“I Don’t Wanna Be An Asshole Anymore”
by The Menzingers
from Rented World
2014
Buy the album on Amazon

There will be another post where I expound on just how goddamn good the last Menzingers album is, but their new album just came out this week, and this song has caught me, and I completely love the video for it.

The song opens the new album, and while it’s not as good as the previous album opener, I have to say – their album openers seem to connect with me on a level I’d rather not admit to. So far the album as a whole hasn’t grabbed me the way the last one did, but this song is a perfect example of the elements that made me fall so hard for their last album. The smart, straight-forward, poetic lyrics, the raw emotion in them and the way they’re sung wrapped in a damn catchy tune with a chorus that begs to be sung along to. Loud.

As for the video…hell yes. First, as much as I connect with the song by itself, you put it with this video and it completely subverts into hilarity, so you can have it either way. I grew up on bad/classic 80’s horror movies, so the opening of the video is already a win (disregarding the asshole person in the YouTube comments complaining that Jason never used a chainsaw). There are so many great little bits of humor in the video that it took me a couple of views to catch all of them. This is the kind of video I would want to make. My favorite part, which I had to rewind (I know that’s an analog term) and pause for, is the bit with the two family photos of (out of the lake rotting) Jason and his (head put back on) Mother. Yep.

Listen to the song without watching the video one time, then with.

Yeah!
Last Friday night I wasn’t me
I was a still life trapped in eternity
I was the focal point of a focus out of ink

And I’ve been wandering and I live through the garden of your heartache
Always making a mess, always stumbling out the door
But I don’t wanna be an asshole anymore

Whoa baby, baby I’ll be good to you
I don’t wanna be an asshole anymore
Whoa baby, baby, I’ll be good to you
Baby, baby, I’ll be good to you

Another night, I devour the sun
Plunge myself into the depths of oblivion
Yeah somewhere along the way I found wine
Feels damn good just to bleed sometimes
All I ever wanted was to make things right
Usual vital, missing spite
I push my emotions off a bridge,
I’ve been taking them hostage with a shotgun
Now we’re somewhere treading water,
Somewhere lost inside the man that I’m not
But I don’t wanna be an asshole anymore

Whoa baby, baby I’ll be good to you
I don’t wanna be an asshole anymore
Whoa baby, baby, I’ll be good to you
I’ll be good to you
I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good

I won’t lie no more about where I’ve been
And I won’t pry no more over the people that you’re hanging with
You’re the only lover that I ever miss
And I’ve been hopelessly in love with
Look at this tangle of thorns
I don’t wanna be an asshole anymore
Yeah, I don’t wanna be an asshole anymore
Oh no, no, no