March 2003

An Open Letter to the Members of NEW FOUND GLORY

Dear Members of New Found Glory,

Congratulations on your recent success in the music industry! You have shown us all that a noticeable lack of musical talent, taste, and originality still has a place on the charts these days. Plus, you all are not gay in any way at all. In my effort to understand your altogether inexplicable success, I have numbered several points which I think are essential to your achievement. This is pure speculation, so I might have overlooked a few things.

REO Speedwagon-esque videos on MTV. Videos that include cutesy animations pertaining to lyrics in the song being sung can be traced way back to the early days of music video. But no one else did it quite like REO Speedwagon. The video for "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" is an example that I am sure you all are familiar with. I can only imagine the planning process for your videos: 'OOH, let's make the bassist's head get all big for this part of the song! It'll be just like REO Speedwagon, and not at all gay!' I don't want to denigrate REO Speedwagon too much, so I'll just go ahead and put your video style just a notch below theirs. But I guess you go with what works.

Wacky videos! Cutesy animation aside, your unpredictable and crazy videos must be a large part of your success. Nothing's crazier than having old people dancing in a music video, or wacky Japanese tourists. It is especially wacky, because they are dancing to your music! That's so crazy, old people dancing to New Found Glory! I'd never imagine that happening! I can imagine you all sitting around the table thinking 'OOH, let's have old people dancing to our music! It's totally unpredictable, and not at all gay!'

Self-deprecating imagery. Just imagine with me, trying to figure out a way to balance your hardcore punk tendencies with your carefully crafted corporate good looks, a meeting that goes like this: 'OOH, let's have the fat bassist dance around with no shirt on in the videos and jiggle his big ole titties to draw some attention away from our coverboy lead singer! That would be so punk, and totally not gay at all.!' Yeah, I think I see how this could work in not only focusing on the singer's face for the little girls to stare at, but show how punk you are by having a fat, naked bass player. It's a two-pronged strategy that probably couldn't possibly fail.

Suck live, and tour with other bands that suck live. Sounding like crap everywhere you go must help sell lots of records, because then people wonder why they came to see you and then they go out and buy the record to make sure that you don't suck and that they didn't waste time or money going to see you live. Plus, touring with lame-o bands like Good Charlotte make you look way better to the audience, and far less gay than they obviously are. 'OOH, we sell more tickets, more records, and look way less gay! That is in no way gay at all!"

That's it. Anyway, I hope that some of what I have written here has helped reconcile why you are so successful, and quite possibly the least gay band ever in the history of recorded music. Congratulations, and keep up appearances for the kids.

Sincerely (and totally not gay at all),

Justy