"Frustrated"
"Frustrated", written by Fieger and Knack guitarist Berton Averre, was the B-side of "Good Girls Don't". Like a number of songs on Get the Knack, such as "My Sharona", "Frustrated" was inspired by Sharona Alperin, and reflected Fieger's real life frustration at the fact that he had a crush on her, but she was keeping him at arm's length (they would eventually have a relationship). Lyrics include lines such as "She'll make you weak, out of breath and feeling close to death." Jack Lloyd of Knight Ridder described it as a song of teen-age woe. The Knack also included "Frustrated" on the live DVD On Stage at World Cafe Live released in 2007. Although not released as an A-side, the band made a promotional music video of the song.
Billboard described "Frustrated" as "The Rolling Stones' answer to Sharona", and called it one of the album's "best tracks". Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone called "Frustrated" a "neck breaker" and considered the song an "artfully veiled metaphor for their leader's professional ambitions", which describes Fieger as "an ingenious overreacher just now closing in on his real goal of securing power by whipping up a pop-rock treat that'll have kids begging to rot their minds on it." Ira Robbins and Michael Sandlin of Trouser Press described the song as a "tight guitar pop" song which described women as "prick-teases". Author John Borack described "Frustrated" like "Good Girls Don't" as a "mean pop tune" in which Fieger comes off "like a leering, sexist twit with hormones a-raging." Pete Bishop of the Pittsburgh Press clained that "Frustrated" "lean(s) towards bubblegum". Critic S. Victor Aaron of Something Else! praised the song's "huge backbeat", "lively bass line" and "thick slab of guitar riffs" as well as Fieger's "impishly sung lyrics". Aaron summed up "Frustrated" as a "perfect danceable tough rocker for any party" and noted that it got significant airplay on AOR radio stations. Audio magazine called it a "basher" with "plenty of style". The Knack bassist Prescott Niles described the song as "catchy" and noted that it was "a big crowd favorite".
Like "Good Girls Don't" and "My Sharona", "Frustrated" was covered by the Chipmunks on their album Chipmunk Punk. The Chipmunks' version incorporates an excerpt from the Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".
Read more about this topic: Good Girls Don't (song)
Famous quotes containing the word frustrated:
“The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The sense of an entailed disadvantage—the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centred, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer sort, who presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a myriad, the inexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imagination tender.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)