‘Butterfly’ By Crazy Town Needs To Be Celebrated For The Transcendent Banger That It Is

Socrates Johnson7 years ago

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first heard “Butterfly” by Crazy Town.

INT. Roller Rink – Day

Probably rocking a D.A.R.E. sweatshirt and some sexy-as-fuck cargo pants that unzipped into shorts, 10-year-old me is at some school-run shindig called the Skate-a-thon, where everyone skated around and ate pizza for a couple hours (I’m pretty sure there was some competitive fundraising element to it, but I had recently seen Brink! on Disney Channel so I was just in it for the soul skating).

Anyway, I’m blading with a few of my amigos when, all of a sudden, I hear that jimmy-rustling guitar riff (h/t Red Hot Chili Peppers) and those Bob Dylan-esque lyrics “come, my lady, come come, my lady.” Quickly overcome by the feeling that I should probably be doing more with my life, my sucks-at-rollerblading ass tries skating backwards. I wipe out. Hard. Skinned my knees up like a motherfucker; making the conversion from cargo pants to shorts was a costly rookie mistake. But at that moment, I felt like I was Andy “Brink” Brinker, leading Team Pup-N-Suds to the Rollerblade Championships or whatever the fuck they ended up winning at the end of that movie.

Fast forward about 10 years later. I’m on the wrong end of the night’s second or third ‘90s power hour. “Butterfly” comes on. BAH GAWD, THAT’S HIS MUSIC! I felt like getting more drunk, breaking something, writing a sonnet, and making sweet, sweet love all at the same time. Butterfly died that day… and rose from the ashes like a goddamn fiery phoenix. It still had a hint of that nostalgic sound, but also brought with it an edge that was both seductive and dangerous, like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct (note to self: YouTube Basic Instinct interrogation scene after writing this).

Sure, you can innocently rollerblade to “Butterfly” as a middle schooler, but you can also set a couch on fire and shotgun a Four Loko while it blares in the background as a college student. Is it rap? Is it rock? Is it Top 40? It’s all, and yet none of those things. That’s what we in the biz call a “transcendent banger,” folks.

We owe it to the children of the future to uplift Butterfly to the lofty yet deserved status of ultimate bangerdom so that they, too, may bask in its glory. How do we do that, you ask? By playing that song at any and every occasion we possibly can. I’m talking graduations, weddings, baptisms, funerals, divorce hearings, etc.

Play it during a tailgate and you’ll immediately want to throw back a million ice cold Natty Lights with the boys. Have the DJ mix it in at the club. You. Will. Get. That. Nub. Dick. Grinded. On. Bring a girl you met at the bar back to your place? Fire up the Spotify Premium, select “Butterfly,” and she’ll be jumping your bones quicker than you can say, “Fierce nipple pierce you got me sprung with your tongue ring.”

“Butterfly” is the past. “Butterfly” is the present. “Butterfly” is the future. I don’t care if you’re a bright-eyed 10-year-old with your whole life ahead of you, a twenty-something who’s significantly less bright-eyed but still has a few things going for him, or a 55-year-old with a penchant for jacking off during half marathons. “Butterfly” will always be there, just waiting for you to press play so it can take you on a journey of enlightenment and self-discovery.

Hop on that banger train before it leaves the station. Next stop? Crazy Town. .

Image via Shutterstock