Monday Morning Popped Culture: I Hate Maniac 2000.

Because it’s Monday, and because it’s Back To School Day for the majority of Ireland’s smallies, and because we haven’t had a single glob of daycent sunshine since Easter, I thought we might all have a little chat about hate, and hatred, and revelling in the fact that you hate something, and growing stronger from said hatred.

Oh, come on. There has to be something you don’t feel bad about hating. Hitler, for example. You couldn’t possibly be made feel ashamed for stating, “Y’know, I hate Hitler” to the world at large. Some people hate certain foodstuffs, and since foodstuffs are inanimate objects (some only since the exact moment of consumption, in fairness), we shouldn’t feel bad about hating them. I hate milk. I don’t think I’m hurting anyone’s feelings by saying I hate milk. The cows? No, the cows are more than likely delighted that I hate milk. The cows probably think it strange that anyone from a different species would want to slurp on their home-churned calf formula, so I think the cows are on my side.

Shure, as we’re on a pop-culture blog, let’s channel this into pop culture territory. Things get a little more mean-spirited and less forgivable when you start on about hating works created by real people. It’s probably forgivable to state that you hate Transformers, as it’s hardly a piece of art defining the psyche of countless fragile fans, and it’s unlikely any of your mates will know someone who slaved their youth away working on the franchise. But what about, say, hating Fair City? Chances are you know someone who knows someone who works on Fair City. “I hate Fair City” is a statement close to personal attack, in Ireland, where the rural population was raised by Miley Byrne and the urban by Bela Doyle. You have to be careful about admitting that you hate something, when it comes to pop culture. Look at poor Zane Lowe recently. He admitted hating nothing at all and he still got screamed at by the loud and indignant.

I went out for a drink last year with a very good friend of mine, who brought along his best mate, who is an actress, who had managed to be cast in what I had spent the previous winter calling the most annoying ad in history. Cue shame and horror when I realised the girl whose head I had been calling for on a rusty platter was actually clever and funny and Just My Kind Of Person. The moral of the anecdote is, you have to be careful what you hate, when it comes to people’s art or careers or hobbies. In many cases, such hate is simply not justifiable.

But there are exceptions to every rule.

There are some things it is not only justifiable to hate, but entirely justifiable to hate people who don’t hate them. Things that we cannot justify being level-headed about. Things we cannot excuse as simply not being to our taste. Crimes against pop culture.

For me, it’s Mark McCabe’s Maniac 2000.

No, I’m not going to fucking YouTube it. It’s that bad a song. It’s not even a song; it’s a mosquito’s lament, a call to rusty arms, the sound of a million fingernails dragging a marathon across Hell’s biggest blackboard. It is, dare I suggest it, The Worst Song Of All Time. It makes Rebecca Black sound like Maria Callas. It makes B*Witched sound like the dawn chorus. It is an over-synthed fuck-up only a lobotomite could spasm to. It stayed at number one in the Irish charts for ten fucking weeks in 2000. It is still heard, like a banshee’s echoing arse explosion, in niteclubs across the rolling plains of the Ireland time forgot. You cannot shame me on this one. I hate Maniac 2000 and I hate Mark McCabe for ever having inflicted it upon us*.

Dance music really took off in the nineties, and had reached saturation point by the turn of the millennium, due in no small part to cynical cash-ins like Maniac 2000, hurriedly thrown together and fucked at the general public by people who thought electronic music was unintelligent and throwaway, its aficionados dolts who would lap up any old shite. Sadly, it’s easy to see how such a conclusion could be reached; with people culturally encouraged to be as off their faces as possible when partaking of repetitive beats, most of them really would lap up any ould shite. There was a huge hunger for throwaway nonsense one could lose one’s tiny little mind to. Aficionados had nothing to do with it. In this sense, and also for easily-pleased teenagers who were generally excluded from the over-18s arena of electronic music, clubs and live DJs, Maniac 2000 was the perfect dance track. Cheap, easy, and stupid.

I’ve heard of UK DJs who, when the track was sent to them, were so amused by the aural proclivities of stupid Paddies that they used the promo disc as a Frisbee. I’ve heard that Mark McCabe, to this day, remains mortified that he was the Frankenstein to the Maniac 2000 monster. Neither nugget helps. For ten weeks, Maniac 2000 straddled the Irish charts and humped the nation’s ears like a mangy cur with nothing to lose but its crabs. And I hate it. I really, truly, unashamedly hate it. I hate it more than crashing into September after a summer of rain. I hate it more than a milky Hitler. I fucking HATE Maniac 2000.

What of you, fellow Monday-trudgers? This is a safe space, so please feel free to let it all out. Share the burden, share the hatred. What pop-culture feature do you detest? Michael McIntyre’s sniggery head? Stephenie Meyer’s butchering of the English language? Something not entirely understandable? Let us know!

*What are the odds Mark McCabe is Sinead’s cousin or something? It’d be just my luck.