The Singles Jukebox

And we kinda shrug…

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[4.57]

Sophia Clara: Is it 2007 again? Did I miss our collective time travel? Did nobody tell me? Because I am ecstatic. Let’s all go to Hot Topic. 5 Seconds of Summer has always sounded like a band of spiritual time-travelers rather than a throwback, joyously transporting us all, and this is no exception. This is a great song, okay. They are so petulant and mad about their bitchy girlfriend, so helpless in the face of her overwhelming hotness. “Just a little itty bitty bit hot!” It is so nasty, it is so juvenile, so aware of how juvenile it is. I am genuinely shocked that the title is not spelled “She’s Kinda Hot Tho,” because that’s definitely the way it’s sung. Even the inspirational part of this song is so deeply petulant: “When you’ve got bigger plans that no one else understands/you’ve got a shot though.” I suddenly feel so free. This is the empowering liberation I’ve been waiting for. “Sometimes I’m feeling like I’m going insane.“ Same, 5SOS. Same. Sure, it doesn’t match the sheer joyous perfection of “She Looks So Perfect” but honestly, what does? You can stay, 5SOS. You can stay.
[7]

Megan Harrington: I think this is a modern retelling of the classic fable “Josie” by Blink 182? Except that “Josie,” even as it indulged in backwards relationship dynamics that called for a forgiving girlfriend willing to not only tolerate but support a whole lame array of shitty behavior from her self-loathing boyfriend, was about falling in love. And “She’s Kinda Hot” never even cat scratches beneath the wheat paste and paper exterior. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: I like how the joke is on the moronic narrator. The Green Day chords help. The elephant honks and synth don’t.
[6]

Brad Shoup: A fine Green Day approximation on the acoustic figure and the background yelling, but that lyric, man — it’s Lit. Imagine a parade that just endlessly circles a kiddie pool.
[5]

Nina Lea Oishi: 5SOS spends the whole song trying to convince us that they’re not whiny, disaffected youth, like their parents/girlfriends allege. Sadly, the boys do not succeed. “She’s Kinda Hot” is an unfortunate return to the worst aspects of petulant teenage skater punk pop.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: You can do shameless douchepunk with ’90s sound effects, or you can do One Direction-esque arena inspiro. Do both, and they’re each an unwelcome interruption of the other. Somehow I prefer the former — “she put me on meds, she won’t get out of my head” is up there with “thinking of my teacher, yes, my sixth grade teacher” — if it tells kids it’s OK to see a shrink so’s the better, and the older I get the more time I have for pop-punk somehow. Which makes half two a massive letdown.
[4]

Crystal Leww: I really appreciate the niche that 5 Seconds of Summer are trying to fill which is really just pop punk boy band, and I really like everything about this song… except the lyrics. It goes from kind of being a rude asshole boyfriend to trying to make some declaratory statement about youth? I don’t know, dude, maybe you should probably just apologize for not calling her on her birthday.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: The Backstreet Boys of pop-punk attempt a self-esteem anthem (“they say we’re losers … but we’re alright though”) which would just be mediocre were it not for its first verse. The tl;dr version is: my girlfriend’s a bitch, but she’s kinda hot, so it’s OK-ish. Hey, 5SOS, you’re “kinda” assholes.
[2]

Danilo Bortoli: Wait, you’ve gone from overpraising perfection to examining hotness? In less than two albums?! That sounds like a downgrade to me.  
[5]

Will Adams: A nightmarish vision of Sugar Ray, stripped of charm and pumped full of preservatives.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Time is cruel to 5 Seconds of Summer. This song will not be taken seriously as a rock song because these kids went and opened for 1D. If you could’ve put every Weezer record that blows up on radio, All-American Rejects biggest hits and all of The Offspring’s worst hits in a blender… it might sound like this. If they’d dropped this song somewhere in the last decade, they’d probably have scored themselves some of that Lit money and been beloved by people who appreciate a hook no matter what the quality. Instead, they just sound like dorks.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: Just dorky enough to excuse the obvious, and mixed well. “We are the kings and the queens of the new broken scene” shouldn’t be as fun a lyric as it is, but the hokeyness of the track helps.
[5]

Mo Kim: Your girlfriend probably only likes you for your reputation as a rock star, the same way I only like this song when you have the brick wall of guitar to back up your whinging/Elsewhere, you’ve somehow deluded yourself into thinking that any of these banal observations about women or young adulthood are insightful or fresh/They’re kind of not, though/They’re kind of not
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: Perhaps it really is autobiographical, but crafting a life-affirming “live your life” anthem around a LOLsome anecdote of being prescribed medication by a psychiatrist if you haven’t is completely worthless. It’s a shame, because “She’s Kinda Hot” does have a good chorus with a great centrepiece: “we’re alright though.” It’s not a strictly defiant statement, but one of reassurance, and it really is quite nice to hear. Why that had to be padded with such tiresome initial verses and a seemingly crowbarred “fancying girls” angle is a mystery. At least one of the band thinks the title’s red herring is a good thing, but the non-nihilistic version of “The Anthem” this could be would have far more of an effect.
[5]