Fan Girl Discusses her Love for Big Time Rush and Reviews their New Album

Nov. 21, 2011. The day was finally here. Not that I would ever be able to forget, with Big-Time Twitter blowing up my phone with tweets from Big Time Rush promoting their new album, Elevate. Every three seconds my phone would buzz with yet another fan’s tweet that singer Kendall Schmidt felt the need to retweet:

“@BTRluvr4life: OMG!!! <3 YOU! SO EXCITED!! ELEVATE!1!!1”

Gotta admire the originality of preteen girls. Nevertheless, I read every single one while furiously typing out my own tweets to Big Time Rush (BTR) @Jamesmaslow, @1loganhenderson, @theCarlosPena and @HeffronDrive from my purely fan girl twitter account.

Big Time Rush, like Hannah Montana, is a band born out of a TV show. Their hit Nickelodeon series follows the ‘four hockey players from Minnesota’ as they try to make it as a boy band in L.A. Two years ago, my three best friends and I fell in love with the very same four quirky cute guys, their catchy pointless dance music and dippy screen writing.

It’s safe to say that I’m obsessed.

The night before the album was released, I Googled around the area trying to find any stores selling Elevate that opened before school, any 24-hour Walmart or Target nearby. Nope. Thanks, Kansas. It looked like my ‘Elevation’ would have to wait till after school. And after eight very long, very boring hours—it was time.

Picture: you’ve just been peacefully shopping for groceries at the local Walmart, you’re way out the door, about to head home and cook your Hamburger Helper, two-year-old daughter in hand and—BAM. You almost get mauled by a crazed high school student as she bursts through the entrance doors and sprints toward the back of the store, best friend in tow. That girl is me, Kim Hoedel.

It was there. I had it. “Elevate” by Big Time Rush. Unfortunately, the CD player in my car was broken, so we entertained ourselves with flipping through the CD booklet discussing which member wrote which songs and arguing over who looked best in which picture. I had tried to switch cars with my dad so that I could blast Elevate on the ride home, but his brakes had just gone out. Even though I said that I didn’t mind, he advised me to value my own life over Big Time Rush.

Home at last and home alone. Score. Phaty rage—and by ‘rage,’ I mean blaring BTR and dancing around like a 7-year- old. I bolted inside and popped the CD into our living room sound system. I couldn’t wait to see what catchy computerized chords BTR had in store for me. But as the songs went on, I noticed a theme that was comprised of a lot of clichéd love lines and an overdose on the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘baby.’ When did Big Time Rush become We The Kings?

I was let down when my hopes of synthetic pop beats turned into soft singing and sweet piano playing. At first, I wasn’t worried, BTR always threw in one or two emotional love songs. Last album it was “Worldwide,” a song that wasn’t my personal favorite until recently, when Big Time Rush pulled me up on stage at their Hutchinson concert and serenaded me with it.

Kim makes her entrance at 1:18.

I skipped around the tracks and was shocked to find an uncomfortable amount of slow, quiet chord progressions. On to the next track, surely this would end the streak. Nope. On the contrary, I was overwhelmed by Kendall’s raw voice belting out a love ballad. No. No, no, no. Stop BTR. What are you doing?! Song after song, my heart sank lower and lower.

Seriously, BTR?

The reason my friends and I loved Big Time Rush in the first place was because it was mindless. It all started as a joke, watching the show to make fun of it, but now it has progressed to fan girl twitter accounts, poster plastered walls, 45-minute phone calls about the newest find in quirky BTR Youtube videos, two concerts (and counting), one involving a five hour commute and Tivos filled to maximum capacity with Big Time Rush episodes.

I liked that as a graduate of elementary school, it wasn’t my demographic. I liked that it was pointless and stupid without drama or real-world problems. Every TV show now involves death or some lame love story—whereas Big Time Rush is more like “Oh no!! We knocked Jordin Sparks down a well! What are we gonna do?!?”

Big Time Rush’s first album was written originally for their show: stupid, pointless, poppy, computerized and most importantly, awesome. Now with “Elevate,” Big Time Rush is trying to be a band first, and a TV show second. The members of Big Time Rush wrote eight of the songs themselves, and while I love that they wrote their own songs, I miss the empty pointlessness of it all.

What really stinks about listening to their newest album is you can hear the demographic they are trying to target. Each song is a sensitive love song to the listener. The album might as well be called ‘Girl.’ The songs are full of typical boy-band messages like: Oh, you think you are invisible but I see you and I love you, you think you are ugly but you’re beautiful and I love you, and I will always be here for you because I love you.

Does BTR think I have self-esteem issues? I mean, not me personally, I’m the 17-year-old who was crazy enough to do their choreographed dance on stage with them, but that’s not what’s important. It means BTR thinks their listeners have self-esteem issues. Like typical Rushers are girls who skulk around, feeling lonely all day, hating themselves and turn to Big Time Rush for love and support. Awesome. Proud to be a Rusher.

Let’s get real. Elevate was kinda disappointing, Big Time Rush let me down with their ‘scandalous’ attempts to separate themselves from Nickelodeon by including H-E-double- hockey-sticks in a song lyric, mentioning ‘clubs’ in another song and singing about ‘deep’ emotions and romantic physical contact.

Let’s get real, again. The album came out three weeks ago and I’ve had every song memorized from Day One. Big Time Rush’s music quality isn’t the point, not for me. The point is that they are cute. They are funny. They make you smile and are just altogether mindless and quirky.

I’m still a die-hard Rusher. I will still listen and love every song from Elevate because those are my boys. I will still tweet @bigtimerush day and night. I will still double-check to make sure the new episode of BTR is set to record on my Tivo. I will still have my computer home page set to the picture of James and me BTR posted on their Nickelodeon webpage. I will still spend every moment in Honors Physics trying to spell out BTR song titles on the periodic table.

We all have our secret obsessions; I’m just willing to publish mine for anyone to read. But I’ll come out and say it: I will always support and love Big Time Rush, no matter what.

I mean, think about it, after this article comes out, they’ll probably be the only friends I have left.