Gwen Stefani on SNL

Gwen Stefani was on Saturday Night Live (SNL) this past week and it was... weak as water.

Don't get me wrong, Gwen Stefani is a gorgeous girl. She was flanked by four gorgeous girls who were dressed and wigged just like her, as well as four male dancers, and a marching drum section. And yet, the whole performance was kind of sad...

First of all, the song she performed was the same song she performed the last time, "Hollaback Girl," except that it had different lyrics... and yodeling. Yes, yodeling.

So basically, this song wasn't so much "written" as simply constructed, possibly by her agent. See, there was some talent show-type reality series on over the summer and the girl who won it was a yodeler (I think -- I watched one or two episodes, but it wasn't all that interesting, and I only heard reports as to who won, so I could be wrong -- if only I had some way of instantly finding out... like a monitor-box thingy, hooked up to a network of news stories and personal documents... but that, as your doctor and dentist will tell you, is just science-fiction), and Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" was a very popular song (though I'm not sure how well it "placed" on Billboard or anything); so this song was basically constructed by ripping off the beat from the one song, adding a yodel to the beginning, and changing the lyrics to something equally female-empowering and insipid. Even the "breakdown" (more formally known as the "bridge" to people what actually know things about, you know, music -- though I cringe to refer to this pap as such) was the same!

A lot of people think geeks like me go too far in criticizing these "stars," like Stefani and Spears, and insist that they manage to put on these incredible floor shows, dance, sing, yodel, write their own songs, manage their own hair boutiques, clothing lines, perfumes, and musical and acting "careers," but I don't buy that crap. This is what it is: a one-hit wonder who just happens to hold the public's eye because she's hot. If Gwen Stefani looked like Grace Jones, we'd have never heard from her again after No Doubt.

See, she'd never have even gotten to make "Hollaback Girl" because no one would have given her a recording contract...