It's an episode that begins with us talking quite frankly about our balls (and our strength), and you might need a lot of strength to get through almost two hours on an album that just doesn't quite get to where it thinks it's going, as the risks hardly ever pay off and at the end of the day, its biggest song is still a cover. But WHAT A COVER IT IS. We discuss what it means to have a cover hit huge, how we perceived it then and now, and whether or not "Movies" can hold a candle to "Smooth Criminal" as the album's first (and third!) single. We also learn that Alien Ant Farm really wants you to know they're good musicians, actually, and it took us 36 episodes but we also figure out that every band categorized as "nu-metal" in the early 2000s could actually be divided into one of two groups: Ozzfest or Warped Tour. And finally, we wax poetic about skaters and "skateboard bands" and Dryden Mitchell's "write the words, worry about what they mean later" strategy of songwriting.

If you want to learn a lot more about songwriting strategy and support the show at the same time, you can head on over to patreon.com/thepodkast, where $4/month gets you access to THREE bonus episodes a month. We do two short reviews of nu-metal songs and one full-length episode much like this one, as last month we had Bryn Nieboer from Stay Inside on the show to discuss The Mad Capsule Markets' classic, "OSC-DIS". There's nearly 80 episodes in the back catalogue to choose from and you get access to our Discord too. What a deal!