The Axis of Awesome: Cry Yourself a River

The Axis of Awesome have a knack for lampooning contemporary music. Their strongest track is easily the perennial closer “4 Chords”, which puts the choruses of nearly forty popular songs to (you guessed it) the same four chords. It's a neat trick, and at its deepest level it's a pretty strong indictment of the artistic bankruptcy of the music industry. But a little goes a long way, and how much you get out of an Axis of Awesome show depends on how committed you are to this format.

Consider a song like “Beauty and the Beastie Boys” – it's a clever enough concept on paper, but it gets less mileage in performance. Same goes for the First World Problems meets Band Aid “Do They Know It's Pizza?” Axis of Awesome are spot-on at skewering the conventions of the humanitarian-ballad genre, but the treatment of the material is flat, especially since this genre is such an easy target.

Parody is effective critique because it plays off the predictability of genres for humourous effect. But there is a fine line to walk here since playing too close to the original can make parody predictable as well. Axis of Awesome have nailed mimicking and performing genres, but there is still some work to be done to make what they do more innovative.