"Cut Your Hair" is a song by American rock band, Pavement on their second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The song is Pavement songwriter Stephen Malkmus' snarky ode to selling out, and, as such, it snidely attacks the importance of image and musicianship's decline in importance in the record industry.[citation needed] Perhaps with a bit of irony, the song was also released as a single and became the band's best selling and most popular song. Both B-sides are included on the reissue Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins.
In May 2007, NME magazine placed "Cut Your Hair" at number 28 in its list of the 50 Greatest Indie Anthems Ever.
Track listing
- "Cut Your Hair"
- "Camera" (R.E.M. cover)
- "Stare"
The video
The video, released in 1994, was relatively simple, showing the band sitting on a bench at a barber shop, waiting to get their hair cut. Some strange things happen to each band member when he goes up to the barber's chair:
- Mark Ibold - He shakes his head to mess up his hair and then sneezes. The viewer finds out that he sneezed out a cat. He then gives it to the barber and goes back to the bench.
- Scott Kannberg - He comes up to the barber's chair dressed in a clothed gorilla suit and gets his hair cut. We then see him back in human form, and he goes back to the bench.
- Bob Nastanovich - When he gets up, he trips over the table of magazines in front of the bench they are sitting on. He tries to drink something out of a flask, and then attempts to drink the barber's Barbicide cleaning solution but the barber won't let him.
- Stephen Malkmus - The barber gives him a platter, a king's sceptre, a martini, and a paper crown. We see a closeup of him with a tear rolling down his cheek.
- Steve West - He asks the barber to cut his hair. Just as he is about to do so, we see that West is suddenly wearing a lizard costume. The barber shakes his head, refusing to give him a haircut.
Each band member has different clothes on when they go back to the bench. After their haircuts, all the band members leave the barbershop very quickly.
In an alternate version of the video, a black-and-white TV in the barber shop played a loop of the band acting silly in Malkmus's old apartment.
MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head criticized the video when they watched it, imploring Pavement to "try harder, dammit! Try harder!"
"Cut Your Hair" was often played during the commercial blocks of ECW Hardcore TV in 1996
"Cut Your Hair" was featured on the soundtrack to Jackass: Number Two and A Very Brady Sequel.
"Cut Your Hair" is available as a downloadable track for Guitar Hero 5
External links
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