Bubbling Under the 75 Best Songs of 2011: The Belle Brigade

Artist: The Belle Brigade

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78. The Belle Brigade
“Losers”

The lead single from the Belle Brigade’s thoroughly engaging eponymous debut begins with a mellow acoustic guitar cuff but builds into a slamming tension-and-release anthem that serves as a refreshing denunciation of conformity and competition, threaded to this bro-sis duo’s tribute to ’70 California pop. With their Everlys-meet-the-the-Chipmunks family harmonies, the Brigade updates There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, but instead of rejecting all the crap they learned in high school, Barbara and Ethan Gruska catalogue all the shit they don’t care about anymore, like being smooth with women, going out on Fridays, being the life of parties, being harder, being daddy’s favorite, etc. What the Belle Brigade achieve most, though, is a sort of irony. In disregarding winning, they’ve made a single that crushed the competition.