Music Review: MKTO "Thank You"

MKTO

Thank You

Album: Thank You

Year: 2012

        Malcolm Kelley and Tony Oller thumb their nose at the adults in power in the misguided “Thank You.”

           A bratty guitar opens the single, setting a belligerent tone.  Kelley dedicates the songs to the teenagers in high school who felt ignored and dropped out, the young women who will deny getting older and then go after men twenty years younger, the kids who smoke weed and anyone else who else gets shunned by adults. (“Yo, this one right here/Is for all the drop out-of-schoolers/The future cougars/The Mary Jane abusers/The ones that chose to be losers/For all the misfit kids and the total outcasts/MKTO, this one's for you/Role models.”)

         In the chorus, they tell the adults their so-called advice is meaningless. They don’t know anything about them and shouldn’t assume based on stereotypes. His generation outnumbers theirs. They won’t let their judgemental attitudes make the world worse for everyone else. (“We are the ones/The ones you left behind/Don't tell us how/Tell us how to live our lives/Ten million strong/We're breaking all the rules/Thank you for nothing/Cause there's nothing left to lose.”)

              Growing up, Oller remembers people saying that if gay people got married, their children will become gay, too. They were told it was something to be stay away from. He later learned that it was a way of taking rights from them. Currently, some of his friends enlisted in the military to pay for college (which has become unaffordable). Getting a college degree is possible but it won’t get a person. He has no reason to listen to the adults. They don’t know anything. Kelley adds that at the first offensive thing, he’ll flip them off.(“Thank you for feeding us years of lies/Thank you for the wars you left us to fight/Thank you for the world you ruined overnight/But we'll be fine/Yeah we'll be fine/Thank you for the world you broke/Like yolk and it ain't no joke/So cold and there ain't no coat/Just me my friends my folks and/We gonna do what we like/So raise that bird up high/And when they ask you why/Just stand there laugh and smile.”)

           The chorus is sung again.

          Oller says they won’t stand up for them. They keep limiting them, claiming they have their bootstraps and then they slice them off. He says he will make it their barriers meant to keep him in his place. Kelley adds that the world has become cruel. For him, he prefers to live his life taking risks. He’s always been outspoken. (“Thank you for the times you said don't make a sound/Thanks for the ropes you used to hold us down/Cause when I break through I'ma use them to reach the clouds/We ain't comin' down/We ain't comin' down/Look Ma I finally made it/This world is too damn jaded/My life is just like Vegas/Go big go home get faded/Been a prob since '92/Can't shut me down curfew/And them girls I'll take a few/Do what I wanna do.”)

               The  chorus is sung again.

            In the bridge, Oller says it’s their fault his generation has no hope. (“We are the ones…thank you from the bottom of my heart/From head to toe from the soul you ripped apart/I say thank you/I say thank you/Yeah, thank you/Thank you, thank you yeah, yeah.”)

             The chorus is sung twice.

             In the final section, Kelley says not to let any adults determine who they are. The term role models is such a joke. (“Yo if you don't like what they tell you to do/Don't do it/If you don't want to be who they want you to be/Screw it/It's your world/It's your life/And they ruined it/Role models/Tune in/Turn up/Drop out.”

           MKTO’s jeering vocals don’t like the world they inherited. However, they don’t have an actual stance on it. Is it aimed at adults in general or is it meant for politicians? It leans towards politics but cop-outs at any real mention of it.

          They end up coming across as hypocritical. It’s more or less when they use the term “future cougars.” According to their logic, any girl with self-image/self-esteem problems is going to go for younger men? At year exactly does it become wrong? When a woman should feel her life has become pathetic? They have bought in the ideas in part, otherwise they wouldn’t have said it.

           The inarticulate “Thank You” gets caught up in its emotional response to properly express its ideas.