So I have a big essay due for one of my uni modules this week. I’m sure many of you can agree that when you get a deadline, you really want to work on it and get it out the way, that’s always the plan. Until YouTube gets in the way…and doing a blog post apparently? Procrastination at its best. Anyway, I’ve spent the majority of my procrastination duration listening to music that was around a few years back, as well as a lot of festival performances from this year. I watched back the Paramore headline slot at Reading and Leeds 2014 and forgot how many songs of theirs I had heard when I was a lot younger – I appreciate them a lot more now – i.e. Pressure which featured in The Sims 2 video game? I know. Wtf? I love the new self titled Paramore album (#unpopularopinion) and I love Hayley Williams. So I was looking back to the old hits such as That’s What You Get and crushcrushcrush, in the recommended videos on the right hand side of the screen I saw Airplanes, I had completely forgot about that song’s existence. I’d completely forgotten how big it was back in the day. Looking back on it now – being a little older – makes me realise how good a song it was.

The song is taken to an extreme situation that most of us – sorry to say – will never ever experience. The song is about each of the individual vocalists on the track analysing their lives if they hadn’t chosen the path of a successful music career. So like I said an extreme situation a lot of us will not achieve – well maybe I speak for myself – as I have no musical talent whatsoever! But it’s about those choices that you make that have changed your life for better or worse and thinking what might have been different if you could change them. It’s a far more grown up and mature song than I originally thought, I just heard the catchiness of it, now I hear the lyrics and it makes me love the song even more.

Even though I love the original version, I adore the Part.2 version featuring Eminem, even more. I’m a big Eminem fan and I think he absolutely destroys B.o.B in this song because his verse is KILLER.

“Alright let’s pretend Marshall Mathers never picked up a pen
Let’s pretend things would have been no different
Pretend he procrastinated, had no motivation
Pretend he just made excuses that were so paper thin they could blow away with the wind
Marshall, you’re never gonna make it makes no sense to play the game there ain’t no way that you’ll win
Pretend he just stayed outside all day and played with his friends
Pretend he even had a friend to say was his friend
And it wasn’t time to move and schools weren’t changing again
He wasn’t socially awkward and just strange as a kid
He had a father and his mother wasn’t crazy as shit
And he never dreamed he could rip stadiums and just lazy as shit
Fuck a talent show in a gymnasium, bitch, you won’t amount to shit quit daydreaming kid
You need to get your cranium checked you thinking like an alien and just ain’t realistic
Now pretend they ain’t just make him angry with this shit
And there was no one he could even aim when he’s pissed it
And his alarm went off to wake him but he didn’t make it to the Rap Olympics
Slept through his plane and he missed it
He’s gon’ have a hard time explaining to Hailie and Lainie these food stamps and this WIC shit
Cause he never risked shit he hoped and he wished it but it didn’t fall in his lap so he ain’t even here
He pretends that”

It’s a shame because this is the only song I like of B.o.B’s and I thought he was great in it; until Eminem squeezed in and stole the limelight. The only downside to this track is that it was never released as a single. The original done extremely well for itself topping charts around the world and selling over 4 million copies by the end of the year it was released (2010) At least this Part. 2 version was nominated for a Grammy though! Obviously I’m not the only one who thinks this song is genius. Have a listen below!