Song Of The Day 8/13/2014: Richard Cheese - "Chop Suey"

Quarterly Covers Report: As someone who's made some dimes off the concept many times in the past, let me be the first to proclaim the rock-covered-as-lounge-act substrata is very much played out. I don't think there's much left in the tank. The lounge genre itself is slipping away, I feel. It got a burst of vigor with Capitol's great Ultra-Lounge mission in the late '90s, ensuring it would produce its ironic jollies for at least one decade more, and it did, and we can all be thankful, and now nobody of the millennial persuasion knows what the hell we're talking about. Their soon-to-emerge affection for '70s pop thanks to its brilliant inclusion in Guardians Of The Galaxy is our lounge music. The swizzle has landed.

That means the last great lounge parodist is Richard Cheese, who's overtaken the cocktail rock manifest over the last decade, succeeding by sheer force of numbers and range. Also through meeting necessity head-on: If there was one popular sub-genre annoying and ubiquitous enough for us to want to send over to the lounge generation as a final offering, it's the steroid-man-rock of the late '90s and early oughts. Cheese can do whatever he wants with "Nookie," "Freak On a Leash" and "She Hates Me." Let him drizzle his magic all over those flatbeds for all I care. Here Cheese has his deflating, perspective-setting way with "Chop Suey" from System Of A Down, one of the few bands in that aerosol style I can actually deal with.

(I'm sorry. Looking back over that last paragraph, I feel really bad for slagging so harshly on an entire rock format. To all those bands: I hope you're doing well, that you've found the happiness that eluded you in your recordings, that your Panera franchises are thriving, that you've resolved all issues with your stepfathers, and that you really kick ass at the casino tonight. Mea rocka!)