“Starlett Johansson“
from the album Reality Check
2008
iTunes
Followers of the Teenagers’ profoundly profane emergence have a valid reason to be made nervous by this song’s title. After all, if the Euro-trash popsters are worked into a lather about garden variety cheerleaders, fashion students and socialites, what kind of depravity do they have in mind for a universally lusted after sexpot? Surprisingly, it’s a semi-chaste appreciation, albeit one that’s about as deep as an US Weekly page.
Like their countrymen Phoenix and Daft Punk, the Teenagers use big dumb ’80s riffs that have been Frenched up to the point of acceptability. The song follows the group’s established template, with an ambiguously European creep speaking slowly, leading to an airy (and Air-y) chorus from his more dashing counterpart. The only things these two seem to know about Miss Scarlett are nuggets gained from men’s magazines and video rentals. In the manner of a 17-year-old dolt, the actions of film heroines are attributed to the actress herself and questionable sound bites about a distaste for monogamy are taken as gospel. But since this track is spared the icky, borderline misogynist language of the band’s other tunes, it’s all a pleasingly melodic daydream.
Also, when the guitars thud out that duh duh duh, duh duh duh and you hear the words, “…and then I noticed/ poor Jared Leto,” avoiding a grin is clinically impossible.