Blogocentric Formulations

Pretend To Be Nice

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Song: "Pretend To Be Nice"
Artist: Josie And The Pussycats
Album: Josie And The Pussycats (OST)


I can't believe lizco252 subjected herself (and everyone else) to "guilty pleasures" week for the "The Soundtrack of Your Life" ! It's almost like she wants us to make her regret running this activity! Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint, so I may as well jump headfirst into the pool and get it over with...

I wish I could say the same about the movie itself, but the soundtrack to 2001's Josie And The Pussycats is one of my all-time guilty pleasures, and that's because I legitimately enjoy just about every song on the album. The woman who sings Josie's parts is not actually actress Rachael Leigh Cook, but rather Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo fame (another of my guilty pleasures in their own right, ever since they made a cameo in the 10 Things I Hate About You movie). "3 Small Words" was the more popular song when the movie came out, but I've always been partial to this one. And pretty much everything Du Jour sings on the album. I mean, come on, if Breckin Meyer, Seth Green, Donald Faison, and Alexander Martin singing "Backdoor Lover" isn't one of the greatest boy band satires of all time, I don't know what is. It's right up there with Blink 182's "All The Small Things" music video.

Don't get me wrong, I fully admit that the movie itself was terrible. Even with the amusing running joke about product placement and branding throughout the movie, it was a bomb. It made less than half of its money back at the box office ($14M in box office receipts on a $39M budget plus marketing? Ouch!), failed to get an even 50% favorable rating from both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and Roger Ebert was credited with saying, "Josie and the Pussycats are not dumber than the Spice Girls, but they're as dumb as the Spice Girls, which is dumb enough."

The soundtrack, however, was much better received. It sold over 500,000 copies, which gave it certified gold status and resulted in the soundtrack earning almost half as much as the movie's entire theatrical run.

Oh man, I should not be referencing the Spice Girls during "guilty pleasures" week. It's... so... tempting... {e:resists_urge}