Welcome once again to Five Songs About, our new weekly (so far, so good!) feature in which we pick a topic and then dig through music history to find relevant songs by some of our favourite artists. It's sort of like a musical parlour game, but mostly it's designed to keep us from finally going insane in this batshit era in which we live. 

Look, we get it. Your New Year's resolution to finally start exercising and get yourself healthy has completely fallen by the wayside, and we're only a month into 2019. Don't worry about it! It happens to the best of us. But there's still time to turn things around. With that in mind, here are five songs designed to get you motivated and to get your blood pumping. Do it!

1. Thunderheist, "Jerk It" (2007)

There's an aphorism, found on fridge magnets and coffee mugs everywhere, that suggests you "dance like no one is watching". Thunderheist takes that one step farther on "Jerk It", which counsels the listener to be fully aware that judgmental eyes might be watching, but to do what you want to do regardless—because, you know, fuck what other people think. Oh, and the video features a model jerking a cock. So there's also that.

SAMPLE LYRIC: Don’t stop, gotta get it get it/Break it down till your body's sweatin'/Everybody watchin', but that don’t mean we stoppin'/Let them know you worth it/Dust it off and jerk it

2. Ice Cube, "You Can Do It" (1999)

Okay, so there's a strong possibility that all the back-and-forth between Ms. Toi and Ice Cube in the chorus has some sexual innuendo, and that the "it" being done is, well, "it". You know: making the beast with two backs. Having a joint session of congress. Blitzkrieg mit dem Fleischgewehr. Boning. (This is seemingly confirmed by the repeated line, later in the song: "Freaky gyration is close to fornication".) Nonetheless, if this cut—Cube's final entry in the Billboard Top 40, barring an unforeseen late-career rally—doesn't make you feel unstoppable, you might want to check yourself for a pulse. And Mack 10 gets bonus points for his verse, in which he declares "I keep pushing, don't quit it/Don't stop till I get it."

SAMPLE LYRIC: [Ms. Toi] You can do it, put your back into it/[Ice Cube] I can do it, put your ass into it/[Ms. Toi] Put your back into it/[Ice Cube] Put your ass into it

3. Andrew W.K., "Keep On Going" (2018)

Andrew Wilkes-Krier is kind of like the Norman Vincent Peale of rock 'n' roll. We mean that literally; the man is an actual, honest-to-god motivational speaker. In 2016, he even undertook a tour of all 50 states in the U.S. to expound upon "positive partying". “During this 50-state odyssey, we aren’t looking for a specific stance on any particular political issue,” he said at the time. “Instead, we’re looking to fortify the foundation of our spirit, so that we can each follow our individual destiny and pursue our own personal exploration of life as best we can. We are uniting around what we have in common—our shared humanity." W.K.'s most recent foray into music is You're Not Alone, a collection of unabashedly inspirational tracks about, well, the power of positive thinking.

SAMPLE LYRIC: But when they tried to push you ‘round/You just stood your ground/And you kept on going/And when they tried to break your heart/You didn’t fall apart/You just kept on going

4. Devo, "Whip It" (1980)

If there’s one thing our mama always told us, it’s that no problem in life is so large that it can’t be solved by cutting the arms off a turtleneck shirt, tightening the belt on a pair of matching shorts, pulling a pair of dress socks up to the limit, putting a flower pot on your head, and then, you know, lunging at it in a disturbingly mechanical way… At least that’s what we remember her saying. Or maybe we’re just recalling this landmark Devo performance from 1980—the first year of official Reaganism. Which, when you think about it, has turned out to be the Problem of All Problems for the planet. Never forget, though: “It’s not too late!”

SAMPLE LYRIC: When a problem comes along/You must whip it/Before the cream sits out too long/You must whip it/When something's going wrong/You must whip it

5. Rollins Band, "Low Self Opinion" (1992)

Based on everything that he'd recorded as a solo artist, with Black Flag, and as a teenager fronting S.O.A., it's not hyperbole to suggest Henry Rollins's "Low Self Opinion" couldn't have come from further left field. Fans had been long accustomed to the Human Pit Bull exorcising his various demons with lyrics like "Hold out your hand to me/Give me your hand/...And I'll bite it off" in "Damaged I". Rollins is as intense and angry as ever with "Low Self Opinion", but for one of the first times he uses his rage to try and make things better. Sounding like the world's most pissed-off guidance counsellor, the singer delivers a message of hope and inspiration to every loner in the mosh pit, arguing they aren't nearly the wastes of spaces they might think. "Low Self Opinion" was funkier than anything Rollins had ever done in the past. It arguably also found him embracing positivity instead of wallowing in the darkness—something that continues today with his lauded spoken-word career. 

SAMPLE LYRIC: If you could see the you that I see/When I see you seeing me/You'd see yourself so differently/Believe me