The Jonas Brothers pander to America’s heartland with a song about Waffle House, and in the process, they humiliate themselves. Over glistening yacht rock with yassified pop sheen, the trio describe the iconic 24-hour breakfast chain as an after-hours place of healing: “No, don’t get stressed, it’s gon’ get figured out/Oh, deep conversations at the Waffle House,” Nick Jonas reassures, while a choir chimes in with praise-Jesus harmonies. “Hey naw” is the brothers’ folksy ad-lib of choice, as if they are not literally from New Jersey.
Let’s be real: After a certain hour, no words of reconciliation are uttered in front of a dead-eyed Waffle House waitress. The dining establishment is where bold truths are hurled with screamed expletives, or just where chairs are thrown. “Kid Rock Gets Probation in Waffle House Fight,” reads an Associated Press headline from 2008; it did not, as the Jonases would suggest, “get figured out” that time. Are there examples of people hashing out their differences over hashbrowns smothered and covered? Almost certainly. But by and large, those moments are for daytime diner softies like the Jonas boys, who are not duking it out late at night but singing “la la la” beatifically toward the rising sun.
