The Singles Jukebox

The test begins… now!

[Video][Website]
[4.43]

Katherine St Asaph: Female singer-songwriters, as ever, remain ignored by critics. And none are more ignored than pop songwriters, the ones whose words the most teens — and primarily teenage girls, let’s not sugarcoat — are loving or using or needing at any given moment. The media worships the 5 per cent of teens who find solace in insert-riot-grrl-indebted-buzzband-here while laughing at those whose solace comes from pop, rewriting the high school popularity order unchanged. Rachel Platten’s first pinned tweet goes out to everyone “Fight Song” has helped. This is still pop, mind, and Platten isn’t just a singer-songwriter but a major-label songwriter, who learned the craft from syncs and branding. “Fight Song”‘s titled like a pep rally but written to some Hunger Games specification (“it’s been two years, I miss my home” — I guess the Divergent series is about there in its plot), and its words of empowerment are as much talisman as viral seed; for every teen who gets through the day by playing and replaying their “Fight Song,” another few streams’ worth go into the penny jar. The track is equal parts hyper-professional polish — that “A Hundred Years” intro, pealing out over an empty homecoming stage, that “Roar” chant-along — and everygirl unassumingness: Platten’s somewhat wan voice, left quietly undertracked on the high notes and chorus, or that front-loaded “ocean/motion” rhyme. A certain sort of critic might be inclined to dismiss it all outright. But the scenarios Platten aims to ease — losing friends, finding rock bottom, and all before a driver’s license — are starkly, brutally non-fictional. Every generation complains that the generation after them is having a uniquely terrifying school experience, and yet: I was a senior in college when the myriad anonymous college “confession” sites took off; kids and adults never lacked for hate, but all of a sudden it was panoptical, a sludge-tide of public judgment that could turn at any moment upon you, and the more you checked the more you made it stronger. But at least those stayed on the computer; these days, kids carry them in their pockets and sleep with them in bed. Boyfriends turn unfriendly fast; girlfriends can betray you, but friendlessness can do it faster. When I was 15, all I wanted to do was raise a daughter; now the thought terrifies me, because I can’t reconcile loving someone and subjecting her to Girl World and her peers, who aren’t laughable but life-sized. All you can do really is look for counterbalances. They’re not all gonna be great, but ultimately I can’t fault this little song by an artist taking care of her own.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Determined to prove that Sara Bareilles can’t corner the market on faux-inspirational female empowerment “anthems”: I mean, “this is my fight song/take-back-my-life song,” really? The production is as generically Adult Top 40 mass-appeal as possible, meaning it’s as 2015-bland as you’d imagine. 
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Motivational enunciation that shoves and prods in an irritating way; job well done there, this record is definitely making me back out of the ring and walk away. Not much of a fighter though.
[2]

Alfred Soto: On first listen it sounded trite as hell — if this is a fight song, its post-Clarkson arrangement embalms the furor. But I can’t separate Platten’s parched vocal from the pathos. Using what she’s got, she suspects she’s going to lose: “I don’t care if anyone believes,” she says over a treacly piano. Over and over the drums steamroll objections. If it becomes a hit, credit teens for whom these sentiments aren’t trite or parched. At least when embalmed you’re past the indifference of others.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Telling someone who is using this for its intended purpose that it’s not very good and there are dozens and dozens of better songs in its “I Will Survive” mode would be a really dick move, so I hope no one who needs it reads this, but it’s not very good and there are dozens and dozens etc.
[4]

Juana Giaimo: In between the cliché songs, the “I believe in myself” song is always ambiguous to me. On one hand, like any cliché, it’s repetitive and uncreative, but on the other, sometimes I can feel its power, like when Rachel Platten sings quite whimsically, but for that same reason, honestly “and I don’t really care if nobody believe in me!” For a moment, I was again that pre-adolescent believing the whole world was against me, but sooner or later we all discover most of it was in our heads. 
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: A generic I-can-do-it song that has existed and will exist in different shapes until the sun finally just gives up, a song that isn’t very interesting but then you invent a hypothetical person in your mind who is actually inspired by this and you feel bad for disliking it at all. That’s the magic and curse of stuff like this — as generic as it is, it’s tough to hate. It’s the pouty face of music.
[5]