Matthew Kelly1001 Albums You Must Die Before You Hear
#113: Alison Gold – Chinese Food (2013)
Our expert on the worst of the worst, the honourable MATT KELLY, gets stuck into a very dubious release that verges on culturally insensitive.
After hitting it big in 2010 with Rebecca Black’s infamous “so bad it’s good” mega-hit ‘Friday’, Patrice Wilson’s Pato Music World company (where stage parents could essentially pay Wilson to make a crappy song and video so their daughters could pretend they were pop stars) wanted more. ‘Gangnam Style’ had happened in 2012, opening up the Korean cultural market, but Wilson had eyes on a bigger prize. He had visions of a song of his going super-viral in China and establishing a revenue stream with millions of people there.
Wilson’s plans did not pan out. Mainland China appears to have shrugged its shoulders and forgotten the song immediately. They knew pandering (or based on the costume Wilson wears in the video, panda-ing) when they saw it. In the US though, the song was decried as being musically garbage thanks to its bland, monotonous melodies, cheap anonymous production, and flat vocal delivery from Gold.
It was also troubling due to the two-dimensional portrayal of Chinese cuisine and culture, the lyrics and video both suggesting that Wilson wasn’t even particularly familiar with the subject, as though he’d just lazily wandered into a Chinese takeaway and written down the names of the first four dishes he’d seen, not to mention that Gold wears traditional Japanese dress in the video.
I feel a little sorry for Gold who feels like a victim here. Everything I’ve read suggests she was Wilson’s puppet. Whereas Friday was a genuine organic surprise and lovably dorky, there’s something oily and cynical about ‘Chinese Food’. It’s trying to be memey and viral and this causes the listener to throw up mental barriers against it. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s not even the worst song Gold and Wilson did together. Stay tuned for that.
