Was Cobra Starship's third record as much of a Hot Mess as I remember?

In 2005 after his groundbreaking emo band Midtown broke up, Gabe Saporta traveled to the Arizona desert to find himself and contemplate what he would do with his life next. While on this trip he had a vision of what his next band would be. That band was New Jersey Fueled by Ramen/Decaydance signees Cobra Starship. We aren’t here to talk about the history of that band though, just one moment in time in particular; 2009’s Hot Mess. This was the band’s third full length and is being reissued with two additional tracks in the coming year. Why are we talking about this in early 2022? When this album came out I was a huge fan of this band’s first two records and Saporta promised this one to be their best yet with a huge focus on dance-ability. When it dropped though, I found myself disappointed. A long time has passed since 2009 though and I thought now would be the perfect time to take a visit to the past and see if I still take issue with it today.

Those new songs were released in the form of “Tracks to the Future,” a sort of half EP, half tack on to the record. These songs, delivered by 2009 Gabe Saporta to his 2021 self, are meant to save the future and offer both sides that Hot Mess before it offers tonally. On “Beautiful Life” Saporta reflects on failing to see the beauty within the day-to-day while inspiring the listener to look for that themselves. While “Party with You” shows the band's neon dance punk roots and sense of humor as a parody of the track was released before the track itself.

The initial album opens with “Nice Guys Finish Last,” a very Fueled by Ramen track with some strong key and bass work that powers through the entire run time. In true more pop than punk fashion it has a great infectious hook with some choral vocals that lead it out. There’s a great guitar solo here as well. None of this to say the track isn’t perfect or at all non-dated, however. In this mid-two thousands era a big pop trend was an in song call-and-response section, which I personally never vibed with and is a big reason why Infinity on High remains one of my least favorite albums by another Fueled by titan, Fall Out Boy. This phenomenon takes a studio dependant experience and forces it to be live dependant thus kind of ruining the moment on the record for the listener and making it feel awkward. Here Saporta asks for the assistance of the ladies in his audience and every time even all these years later I still find myself wishing the part would end sooner than it does. There’s also a weird pretty misogynistic messaging here and on various points of the album. I’ll get into the character Saporta portrays on this record a bit more later but I can’t really always tell if he meant the messaging of the track and it’s title to be serious or if he was playing into something that was really firing up weird incel dudes at the time, as he was known to do that in songs. I’m gonna give this one a pass as I think it’s the latter but sometimes it feels too real.

Back when this album came out, if you can believe it, MySpace was still the big social network, especially among the scene. Something that always occurred right before an album cycle like the first cloud of a coming storm was a band would hype up and release a new song to their MySpace player seemingly out of nowhere. Eventually you would get the “real” single for the album complete with a music video and that first new song would be thrown on the album sort of under the radar. “Pete Wentz is the Only Reason we’re Famous” was the former of these two events for Hot Mess, which makes sense as it’s a true pop punk track as opposed to the record’s true lead single. The keys here are really grand and epic and almost sound like they’re rushing through the chorus but in their way they really work. There’s some very interesting production in the mid section of the track and the whole thing is so catchy as well. Where I questioned Saporta on the last song I’m actually going to praise him here. He’s really channeling his inner tough guy to call out social media vultures who didn’t like his band simply for being in the scene they were in. In fact, and I couldn’t find a source on this so don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure that song title was an exact comment on some Cobra Starship article. The problem back then was a lot of guys on the online scene took Fueled by bands or even any neon pop punk band and labeled them as “gay” or “effeminate” and “not real musicians” so while when they broke out they recieved a lot of success they had a hard time coming up. Here, Saporta is literally challenging those music fans in a tongue-in-cheek way;

“I’m not street but I do what I gotta do. So what you got a crew? I got a crew too.”

As if this known sweetheart would be even capable of fighting anyone. A handful of these lyrics maybe haven’t aged gracefully but I couldn’t find anything truly problematic and it was sort of indicative of the time it came from, it’s still a great pop punk song.

If “Pete Wentz” was the MySpace single, “Good Girls Go Bad” was the more accessible single, and boy was it accessible. “Good Girls” didn’t just blow up online, it debuted at number 76 of the Billboard Hot 100, which, for a relatively online band was huge. Other Fueled by bands, Fall Out Boy especially, had charted before but Cobra had never seen mainstream success and this was the start of a little successful run that would follow them throughout the rest of their career. Personally, however, I could take or leave this song. In fact it’s a lot of the reason I had a jaded view of this album historically. To begin with, the track does not sequence well at all coming in at number three on a, thus far, pop punk record. Not that Cobra didn’t make dance songs like this but they always eased you in either with needing a changeup on the track listing or having the style either be lead into or at least have some sort of tie-in to the other songs on the album. All that and sure this feels at home on pop radio of the time but on this record? It just felt awkward. The track has a Leighton Meester feature, which, goes over well enough but Meester was an actress not really a musician and given her short discography I’m going to say she wasn’t too passionate about putting records out and it was more a celebrity stunt. There’s another call and response moment that isn’t bad but it still feels awkward on recording. Whereas on a normal Cobra Starship song I can call out the weird messaging about objectifying women as a joke on Sapora’s part making fun of toxic masculinity here it’s clearly for the cash grab. That’s the entire problem, really, not that I’ve ever been one to cry “sellout” but the entire track and it’s rollout in clashing with the record make it feel like a top 40s chess move as opposed to a real song and I can’t really respect that especially when the song is as mid as it is.

I want to do something I don’t normally do here and lump my thoughts on “Fold Your Hands Child,” “Living in the Sky with Diamonds,” and “The Scene is Dead; Long Live the Scene” together into one. I could review each track individually but my thing here is these are sort of the definition of a deep cut and they don’t really stand on their own. For their respective placements on the record I think they go over fine and don’t quite hit skip track territory like a couple other tracks do, but I’m not looking to put them on outside of this listening experience.

As I hinted at in the intro, I was a little skeptical going into this because I thought I would find the album was worse than I remembered, songs like “You’re Not in on the Joke” really make me eat my words on that one. This song makes me excited to go back to my childhood with the critical eye I’ve been teaching myself to have. This is a true MySpace era song, with electronically produced verses that make you think it’s one thing, then explosive rock choruses that prove this band can do both. That’s just half the genres it explores in it’s three and a half minute runtime too. The riffs on this thing are halfway between pop punk and post-hardcore and it even comes complete with a breakdown featuring Pete Wentz himself giving that Arma Angelus delivery. The midpoint of the track features a seconds-long window into what a piano ballad edition would look like. Speaking of members of Fall Out Boy, a lot of the vocal melodies seem very Patrick Stump, which makes sense considering he was so close to the writing on the Cobra record before this, Guilty Pleasure. Not that I’m accusing Saporta of being a clone, it's just clear they were working and running in similar circles during that period in time.

(Note:Researching the record a bit it seems Stump, Wentz and some other pop punk mid-2000s names are credited on this track so maybe he had more of a hand there than I thought.)

Where “Good Girls” falls flat for meis really made up for in the title track. This is more what I expect from a Cobra Starship pop song; taking the douchey guy formula and staging it in a really comical and exaggerated way. With lines like the chorus;

“Well you’re a hot mess and I’m falling for you and I’m like ‘hot damn, let me make you my boo.’

Cause you can shake it, shake it, shake it, yea you know what to do.

You’re a hot mess, I’m loving it, Hell yes.”

I get more of what I want out of Saporta’s lyrical style. It’s clear he doesn’t mean this in a mean spirited way but it’s funny, it makes for good pop especially in the year it’s from. It’s that very top forty sound without sounding phoned in and I don’t just mean lyrically. The percussion all sounds more like bongo drums than it does a full kit and even as bare and vocal focused as that chorus is, those drum tracks really shine through. I also have to admire the bridge of the song being delivered with more of a rough, punk delivery but never leaving that pop sphere. I think this is another hidden gem here and this was a single, it even had radio play, which, I didn’t realize till I was researching to make this write up. It’s everything the lead single fails to be, it doesn’t even mess up the sequencing of the record.

“Wet Hot American Summer” once again has all the production perks of “Good Girls” without any of the bad. The track features no guitar but the rest of the band is in full gear to make a track that is as fun as a club single without any of the trashy messaging. On this one it really just feels like Saporta was writing what he was feeling in the moment. What stands out to me about this track on the overall record is that it does not take it’s production decisions lightly. Everything is properly placed from the drum pumps to the vocal isolation on the last “sun comes up” chant. It also delivers on the promise of a dance record even if it takes until track eight.

Saporta takes another stab at the fake tough guy personality on “Move Like You Gonna Die” only this time he’s too good for you or your social gatherings;

“I have the best taste in this whole damn place but I’ve had it up to here with this crowd, I’m leaving now.”

While the rest of the full band tracks on the record have more of a dance punk feel this one has more of a pop punk but sometimes straight alt rock feel. The lowkey pre-chorus is a standout moment for sure and something about Saporta shouting “smoke this dancefloor” toward the end just reminds me of why I love this band so much though I could do without the line about the guns.

Unfortunately, despite all my turning around on most of this record's sound and themes, “The World Will Never Do” is neither a good outro or a good song overall. I will hand this track it’s synth riff and it’s vocal melody but other than that the entire thing just makes this record crash land. First of all the lyrical presentation is just abysmal. On the vocal melody, I think in parts it works, especially in it’s hook, but there’s some points where even that goes over quite badly. Let’s look at the verses for a moment. It sounds like Saporta had a good verse in mind but performance-wise couldn’t make it land so he overdubbed it twice with auto-tune that doesn’t even go with the other layer of him just fumbling and struggling. There is a section where the bass and synth go off at the same time but they don’t compliment each other whatsoever; in fact it sounds like they’re fighting to fit onto the track over the other. Then a truly awful feature from B.o.B., what is it with this guy and the sky? The verse sounds like he heard the title of the track, wrote some bad raps just on that concept and no one told him it didn’t go at all. Not that a rap verse ever has to connect perfectly but it, like the rest of the runtime, sounds lazy.

Overall though? This album is not nearly as bad as I remember it. In fact, at the time fo writing this? I’m kind of into it. The overall mission statement provided by the band of it being all dance ragers all the time failed but the sounds presented are ones this band were already good at. The lead single as well as the album closer make this albums take off and arrival pretty poor, the deep cuts kind of blend together, but the majority of the run time is still really great. I think something this record suffers from is it’s desperate attempt at mainstream success leading to a band that was only in that viewpoint for a short time whereas to many people this band is looked at fondly. That and even for the success the top forties section had you don’t really hear it get much love today. So all in all, I think I’ve turned around on this album with some years apart from it and I’ve even found myself listening to some of these songs after having finished taking these notes.