3OH!3’s Don’t Trust Me isn’t a huge hit or even that good of a song, but it has some great components.
The first (and best) is the line:
“Tell your boyfriend, if he says he’s got beef, that I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t f** scared of him.”
How creative! That lyric coupled with the lack of music in the background is the perfect lead-in to the bridge! The end of the line makes you want to bang some drums and rock your head up and down. You can’t help but not sing along during that part. I love that the softer verses of the song are sang in a kind of caddy tone. The echo of certain words also reinforces the mood created – “Tell your boyfriend (boyfriend) – It’s suits the song so well. Gossip. Promiscuous girls. Cheating. Caddyness. Attention-seekers.
I also like the stuttering of the T’s: “T-t-t-tongues” and “T-t-tell your boyfriend.”
I wish the counterpart of the beef line I just mentioned above was a little stronger in the second verse. The musical treatment of that line mimics the beef line. The second verse version is: “And the best is, no one knows who you are. Just another girl, alone at the bar.” It’s good, but not near equivalent to the power of the beef line in the first verse. But this line brings up another good aspect of the song. Nathaniel Mottee, the lead singer, does a terrific job at pulling off the pauses in the song. It makes for a great effect. There is a noticeable pause in the between “just another girl” and “alone at the bar,” and it makes the latter part much stronger.
The absolute worst part of the song (and it’s pretty bad) is the Hellen Keller reference. “Shush girl, shut your lips, do the Hellen Keller and talk with your hips.” Totally irrelevant. I don’t even fully understand the connection to Hellen Keller. She was deaf and blind but she could talk with her hands not with her hips. While I realize what they’re trying to play at, it just draws a blank for me.
The chorus is average. The verses, the well-placed pauses, the stutters and the lyrical gems in the song are what make the song special and, honestly, much more sophisticated than some other new releases.
