The Lonely Island - "Equal Rights (feat. P!nk)

The Lonely Island's second feature-length film, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, is one of the best comedies of the 21st century. It's gained cult status as such in the years since its commercial failure, but it's still a bummer that it's not as widely recognized as, say Anchorman or Superbad. It's an incredibly joke-dense parody of fame in the music industry and the vapid shallowness of the celebrities therein.

This song, aside from being a banger, is a whipsmart takedown of the passive homophobia found in performative and/or corporate allyship and the toxic insecurity of heteronormative masculinity. It's also a direct satire of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' "One Love", or, more specifically, the success of the song with a general public whose support has notoriously ebbed and flowed based on social trends. In the film, Conner4Real - Andy Samberg's delightfully ignorant analogue of the Justins Bieber and Timberlake - releases this song well after gay marriage has been legalized. There's also a reading where the group is mocking themselves, having grown up as private individuals a lot since the "Dick In A Box" days.

I think it's pretty neat that all of this came from a group of straight dudes. It is parody at its finest: both subtle and obvious at once, couching astute cultural observations and critique beneath an onslaught of carefully constructed silliness. I get it caught in my head at least once a month, along with two of the film's other, equally fantastic songs: "I'm So Humble (feat. Adam Levine)" and "Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song)". This movie and soundtrack are where The Lonely Island found themselves inarguable peers with the genius of Weird Al.

Seriously, check this shit out if you haven't. It's fucking great.