Hell Is A Discotheque

"Bait & Switch/Hell Is A Discotheque"
Single by Romo from the album POPSTAR 2: Belle After Death
Released	January 18, 2010
Format	CD single Digital download
Recorded	2009
Genre	Electropop
Length	3:52
Label	Ensemble
Writer	Jenna Romo
Producer	Jenna Romo
Chart position	#2 (Urapopstar Singles Chart) #9 (Urapopstar Airplay 40)
Certification	Platinum
Additional artwork
UK CD2
Romo chronology
"TITS-FM!" (2009) "Bait & Switch/Hell Is A Discotheque" (2010) "Game Over" (2010)

"Hell Is A Discotheque" is track 7 on Romo's third studio album POPSTAR 2: Belle After Death. The song was written by Romo with the call-and-response structure she popularized with her song "If Blair Waldorf Jumped Off A Cliff" from her previous album, POPSTAR: The Life & Times Of Belle Ball. The latter song is referred to when the prisoner shouts to Hannah, "Go jump off a cliff, Blair!"

"Hell Is A Discotheque" was released as a double A-side with "Bait & Switch" as the album's second single on January 18, 2010.

Background

"Hell Is A Discotheque" takes place following Hannah's arrest on child pornography charges in "Sextuality". Hannah is in jail, and by chance she shares her cell with the same woman who shared a cell with Belle Ball when she served a two week jail sentence in the previous POPSTAR album. The woman tells Hannah that she wanted to speak her mind to Belle when they had the chance to so that she could help her through her problems, but Belle shut her out so she could be by herself. But Hannah's verbal exchanges with the prisoner in defense of Belle cause a similar situation, and ultimately her time in jail echoes Belle's.

Romo says the prisoner's belief that Hannah was more disturbing than Dakota Fanning was included because "Dakota Fanning is just plain creepy".

This is the third song Romo wrote utilizing the call-and-response technique, following "If Blair Waldorf Jumped Off A Cliff" from POPSTAR 1 and "Good Cop Bad Cop", a collaboration between Amy Marshall and China, released on Amy's Reincarnation album.

Reception

"Hell Is A Discotheque" is largely considered by fans and critics to be the best song on POPSTAR 2. Q called it "the highlight of the album", Popjustice referred to it as "the most exciting thing Romo has done", and BBC Music listed it as "one of the best pop songs of the last five years".

Allmusic's review of POPSTAR 2 writes that "'Hell Is A Discotheque' borders on soap opera territory as Belle Ball's biggest fan and a religious zealot are imprisoned together and attempt to discredit each other, expanding on the theatrics of 'Blair Waldorf' and religious exploration of 'Dance On My Grave' from the last album".

Track listings

CD1

1. Bait & Switch
2. Hell Is A Discotheque
3. Girl, Interrupted
4. Deep Comatose/Physical (live at Shell Ruin: All That Glitters)

CD2

1. Bait & Switch (Dresden & Bareilles Switchblade Rock Mix)
2. Bait & Switch (KLA Jailbait Bitch Switch Mix)
3. Bait & Switch (Dance in the Snow Remix)
4. Hell Is A Discotheque (DB Anti-Nisha Unsexy Buttercrap Holmes2Die Mix)
5. Hell Is A Discotheque (Alesha's Infernal Superstar Remix)
6. Bait & Blunt (Romo vs. Paulo)
7. Hell Is A Disco Stick (Paulo's ROFL ROMO'S GOT A BIT DONG Remix)

Music video

The video for "Hell Is A Discotheque" premiered on January 14, 2010. It was hyped by Romo as "a big budget depiction of Hell", and she used most of the budget Ensemble gave her to film the videos for her double A-side on the "Hell" video, allotting over $350,000 for "Hell" and only $25,000 on "Bait & Switch". Like "Bait & Switch", Romo co-directed the video and played two characters; here, she plays POPSTAR 2 protagonist Hannah and POPSTAR 1 protagonist Belle Ball.

The video begins with Hannah being escorted into jail for her engagement in sexting. Because the juvenile detention facility is full, she is locked in a cell alongside adult prisoners. Amidst a swarm of chaotic madness, Hannah can do nothing but fantasize, looking outside her dank window and envisioning herself someplace else, beginning in what seems to be a normal neighborhood before the ground before her shakes and falls into a sea of flames, symbolizing that Hannah is envisioning Hell.

As Hannah turns around to seek refuge, she slips to the ground and encounters the bloodied and bruised body of Belle Ball tied to a post. As she warns Hannah not to look Satan in the eye, the ground shakes once more. The camera reveals that the shakes are being caused by the footsteps of Satan, depicted as a ripped bodybuilder in biker garb with snakes around his neck. Satan uses one of his snakes to further torture Belle through biting and suffocation.

Next, Hannah enters an abandoned prison, where she comes face to face with the zealot who takes a confrontational stand against her in the song. Hannah triggers another earthquake when she accuses the zealot of lacking faith, in turn destroying the prison. She makes it out just barely, but passes out and is escorted by Satan's minions to a dungeon. The inside of the dungeon brings the song's title to life, depicting Hell as a discotheque with Satan as the DJ and the dancefloor as a torture chamber in which dancers get electrocuted. Hannah regains consciousness and expresses shock upon what she sees, and attempts to find a way out. But she stumbles upon another torture chamber, in which she is gripped and bound by sets of hands coming from inside the walls. Hannah fails to fight them off using the force of her body, but manages to free herself simply by biting the hands.

While searching for an exit, Hannah finds a mystery room with a peephole. She peers through and finds Satan with an army of 12 notorious killers congregating in the room with him in a homage to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Satan believes one of the killers in the room is trying to betray him, and as a form of punishment, demands that several of them perform fellatio on him. Hannah then moves to the other side, where she uncovers another mystery door with another peephole. The peephole leads to the same room, but this time Hannah sees Satan performing anal sex on OJ Simpson. Satan just barely misses orgasm so he can check who's lurking outside the room, prompting Hannah to immediately run away.

She manages to reverse course and return to the disco hall, now empty, leaving not before she throws a high heeled shoe at one of the strobe lights. But this act sets off another earthquake and Hannah once again just barely escapes before possibly dying. The scenery outside the dungeon shows what appears to be a park with a lake, but the lake contains gasoline and sets everyone who sets foot in it on fire. Horrified by what she sees, Hannah runs as fast as she can, dodging a crowd of badly charred bodies, but she cannot take it anymore and she passes out one last time before regaining consciousness and finally confronting Satan. Immobile, Hannah tries to budge but inevitably surrenders to Satan as he moves his hands around her body.

The video ends as Hannah returns to reality, overwhelmed by her fantasy, screaming for Satan not to touch her. The guard asks Hannah's arresting officer for "the number for the crazy house".

Reaction

Almost immediately after its television premiere, the music video for "Hell Is A Discotheque" created a firestorm of controversy.

Various parents groups and religious groups used the Internet to express their distaste for Romo's video, citing its use of explicit language, strong violence, and disturbing content. The Anti-Defamation League believed that glamorizing hell as a nightclub encouraged bad behavior and frowned upon religion, while the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood blasted the video's use of images of torture, not limited to but including bondage, electrocution, and severe burning.

By far the video's most controversial scene involved a gay sex session between Satan and several notorious killers. GLAAD demanded that the video be pulled from future television viewings because it left the impression that gay people were "something to be feared" by depicting Satan as a homosexual; many religious groups, in addition to criticizing the gay sex scene, thought paying homage to the Last Supper by replacing Jesus with Satan and the 12 Apostles with 12 notorious killers such as OJ Simpson and Charles Manson was in bad taste.

The groups criticizing the video have also called for an all-out boycott of Romo's records.

The video's imagery unsettled even her peers, with Calvin Andrews of Twisted Disco and Saffiyah Compton from Tiger Tiger admitting the video went too far.

Promotion

Full time promotion began the week after the Christmas charts, with Romo quickly unleashing her acid tongue against the likes of Sexy Star and Camilla Holmes. Romo's return to attack stance came following her third place ranking in the most recent URAPS Rate and continued sales successes; in the wake of the poor chart entry for previous single "TITS-FM!" and her two major awards losses at Urapopstar Awards 17, Ensemble reps decided to ply Romo with "happy drugs" to alter her personality so that she could appeal to a mass audience in the same vein as friend and mentor China.

To promote the single, Romo performed at the Shell Ruin tribute concert All That Glitters, performing a medley of Ruin's "Deep Comatose" and Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" (the chorus of which closes "Deep Comatose"), along with a slightly amended version of her own "Dance On My Grave". The "Deep Comatose" performance appears on the CD1 format as a B-side. Furthermore, Romo announced her second headlining tour, Usurp The Throne, with support acts Logan Cross and The Warning; the tour will feature an intermission from the narrative set with a tribute to Ruin, which was done because Romo's original plan was to support Ruin on her headlining tour, Live At Last, and Romo's UK dates included many of the venues Shell was to play.

Romo also got caught in a number of embarrassing situations, such as finding herself playing around with mannequins in a sexual manner and dressing up in a sci-fi-inspired ensemble at a nightclub that eventually led her to spend an afternoon in "Star Wars Jail". She also made headlines for going out with a 16-year-old, leading the media to dub her a "cougar in training".

Following Elice Claire's success dabbling in country and western-inspired pop, Romo experimented by performing an impromptu acoustic country set with Mark Charlie Wilson during a concert, much in the style of CMT's Crossroads series.

She also signed on to be a spokesperson for Hawaii's board of tourism after multiple visits to the 50th U.S. state and much enjoyment out of it.

Controversy

The impending release of "Bait & Switch/Hell Is A Discotheque" drew headlines for demonstrating Romo's willingness to take chances on the charts. Originally she was going to release January 11th and face off against Jack Stevens and Alex Washington, but after a late start on promotion she moved to January 18th, where her biggest competition was from Paulo Araujo's latest single, "Blunt". The tight competition, with many believing Paulo to be the winner when all is said and done, became a source of man-made controversy in the world of Romo.

Romo was notably absent for two weeks after announcing the date change, and blamed it on Paulo for she believed his tea was cursed. She thought Paulo was doing everything possible to attempt to get the upper hand on her release date, further adding that she thought bad blood between them had sunk in during recent weeks because of Romo's support of Paulo's ex-boyfriend Alex Washington. Paulo, however, said he hoped Romo would beat him on the charts because it would squash beliefs that she was just a passing fad on its way out.

Things remained quiet between both parties since then, until on January 11, 2010, when Romo responded to predictions that Paulo would reach #1 by announcing "a global tea boycott" if the predictions became true. Paulo responded in an interview on GMTV that the singer is nothing more than the plastic personas she created in her POPSTAR albums, crying after saying he thought she was his friend. The event contributed to a nervous breakdown that put Paulo in the psych ward, immediately leading to a massive backlash against Romo - even on her own official message boards and social networking pages - because she took her attempts to reclaim #1 too far.

Romo's friendship with China took a downturn, especially in the weeks following China's immense success with "Not Gonna Tell" and Fortune Favours The Bold, as Romo believed she was on the same level as China but not achieving the same results. China was deeply saddened by Paulo's hospitalization, and Romo's self-centered tendencies came out once again as she got in a bitter fight with China about how wrong she was during the whole situation. Many reports surfaced following the fight that Romo and China would end their friendship, although it ultimately did not happen.

Chart performance

"Hell Is A Discotheque" entered the Urapopstar Airplay 40 in late November 2009, and has so far peaked at #9.

"Bait & Switch/Hell Is A Discotheque" debuted at #2 on the Urapopstar Top 40 Singles Chart with 90,548 copies sold. Despite losing a fierce chart battle with Paulo Araujo, the single gave Romo her best first-week sales to date, barely beating the 89,232 figure amassed by her collaboration with China, "Belle Ball/Covergirl". It held on to the runner-up position the following week, outsold by China's "Dead Famous". The single sold a total 309,836 copies, enough to be certified platinum.

External links

Lyrics