. Maybe it is unfair of me to use the plural term 'women.' I do not know the exact number of women that he has beaten, and if he has only beaten the one then I'm sorry, but I have no moral or ethical issues with slandering Chris Brown. I think that would be a pretty poor defence to put forward anyway: “yes, we'd like to take David McIver to court because he has misrepresented the number of women that our client Chris Brown has beaten on an online blog that receives about a dozen views per week.”

One could argue that this one incident of domestic abuse alone should rid him of any manufactured success in our pop charts; and one would be right. The argument should end there really, but it doesn't. It turns out that fans of Chris Brown love domestic abuse, and hence he continues to see his name in the UK music charts. I assume these charts are painted on some sort of wall somewhere in London, and teenagers gather round the wall chanting the names of their favourite 'artists' and throwing money at the charts until the person(s) of their choice makes it to the top of the pops, hence becoming 'King of the Charts' and winning Reggie Yates and Ferne Cotton as butlers for the week.

So if we disregard his violence against women as playful antics, (because when has violence ever hurt anyone?) we must instead turn to his music for analysis, which in many ways is far worse than domestic abuse (and worse than many other violent crimes too. I'm unable to pinpoint his exact place on the scale of terrible psychopathic atrocities, but I think his music lies somewhere between paedophilia and genocide.)

One song of his that is particularly fertile ground for analysis is something that goes by the name of “Yeah 3x.” Firstly, the name of this song is problematic. By incorporating a mathematical symbol in place of words he has created a song title with no clear way of saying it. Is it pronounced 'Yeah Three-Ex?' which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Or is it pronounced 'Yeah Three Times?' which is not so much a title so much as a rough guide to the words that will be appearing in the song and their respective frequency, but also begs the question, why not just call the song 'Yeah Three Times?' It gives the exact same message as 'Yeah 3x,' while at the same time being a more aesthetically pleasing song title to read and eliminating all confusion. It's almost as if he has a certain level of self-awareness about himself and is trying to create a song title with ambiguous pronunciation possibilities in order to pose some sort of subversive artistic statement. Except of course he is an idiot, and you can't make art out of shit. Unless of course you are Piero Manzoni, who, despite being an Italian man that made a living out of shitting in a can, still has more self-awareness and artistic credibility than Chris Brown.

Let us delve into the frightening body of this song shall we? Let me present you with a verse or a chorus or something, I don't know I'm not a musician:

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, girl, I wanna

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna see you tonight

Yeah, yeah, yeah, girl, I gotta

(Yeah, yeah, yeah)

I gotta, I gotta, I gotta see you tonight.”

Now, seeing as Chris Brown has demonstrated such enthusiasm for maths in the naming of his song, I thought I should approach the criticism of his song through mathematical analysis. Not many people these days approach musical criticism from a strictly mathematical perspective. I guess my methods are just to radical for 'The Man.' Maybe that's why I'm not a music journalist. (I can think of no other reasons.)

Anyway, in this chorus there are a total of thirty-two words. Out of these words, the word 'yeah' is used a whopping twelve times. A massive 37.5% of the chorus therefore is just the word 'yeah.' I'm not even totally sure if it is being used as a slang term for a positive affirmation, or if Chris Brown is just treating it as a random syllable in order to give his listeners more sound for their money. But the maths does not stop there. Out of this thirty-two word chorus, only eight unique words are used (yeah, girl, I, wanna, see, you, tonight, and gotta.) The chorus is therefore 25% unique words, and 75% repetition of words. They are shit words too. I'm not even sure I should be validating the existence of the words 'gotta' and 'wanna,' as I am unsure as to whether or not I could find them in the Oxford English Dictionary. When Samuel Johnson completed the first English dictionary in 1755 I am pretty sure he didn't envision the lazy bastardisation of 'want to' into 'wanna' being accepted by future lexicographers. Perhaps Chris Brown hates Samuel Johnson as well as women, and if Samuel Johnson were alive today Chris Brown would endeavour to fight him. Although he probably wouldn't because Samuel Johnson, being a man, poses too much of a danger to Chris Brown, who is timid about entering into fights with less than a 90% (yes more maths!) chance of success.

Also, despite the fact that Chris Brown uses only eight words, (and that's being kind) it is still too many words to portray the message of his chorus. I don't like to extract a single meaning from poetry as I feel this is almost always a reductive method of literary criticism, but I feel that we lose absolutely nothing from the song if we say that the chorus could be summed up with the words “Chris wants to see you tonight” (presumably so he can beat you). Those words, in perfect grammar, adequately sum up what Chris Brown took thirty-two words to say. And look, I've done it in six words, which is two less unique words than his version, and a massive twenty-six less words in total. To think people say mathematically dissecting pop songs is a waste of time!

What can we deduce from Chris Brown inability to use more than eight original words in a thirty-two word chorus? Well firstly, that Chris Brown hates Samuel Johnson, his fans, poets, poetry, all writers, eminent literary scholars, teachers, university professors, lexicographers, people's virginal eardrums, Rihanna, Rihanna's friends and family, all women in general, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Smiths, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Talking Heads, The Stone Roses, the past hundred years of innovative pop music, choruses that consist of more than 25% unique words and any suggestion of a successful pop song so much as pretending to grasp at any shred of artistic credibility, among many other things that I don't have time to name (I'm obviously a very busy man). You can just make them up yourself if you want to. Think of something nice. Are you thinking of it? Chris Brown hates it. Your thought didn't contain enough domestic abuse for his liking. (Unless of course you are a fan of Chris Brown, in which case you probably were thinking about domestic abuse, and Chris Brown liked it.)

The second thing we can deduce from the song, is that in the attempt to manufacture a commercially successful pop song, terms such as 'innovation,' 'creativity' and 'poetry' are ugly words that get in the way of things like money, profit-margins and money.

And that is my incredibly obvious message for you all today.