15 April 2004
‘Disingenuous’ is probably not the first bone you’d pick with this single, I grant you. However, the expression ‘Fuck It’, the track’s title, has an air of resigned acceptance: a world-weary shrug. The track itself, though, is a spittle-flecked, vein-bulging “Fuck you”, repeatedly, to a woman he calls some quite derogatory and misogynistic things. Not that you’d have heard any of that on the clean version for radio, but I doubt anyone bought this single for the clean version for radio.
The thing is, following the ‘Fuck It’ line of thought instead could have made this a totally different track, and maybe even a good one. That first verse is actually quite appealing, with its new jack swingbeat, Eamon’s puppyish voice, and lyrics that stick to inward pain rather than outward vitriol. Break-up songs are as old as time, and many’s the pop classic with an undercoat or even an overcoat of bitterness. The chorus and second verse, though, shoot right over bitterness and into hate. Eamon and the record company behind this cheap, nasty single are exploiting the post-Eminem (Eamonem!) and Limp Bizkit demand for angry white male rappers venting angry white male resentment and entitlement. Let’s not forget the proven market appetite for puerile shock-value records either.
That an almost-immediate response record from the girl’s point of view, ‘F.U.R.B.’ by Frankee, also became a huge hit is heartening: maybe the general public realised that Eamon, and liking Eamon, and enabling Eamon, were all wrong. I’d like to say that today, twenty years later, Eamon’s brand of celebrity-endorsed misogyny is gone the way of the Callcard, but anyone with an Internet connection knows the answer to that.
Irish Number Ones 