Minneapolis multi-instrumentalist James M LaRocque has built a career on genre promiscuity, cutting his teeth across big band, jazz, country, punk, and lounge before landing on a songwriting style that draws as easily from The Beatles and Bach as it does from 10cc and Zappa. “TDS,” released June 16th, is a character takedown song aimed at what LaRocque describes as an egotistical, vain, and generally ugly personality type – the kind of person, he notes, most listeners will recognize from somewhere in their own lives. The troll doll on the cover art, designed by Chuck Williams, is a not-especially-subtle stand-in for Donald Trump, with the song’s final repeated lines – “please don’t tell me how rich you are, please don’t tell me how big you are, Donnie” – making the target explicit. LaRocque is also clear that no AI was used anywhere in the music or video.
The humor here is more Zappa than anything else – a satirical, almost cartoonish approach to a genuinely bleak subject, piling on absurd specific insults rather than going for outright anger. Production-wise, though, it’s much more straightforward 80s rock: a big, punchy snare sound and a bassline that plays relentless eighth notes for essentially the entire song, driving the track forward with almost mechanical insistence. That rhythmic stubbornness works in the song’s favor – it gives “TDS” a sense of momentum that mirrors the relentless, repetitive nature of the criticism being leveled, hammering the same point home the way the lyrics do.
Political satire songs live or die on whether the music actually supports the joke, and “TDS” earns that by committing fully to both halves – the absurdist lyric writing and the deadpan, straight-faced 80s rock instrumentation underneath it. LaRocque clearly isn’t trying to be subtle, and the song is more fun for it.
