Music

Mullet Over

Let's end this. Now.

By Niki D'Andrea 

Dear Gods of Rock:

It's me, The Mullet. Please kill me. My time on this earth—hanging off Richard Marx's head as it sang "Don't Mean Nothin'," going to Indigo Girls shows and bathing in NASCAR exhaust fumes—has been fun, but I just can't take being the style that springs and sucks eternal anymore.

When you created me on the eighth day, I was a proud pariah of hesher hair—an awful, evil 'do that rocked out at metal shows in the '80s; frequented stock car races, redneck bars and lesbian music festivals; and rode around in Camaros, shedding myself all over wife-beaters. I graced the craniums of people such as Michael Bolton and Billy Ray Cyrus. I mutated and spread into the femullet, the permullet, the skullet and the mullatino. I was an abominable follicle revolution, and I liked being loathed.

So why did you have to go and let people cultivate this love of lowbrow culture? I'm like the bell-bottoms of hairstyles now. I just want to go away, but some people insist I'm so bad that I'm cool. I'm "retro." Children used to cut their own hair and carelessly give themselves a mullet, and it'd piss off their parents. Now, Angelina Jolie gives her son Maddox a mullet on purpose.

And this latest thing, this two-disc Mullets Rock! Too! compilation on Sony Legacy Recordings, is only going to make things worse for me, 'cause it's all ridiculous "retro" too. There's the Psyched! CD, which includes all these fab-o "fuck me" FM hits from the '70s such as Ted Nugent's "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang," Eddie Money's "Baby Hold On," Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and Blue Oyster Cult's "Burnin' for You." A perfect soundtrack for mullethead mating. Then there's the Bummed! disc, which is full of ballads about breakups such as Cheap Trick's "The Flame," Warrant's "I Saw Red" and Nazareth's "Love Hurts," along with cheesy been-dumped ditties such as Eric Carmen's "All By Myself," Air Supply's "All Out of Love" and Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

With 30 songs in all, this fuck-and-run-and-then-feather-your-sides collection can only make mullet-lovers breed and break up. Which breeds more mullets. If you were going to make me an iconic rock hairstyle, couldn't you at least have inspired somebody super-cool to sport me? I mean, the pompadour got Elvis. Not fair.

Please, just let me die. The emo cut can take my place.