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Why My Darkest Days Is Needed To Be With Your Music Library

This rock band never got their day, but now the dark days have come to light with the resurgence of their recordings.

By Samantha ParrishPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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In the decade of the new millennium, This band rode the wave in from a major music benefactor that found them to splash onto shore. But sadly, the wave they rode just dispersed onto land and seeped through the sand with a short lived span as their music fell into obscurity.

My Darkest Days had a rocky start in 2005 and five years later, Chad Kroeger found them. With the help of the Nickelback front-man as a song-writer, featured singer, and producer for their first hit Porn Star Dancing was released in 2010.

If you haven't listened to Porn Star Dancing yet, this might be the best stripper song since Pour Some Sugar On Me. See for yourself.

This Canadian band went on for three years with some steady success, but nothing really hit the billboards like Porn Star Dancing and the band disbanded in 2013, so they were only relevant for the latter three years and split after eight years.

When I took the time to go through their albums, it was exactly the kind of music I would have listened to vehemently on repeat in my teenager days that listened to anything of the likes of Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Green Day, My Chemical Romance, etc.

This is a band that you probably listened to without even knowing, This is also a band that has such a unique contribution to the genre of rock music.

I discovered this band on accident, I happen to be looking for covers of Duran Duran songs and found that they did a cover of Come Undone, it was interesting and impressive with their take on one of my favorite songs. At that time I didn't look into what the rest of the band did because I wanted was to keep listening to the Come Undone cover. Years later, I ended up finding Porn Star Dancing on a YouTube shuffle. With a title like that, I was intrigued how the song would be, I accidentally loved it and had to find more of their songs. When I purchased the song on iTunes, and it was placed in my iTunes library, that was when I realized I had already listened to this band years before with the cover of Come Undone. It was clear to me that it was an interesting coincidence and I had the interest I didn't have before to explore the rest of their albums. The various other songs I ventured into listening to, I was thoroughly impressed about their contribution to the genre of rock.

Now when I accidentally re-discovered My Darkest Days and listened to Porn Star Dancing. I did a little research. As mentioned, Chad Kroeger of Nickelback was the one that discovered the band, and he contributed most of his sounds to their first song to be distributed. If you listen to the song, it does sound a lot like Nickelback, that was my first impression. The song is almost entirely helped by Nickelback. the writing, and as mentioned, Chad Kroeger sings a solo in the middle chorus of the song.

If you look at the timing upbringing of My Darkest Days working with Nickelback to create Porn Star Dancing, it's ironic that it was also around the time that Nickelback was starting to put out some songs that a provocative material. Nickelback had made some songs like S.E.X. and Something In Your Mouth.

But I'll admit, the performance to singing the in the criteria of the sexual material from My Darkest Days is better then what Nickelback did. Not because of the reputation of Nickelback and the mixed reviews they get, I'm neutral when it comes to Nickelback, so I say it without antagonizing or demeaning the band. But some bands just can't do a certain criteria for a song of a certain topic.

There has been other songs that My Darkest Days did after Porn Star Dancing that has a plethora of different styles for the songs they wanted to do without losing their identity. But the songs never felt like they were doing what other bands did despite their first song being written by Chad Kroeger. When they started to show what they wanted to do, the brilliance of their style showed. The other dirty songs they did never fell stale or dull to be shock value, nor was it trying to re-create Porn Star Dancing again. The emotional songs they did, shot straight to the heart of the pain they conveyed.

Like their band name, they did songs that were angled towards a dark tone. That dark tone is prominent for the story of their songs. Most of the content for the discography for the band usually had a vibe that was about being misunderstood, betrayed, or starting anarchy. But they did have several different themes that were projected and understood. Not many bands can do the balance to go in between themes while maintaining their identity within their genre and the exact tune they do.

Let me go over an analysis of three of their songs to share how they were very innovative in dark tones that could be dissected to see the meaning.

In Casual Sex it was a song about being friends with benefits and how comfortable it was to have a woman that understood the boundaries of their relationship is just towards sex. Upon listening to this song, it never felt demeaning or misogynistic, it was just a blunt song about the neutral nature of desire of the tryst together without the romance.

"My heart will never break I'm just here to break a sweat"

Sick and Twisted Affair was a song about giving into temptation of each other. The singer talks about how he knows this woman needs him in dire times and he loves it, and in turn he sings about how she takes control when the moment comes up. So it's a balance of what these two want out of this affair. But there is a comfort in the company that they have with each other in secretive times. They don't want to be alone and can't get enough of each other. There is also a strange co-dependency of care for each other, so it appears to be more then just lust as the singer explains. It wasn't endorsing the relationship of affairs, and I found it refreshing to explain the perspective of the man and his role of being the object of desire; how he enjoys it from what he can give in any way he can. The song also explains the woman's side to it too and how she takes control in these moments to be with him. The song isn't about how the singer is using the woman for his own selfish desires, nor the woman using the man, they are on the same wavelength of recklessness. Anytime I listen to this song, it invokes a sense of rebellion and recklessness for lust that I never get.

"You need poison, Like it’s the only thing that keeps you alive, You hear voices, They just keep telling you they need me tonight"

Save Yourself was about the broken nature in the singer. He's pleading to the person he loves that despite how scarred they are from their own demons they can't be together and knows she'll never truly understand what has taken hold of him. He pushes the person he loves away because of the demons that have continued to haunt him and doesn't want to drag someone into his own hell.

"Save yourself, From the choices I make, 'Cause nothing but failure follows me"

These were the kind of rock songs I wish I discovered back in my teenage days. After the band went their separate ways, the songs they did never got the proper attention. When I decided to take a chance on this disbanded band, I've seen that the selective songs they did have finally been given the praise they deserved.

In 2018, the songs off of their albums have been released and people can listen to what they missed out on. To me, this band has given me the chance to go back in time ten years ago to listen to these songs that I would have listened to. But at the same time, I think their resurgence has come at a right time where YouTube is starting to be attentive to the music sections to make channels of all artists and their entire discography.

Now that this band has been re-discovered, if you still keep up with some of the rock bands you listened to in your younger years. There is a chance you may have inadvertently listened to the lead singer Matt Walsh and didn't even know it. Matt Walsh is actually the current lead singer for Three Days Grace after his brother who departed from the band in 2014.

After finding that out, I had to re-listen to the song Infra-Red, I've been infatuated with that song for two years now, I had no idea I had been listening to another lead singer.

So that's two times now I've been listening to My Darkest Days on accident, now I'm stuck and I accidentally love this band.

With their songs uploaded to YouTube, there has been an overdue praise for their songs throughout the comment sections. Many listeners have commented about where this band was and how come there isn't enough attention for this forgotten band.

This kind of rock music from the early 2010s has been a wonderful blast to the past of how rock music used to be. I had almost forgotten what it was like to this kind of rock music that I loved to listen to when I was obsessed with rock music, but discovering them makes me appreciate that minor era of rock music before it changed in the later years.

Now that there has been a steady spread of attention for My Darkest Days, the fan-base is growing day by day and maybe, My Darkest Days, will have their day again with give a reunion to the fans they now have.

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About the Creator

Samantha Parrish

What's something interesting you always wanted to know?

Instagram: parrishpassages

tiktok: themysticalspacewitch

My book Inglorious Ink is now available on Amazon!

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