Last Resort / Cut My Life Into Pieces

About

"Cut My Life Into Pieces" is the lyrics from the 2000 nu metal rock song "Last Resort" by American hard rock band Papa Roach. Since the '90s nostalgia-driven resurgence of the song's popularity in the late 2000s, the lyrics of the song has been frequently parodied in various forms, including the notable mondegreen rendition, "cut my life into pizzas, this is my plastic fork."

Origin

"Last Resort" was released on September 18th, 2000 as the debut single from Papa Roach's second album Infest. The song, which arrived at the height of the nu metal wave during the early 2000s, immediately became a commercial hit and the breakout single that brought the band into mainstream popularity. It also performed quite well on many charts around the world, including Billboard's number #1 spot on the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks.

Saturday Night Live Skit

One of the first known parodies of the song's lyrics was featured in a musical skit on the November 11th, 2000 episode of Saturday Night Live, wherein the lyrics "don't give a fuck" is substituted with "don't give a fork" for comedic effect.

YTMNDs

On December 25th, 2005, YTMND user catwatch created one of the first parodies of the song featuring an image of the classic board game The Game of Life. Over the course of the following year, at least four additional parody sites employing various puns surfaced on YTMND.

Spread

As the nu metal and screamo waves of the late '90s and early 2000s began to wane in popularity, online interest in the song gradually and steadily declined as well. However, sometime in early 2010, almost a decade after the release of the song, "Last Resort" made a comeback on various music-related discussion forums, mainly for its highly cringeworthy lyrics in retrospect, including on 4chan":/memes/4chan where a thread about the song reportedly gave way to the most well-known parody of the original lyrics in which the word "pieces" is replaced with "pizzas".

On June 19th, 2010, the first notable parody of the song in its full-length was submitted to FunnyJunk by user ieuhauntswizards. Months later, on December 10th, the pizza-themed image macro was posted on the German humor forum Lowbird, followed by another repost to /r/pics on April 20th, 2011 by Redditor Sopadeelie. On October 22nd, the earliest archived parody instance of the lyrics was posted on 4chan's /sci/ (science & math) board.

Paul Ryan Hoax

On March 24th, 2017, after a vote for the American Health Care Act was pulled from the House of Representatives due to lack of support, a hoax began spreading on Twitter that as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the most prominent supporter of the bill, drove away from the capitol while listening to "Last Resort." Twitter user @justin_halpern^[22] tweeted a convincing photoshop of the New York Times coverage of the bill's failure, editing the last paragraph of the New York Times piece to suggest that Ryan had been blaring "Last Resort" as a means to vent his frustration.

The tweet gained over 19,000 retweets and 45,000 favorites. It also led to widespread sharing of the story as if it were real on Twitter, though this was more likely a prank born out of schadenfreude than a sincere belief in the photoshop. The moment was covered by Daily Dot^[23] and Twitter Moments.^[24]

The members of Papa Roach became aware of the story and tweeted a cheeky endorsement of the hoax, before reminding their Twitter followers that the song was about suicide (shown below).

Search Interest

External References