Villain Songs

I could be a dick and link you to TV Tropes, therefore causing you to spend the rest of your day on the site. I'll spare you the pain and assume you know what I'm talking about when I say The Villain Song.

The villain is always the coolest character.

There is no doubt about it.

They've got the evil laugh (gotta work on the *ahem* aughhhhhh)

They've got the sweet cape (let's try and forget about The Incredibles)

But most importantly, they've got that one show-stopping number filled with megalomaniacal (or sometimes just plain maniacal) euphoria, regardless of genre. And the villain never really sings about anything. Sure, they might mention bringing the hero down or ruling the world as villains ordinarily do, but for the most part it's sung just to say, yeah, I'm evil and yeah, I'm better than the hero. I'd much rather hear a villain sing about how awesome they are than about the main character's true love or some dead family member. Because face it, which one is cooler?

So I decided I'd post links to all the villain songs I absolutely love.

Oh yeah, by the way, The Nostalgia Critic did something similar and you should totally watch that one too. There might be a few overlaps, by the way, but who says everyone can't like the same songs? :B

Everyone's a Hero (Captain Hammer) - Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

First off is a song from one of my favorite Web Originals, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It could be easily argued that about a third of the songs in that movie are villain songs, since it is about a "villain," but it also strangely subverts the entire song trope by making the "hero" figure sing it. Just watch it yourself and you'll understand:

He has the whole city under his control. And he's loving it. Being an idiotic jackass to a bunch of homeless folks and admiring fans all the while rubbing in their faces that they just buy it all. Suddenly a Freeze Ray doesn't seem that horrible (that's two r's, h-o-r-r...).

The Hounds (Dr. Wily) - The Protomen

Okay. Okay. Sorry that I'm putting something remotely Mega Man related in here. But I assure you, The Protomen have strayed as far as they can from the main story making something totally new, a rock opera of epic proportions. The song doesn't really have visuals unless you count the stage directions, but the lyrics speak for themselves.

In case it's hard to understand out of context, here's the basic story: Dr. Wily has framed Dr. Light for the murder of Light's love, Emily. In order to kill her, Wily created a robot. When she's discovered dead, Wily first blames the murder on light ("what kind of man builds a machine to kill a girl...") and of course, the city is eating it up ("what was her name?" "doesn't matter... now listen!"). And then for the rest of the song he gloats. To the man whose wife was just killed. Just because Wily is that evil. Strangely, it's The Protomen's most upbeat, fast-paced, triumphant song, possibly tied with "Light up the Night." But can you blame them?

Thankless Job (The Repo Man) - Repo! The Genetic Opera


A big lipped alligator moment? Maybe. Maybe not. It's sorta hard to tell when the movie can't decide whether to be serious, campy, funny, or an homage to old horror flicks, but either way this song is just seeping with villainy pride. And it's disgusting.

There's no footage of the actual scene on YouTube... and maybe that's just as well. It's spoilery if you haven't seen the movie but what's going on is the Repo Man sings about how he relishes his job - literally repossessing body parts by murdering and/or vivisecting the victim. And he uses his current victim, one who owes intestine, as a puppet. Who he makes sing along with him. If he's not a villain I don't know who is.

(Honorable mention goes to "Gold" from Rotti Largo because of how different and emotionally charged it is, but only one Repo! song is gonna be listed here. Either way I recommend this movie just for the silliness of it all.)

Sweet Transvestite (Dr. Frank-N-Furter) - The Rocky Horror Picture Show

How could I not list this here? There's some argument all over as to whether it's a "villain song." He's not really singing about being villainous. He's singing about... well, about being a sweet transvestite. Either way, Tim Curry plays the role way to well to ignore.

A Little Priest (Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett) - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Villain song at its finest. Two fellow dabblers in evil singing - right after Sweeney's "epiphany" that in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two - about killing people and baking them into pies. Not outright saying it, mind you. They understand each other all the way.

Makes you wonder what the people you know would taste like.

...No? It doesn't? That's just weird? Forget I mentioned it then.

(Honorable mention goes to "Pretty Women" from the same movie but I think the Nostalgia Critic sums that one up quite nicely and I'd rather put one of my other favorite songs from this film on my list)

Beelzeboss (Satan) - Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny

The devil fucking rocks.

Try and make sense out of this movie other than it was a contest to see who could write a more vulgar song. It's ridiculous, often hilarious in all its sophomoric antics, but never really goes anywhere. And then in the penultimate scene, the big bad who literally just appeared has his moment in the limelight.

The devil's "villain song" is only one segment - in the middle - but it's well-worth watching the whole thing. Singing about how a.) you love metal, the music most often tagged as evil and b.) sexually enslaving Kyle Gass? (ewwwww...). Evil. In so many ways.

Oogie Boogie's Song (Oogie Boogie) - The Nightmare Before Christmas

 

I'm not too fond of this villain. He kinda just pops up around the end when there was already some genuine conflict going on, but you can't deny the catchiness of the song. Not to mention he's bragging about his evilness to Santa Claus. That's just a new breed of nightmare.

Of course, "Kidnap the Sandy Claus" would be a good selection too but I don't really feel like it's a villain song so much as a song sung by villains. Honorable mention though, definitely.

PRETTY MUCH ANY DISNEY MOVIE WITH A VILLAIN

Seriously. If there's anything Disney can do better than be scathingly critiqued by Cracked.com, it's make a kickass villain song. I could go on for hours listing my favorites, so I'll just go with the one I find the most powerful.

I'm not too fond of The Little Mermaid (weirdly enough considering my marine life obsession) but Ursula is really an outstanding villain figure. A true mix of both cruel and vicious yet sympathetic and misunderstood. I have trouble buying villains who are evil well, just because, but also think they need a bit of true cruelty and psychopathy. Both of which Ursula have, illustrated perfectly in this song which fluctuates between calm and reassuring to totally angry at the world and ready to slap silly little Ariel in the face.

Props go to Scar's "Be Prepared", Gaston's "Gaston" (how fucking conceited) and Frollo's "Hellfire". I just wish Hades had a song.

And that basically wraps it up. I could mention some without lyrics (Darth Vader's theme which is basically what I assume pure evil sounds like) or the Fairy Godmother's rendition of "Holding Out For a Hero" from Shrek 2 but it's hardly a villain song. The little-known musical "Starmites" has a great villain song sung by Shak Graa but I can't seem to remember the title or find a link, and the last time I saw that show was mid-January.

And there are so many others. Because face it. The world has a lot of villains, but we can never get enough.

Hey Look a Blog

I don't want to never update, despite my constant busy-ness (business? I'm so confused @_@)

So I'll leave you with a quick montage of what I've been doing lately other than blogging.

First things first, I slammed down that E-Tank Fergie style before cleaning up my yard.

IT TASTES JUST LIKE HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP

I'm not new to caffeine. I drink coffee basically daily and regular old energy drinks on a frequent basis, but I'm pretty sure the euphoria of drinking this themed soda got to my head a bit and I was basically hyper for the next hour.

Then I got all dolled up to go to the gay pride parade the next day

Rainbows everywhere! (Not an accurate depiction)

So I buy my silly outfit with my bro Ooey and plan the bus route and everything.

And then I get the fateful call.

A call from the craft store where I work.

Crafts everywhere! (Somewhat accurate depiction)

Silly illustrated alter-ego, what's with the badly drawn mop, outdoors at that? Do I even mop?

But yeah. Eight-hour shift with no LGBT pride shenanigans and songs that you now only hear looped in commercials for Windex and contact lenses over and over again. I never even got customers /rageface.

When it was all said and done I got pizza with some friends afterwards so that was cool.

Wait a second! That entry was lame! I need to make entries that are less personal and more uh... uh... worldly! That's it.

Eh, whatever.

*collapses on keyboarddzfsjl

 

A somewhat relevant song for the road.

Whatever happened to Saturday night~?

Keep My E-Tank Safe in Reserve Just as Long as I Can

So I went to the mall today.

And at the store Spencer's, which usually proves pretty useless, I was buying some socks.

When at the register I spotted it.

This was my exact reaction. Also animated if you click on it.

Yes. They actually sell E-Tanks. It appears to be some Mega Man-themed energy drink, but from the ingredients looks like carbonated water and corn syrup mostly. So possibly just a sweet soda sort of deal.

Why don't I know what it tastes like?

Because I need to save it. Save it for when I need it. Like for when I fight Air Man.

...yeah this blog really needs some meaningful posts. Don't judge me. Just go to Spencer's and buy the damn drink.

I'll post some photos of the can eventually.

I Warned You About Stairs!!!

I told you dog! I warned you not to make boring posts nobody will care about!

This one is an exception. So I'm working on my template if you didn't notice (likely). I ditched the Portuguese skin since I finally got my Adobe Suite running, and added a nice header and favicon. Everything is just about ready...

Except for the big space to the right of the logo.

You don't know CSS, Kopaka13! This is why we can't have nice things.

Seriously what's it's deal. What I want to do is add a column of links of some sort there, right-aligned, flush with the post column. Probably a link for each page in the blog (and there will be more). However, Blogger doesn't seem to like objects sharing space with the header. Can anybody help me with this? Anyone at all?

Edit: Okay. So I've made some progress but now it's time to go to bed. What I need tips on now is how to change the "tabs" section back to the "links" section and then put that next to the header.

LUDO

So for those of you who read my blog (ahahaha) and haven't heard of Ludo, aka LUDO, I'm gonna take the time to introduce you.

 

It's really hard to describe this band. In their 6-year lifetime, they've put out all sorts of songs in all sorts of styles, the only unifying factor to them all being Andrew Volpe's geeky but lovable voice and the constant Moog synthesized backdrops to their music. I guess you'd call them alternative? Maybe sorta like a free-form sort of pop-punk, or even Weezer-like geek rock?

The thing is, it's hard to care what genre they are when you listen to them.

(no, this is not from a Tim Burton flick)

The band is made up of frontman/singer/guitarist Andrew Volpe, Moog/keyboard player Tim Convy, lead guitarist Tim Ferrell, and drummer Matt Palermo. They've had four albums so far, each one extremely different but somehow united by their wacky style. Notably, their second album (a five-song EP, technically) is a rock opera called Broken Bride, a massive epic with more twists and tearjerking moments and epic victories than Tommy, American Idiot, and The Wall combined. Well, maybe.

What could be more epic? Maybe their concerts. While normally they have energy-filled performances that are a blast to attend, they sometimes pull weird concert themes out of the air and use those for the tour. And maybe "weird" is a bit of an understatement...

Honestly, I cannot wait for these guys to come to Chicago and play once again in the Bottom Lounge. Lucky us, the concert theme is not merely "space," "basketball," or "dracula," it's "Space Dracula's Basketball Expo." Remind me not to go too crazy with the aluminum foil.

Other songs to look up: Laundry Girl, Overdone, Love Me Dead, Lake Pontchartrain, Save Our City, Ode To Kevin Arnold, Scream Scream Scream, Rotten Town, Safe in the Dark, Elektra's Complex, and pretty much anything else. Seriously, these guys rock. If I got one more person interested with this blog entry I am satisfied.

~ ~ ~

Unrelated to Ludo, I'm still working on getting my Windows 7 HP laptop up and running. Customization is running smoothly but installing the Adobe CS4 Suite is giving me issues for some reason, so until then I have to stick with this headerless blog design with strange bits of some language which seems to be Portuguese or something. Ah well, it'll be fixed soon enough.

Blogs

I never thought blogging was really my style. The only bloggers I ever see are crazy political people, people with some level of fame for their art/music/writing, or people who are just bored and feel like typing stuff. There's the occasional other blog that I really enjoy is the type that goes on about random subjects not for the sake of internet-fueled histrionics but for the sake of comedy or just plain "this is cool/lame/annoying" so I figure I'll stick myself in this subject to avoid being in the "bored" category.

But what does it take to make a cool blog that people read not because they agree/disagree with some insane opinions, want to glomp and have the babies of the author, or just talk about mundane stuff like their friends and daily escapades (but not really escapades, more like routines)?

Umm, I'm still figuring that out.

I'm also trying to figure out how to change the default language on this skin from Portuguese (?) to English. I found a beautiful teal skin from a Google search because I can't be bothered to design my own right now. Any tips?

In order to distract you from the terribly lame blog opening, here's a picture of Clubs Deuce, courtesy of Andrew Hussie.

You got a hat full of bomb, a fist full of penis, and a head full of empty.

Quick, run! While they're not looking!