Pink Slip, Stillwater And Our Other Favorite Bands That Don’t Actually Exist
By Elizabeth Rauner
Everyone loves music. Music is dope and it sounds good. Everyone loves listening to music (unless you’re Satan) and everyone loves talking about music. Music rocks. Bands are cool. Singing is nice. To celebrate music, which is rad, we decided to spend some time talking about our favorite bands of television and film. They might not be “real” bands, but damn do they have soul, and good sounds. If anything, they might just have a good band name? Anyways, let’s talk about Lindsay Lohan already.
1. Pink Slip in Freaky Friday: Pink Slip is the perfect early 2000’s teen angst band. Their sound is generic, their fronting members are cute girls, and dudes hang in the back and their singer has wild colored streaks in her hair. Essentially, Pink Slip is perfect. They brought an edge to an already stellar movie and gave us not one, but two teen anthems that we can sing until the end of time. Who doesn’t want to listen to “Ultimate” and daydream about Chad Michael Murray with long, greasy hair (I’m so sorry) and rock out to “Take Me Away” after telling your mom to GTFO of your room? 2. Stillwater in Almost Famous: Does this need a freaking explanation? They recorded a 6-song CD so they’re BASICALLY a real band. Regardless, Stillwater’s tunes amp up the superbly crafted soundtrack of the best rock n roll movie ever (no room for negotiation on this folks). Why are we explaining this to you? TBH if you don’t know what we’re talking about you should check yourself, because you my friend have already wrecked yourself.
3. Mouse Rat in Parks and Recreation: Fact: Andy Dwyer is a dreamboat with a band. Fact: his band wrote a song about a dead horse and it is beautiful. Mouse Rat is that down-and-out local band that sings songs about daily happenings with subpar yet glorious lyrics. You love to sway along with your cheap beer. You almost forget they aren’t a real band. Also, anyone who says things like this AND fronts a band is a winner and it doesn’t even matter if their music is “good.”
4. The Cheetah Girls because THE CHEETAH GIRLS.
5. While we’re talking about Raven Symone, let’s talk about Boyz N Motion, the fictional boy band of Disney’s That’s So Raven. Before networks started importing One Direction for guest episodes they created their own boy bands, and they’re just as cute, just as silly and sing about emergency preparedness instead of sex (which now just sounds like the same thing actually). Boyz N Motion are not a real boy band, but like, are any boy bands real?
6. Hep Alien (or, Lane’s Band) in Gilmore Girls: Lane is a school-nerd female drummer, which means this band is automatically the best. Hep Alien has some boy drama, with Adam Brody as an original band member (nope, I can’t) and Lane’s boyfriend. He leaves town, and she later dates and marries other band member Zack. Basically Hep Alien is super close (three members live together) but they also have a dad guitarist and, um, a FEMALE DRUMMER.
Honorable Mentions:
Lana and the Lannettes from The Princess Diaries. Mandy Moore is great.
Josie and the Pussycats. Because, Tara Reid.
Fistfull of Assholes from Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist. Ok, so they don’t have a drummer, but they have immortal awkward teen and cactus holding Michael Cera.
This FUCKING LESS-THAN-A-MINUTE SONG FROM KIM POSSIBLE HAS BEEN STUCK IN MY HEAD FOR HALF A CENTURY. SOMEONE MAKE THIS SHIT STOP.
