Papa Roach is Still the Soundtrack of Discontent

An unhappy person blasting "Last Resort" is the real-life meme I can't escape.

One of the last stories I wrote for Uproxx before they laid me off was about Papa Roach. Today, a suitably stupid update.

Photo by Erik Karits on Unsplash

Back in 2015, Justin Halpern, now an Emmy-nominated producer on Abbott Elementary and the creator of Harley Quinn on HBO, told a story on my podcast, the Frotcast (also at 3:21 of Best of 2016). It was about him living San Diego, hooking up with a girl he thought was his girlfriend, and then relaxing on the couch. That was when, according to him, her actual boyfriend showed up. The story, during which he was pretending to be asleep (“I figured no one wants to beat up an asleep guy”), was punctuated by the guy hopping in his car, turning the key in the ignition, at which point the sound of Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” kicked in, blaring then fading out as he drove away crying (CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES…).

It’s a great story, but mostly I retell it because of how uncannily it has seemed to metastasize into pop culture. Two years later, in a 2017 episode of Silicon Valley, fictional billionaire Russ Hanneman (played brilliantly by wildly underrated comedy actor Chris Diamantopoulos) angrily peeled away in his Lamborghini, to the sounds of, you guessed it, “Last Resort” by Papa Roach. Joe Bernstein at Buzzfeed News soon wrote a thinkpiece, “How Last Resort Became The Internet’s New Favorite Joke Song.”

In March, “Last Resort” showed up once again in an episode of Showtime’s Yellowjackets, in another circumstance eerily reminiscent of the Halpern story — as a song a recently-cuckolded guy rocks out to.

Which brings us to this week. Adult film star Tasha Reign has a memoir out, From Princess to Porn Star, released in June. A publicist emailed to asked if they could send me a copy in case it sparked any story ideas. As an unabashed fan of porn memoirs (the honest-seeming ones, at least, that aren’t just promo for the persona*) I said sure.

It showed up a few days ago, and when I cracked it open, this showed up. This was, and I stress this part, ON THE VERY FIRST PAGE (emphasis mine):

My father had lost a battle with sarcoma (blood and tissue cancer) after two long years of fighting tooth and nail to survive. My last memory of him was when my stepmother pulled the plug on Christmas Day. Sure, he wasn’t going to make it, but why she chose Christmas Day as his death day, I’ll never now. I blasted the song “Last Resort” by Papa Roach as the realization sank in. My father was dead, forever. I couldn’t believe it. So, I just sat there on the oversize sofa screaming the lyrics, “Cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort, suffocation, no breathing, don’t give a fuck if . . .” as my stepsiblings stared at me in disbelief.

True, this latest “Last Resort” cameo doesn’t have a cuckolding angle (like the Yellowjackets scene) or a driving-off-angrily angle (like the Silicon Valley scene) but at this point my antennae are highly attuned to pick up any instance of Papa Roach being used to punctuate a dramatic point. And again, I didn’t even have to search, it was on the first page.

Buzzfeed News tried to explain how “Last Resort” became a joke six years ago. Yet if you follow the timeline, from Halpern to Silicon Valley to Yellowjackets to From Princess to Porn Star, each reference gets progressively less jokey. It’s a classic irony-to-earnestness pipeline (I don’t call it irony poisoning, which has already been coined, because I don’t think there’s anything particularly bad about coming to find meaning in a song you initially found hopelessly corny). Tasha Reign screams “cut my life into pieces” here to illustrate feeling like her life has been cut into pieces.

What is it about a song written by dudes from Vacaville named Tobin and Jacoby that makes it nigh inescapable, even 23 years later? Aside from being catchy and easy to sing along to, my running theory is that “Last Resort” lends itself to on-the-nose uses because it’s an on-the-nose song (which, to be fair, is true of almost all late 90s/early 2000s nu metal).

The song is about suicide, but it’s not the kind of dirge that that might make you imagine. It’s introspective only in the most confrontational and performative ways — it makes sense that someone who was also attracted to working in porn would gravitate to it.

And for me I find myself weirdly nostalgic for the idea of someone deliciously sneering “…and I’m contemplatin’ suiciiiiide” or masculinely bellowing “I’m runnin’ and I’m cryyyyyin…”

One of the most beautiful innovations of nu-metal as a whole was encouraging men to reveal their sensitive sides — their fears, their depression, their childhood traumas — provided they did so in a format that sounded like a threat to kick your ass. I’M CONTEMPLATING SUICIDE, BITCH. I DON’T CARE, FUCK YOU.

The thought of it always makes me smile.

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*Girlvert is a fave, matter-of-fact about the grossest things in a hilarious way.

Also:

Nathan Fielder (Nathan For You, The Rehearsal) has a new show coming in November, called The Curse. It was co-created by Fielder and Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems, etc) and stars Fielder and Emma Stone as house flippers in some sort of dark take on HGTV programming. It’s kind of hard for me to imagine Nathan Fielder doing regular acting (I guess?), but everything about it sounds weird as hell in the best way possible.

Okay, that’s all for now. Thank you all for subscribing and even more if you pay for it.