The Singles Jukebox

“Chainsmokers’ “Everybody Hates Me” Is Depressing… | Lyrics Explained”

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[2.83]

Katherine St Asaph: Guess I’ll go eat worms.
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Alfred Soto: Too easy, dudes, I mumbled in response to the title. I don’t hate them for the synth stabs or Andrew what’s-his-name’s talking as mellifluously as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando — I hate how ubiquitous this is going to be in Ultra-besotted Miami.
[1]

Jonathan Bradley: Even the committed pop heels behind The Chainsmokers should forgo a title as maladroit as this one; its pointed douchebaggery undermines the hungover nostalgia that made songs like “Closer” or “Paris” unexpectedly resonant. “I just want to drink tequila with my friends” should suggest good times, but delivered in that smug and graceless sing-rap, I feel like I need to leave in case Andrew Taggart’s pals actually show up. “Everybody Hates Me” wants to be a successor to Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza,” which combined the plaintive and the hedonistic to create pathos for a persona who didn’t do much to deserve it, but Andrew Taggart here resists identification. And despite a critical consensus that would concur with this song’s title, identification has always been The Chainsmokers’ strength.
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Alex Clifton: The chorus is music at its most millennial: “walk into the club like everybody hates me” feels like a nihilistic tweet. Alas, it’s stretched out beyond the 280-character limit of Twitter, which makes this go from relatable to insufferable.
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A self-aware self-loathing that captures (an approximation of) the zeitgeist as successfully as “Closer.” The only issue is that it’s not nearly as nuanced, witty, or cathartic as the one-liners on my timeline. Still, the “walk into the club like everybody hates me” line is as tongue-in-cheek and self-satisfied as the contrasting “Thrift Shop” line that begs immediate comparison.
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Crystal Leww: Over the weekend, a friend of mine called the new phase of The Chainsmokers their twenty one pilots phase. While I can appreciate the aesthetic — very Teen Dirtbag Who Throws Rocks By the Creek — I find the music, like twenty one pilots, to be very, very bad. This is not emotional bigness, this is teen boy existential crisis. I already went through my phase of thinking that boys with long eyelashes who sighed a lot were quiet but deep, rather than just assholes. I don’t need to do it again.
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Micha Cavaseno: An All Time Low song for people who unironically do the prayer hands gesture. The Chainsmokers have graduated into a rock act, recognizing EDM’s desperation for anthema and the power of the Big Riff. For all the “child of the internet” talk, the echoes of ’00s mallrock and ’80s neon synths, they preach to the easy potency of the most dunderheaded sledgehammer hooks, which manage to transcend time in spite of their cheapness.
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Nortey Dowuona: Bleh 2010 bass breakdown. Meh guitar synth stabs. Empty drum smacks. Spindly synth arps. Cringy rap-singing. At least the lead singer can hit real notes now.
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Will Adams: Andrew Taggart has apparently decided he’s had enough singing lessons to try out disaffected affect; it goes about as well as trying to elicit sympathy via “I just wanna drink tequila with my friends.” The Chainsmokers’ latest era is a plunge into bathetic self-pity that asks us to tolerate shit like “How many likes is my life worth?” or whining about not being Superman. “Everybody Hates Me” doubles down on the sad-sackery while taking the previous songs’ sole decent point — the drop — and knocking the wind out of it.
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Katie Gill: So it’s official? We’re all just accepting the fact that the Chainsmokers guy can’t sing and pretending that he can? We don’t even have our token probably-not-credited indie girl to provide a counterbalance. We’re just going to put the entire vocal line on someone who plain and simple can’t sing. That EDM drop is sublime, probably their best since “Rozes.” But then there’s the rest of the song.
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Stephen Eisermann: There are so many reasons to dislike The Chainsmokers: their music is awful, their personalities are worse, and their aesthetic is nothing you can’t find in every fraternity at any university in this country. This song, however, may be the biggest reason to dislike them — parading around your privilege in an attempt to humblebrag and act self-deprecating is equal parts embarrassing and tragic. If you’re going to beg for likes this openly, at least make the beat you’re begging to good.
[1]

Hannah Jocelyn: The production raises the stakes, with string stabs and hyperactive drums (likely influenced by their disproportionately good live drummer Matt McGuire), and the drop alone makes up for most of the underwhelming Memories… Do Not Open. And the lyrics are thankfully improved from the incoherent “Sick Boy,” though that doesn’t elevate the song enough. Basically, the group who broke through with “Selfie” is stuck writing the musical equivalent of black and white mirror selfies, the title acting as the #artsy tag in the caption: self-conscious, self-deprecating, but not self-aware enough.
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