The Singles Jukebox

hey, where did all their capital letters go?

[Video]
[2.67]

Katherine St Asaph: You ever hear a song, and picture, immediately and viscerally, the future callout post about one of its douchebag members?
[1]

Will Adams: This would have gotten at least five more points from me if the lyric were, “I like that you’re broken, broken like me/I guess that makes me a tool.”
[1]

Hannah Jocelyn: “I like that you’re broken/broken like me” is “you don’t know you’re beautiful/that’s what makes you beautiful” for the “suicide/if you ever try to let go” generation. “Broken” is less troubling than that XXXTentacion song and its global success — there’s a sweet bit of escapism in the “she grabbed my face” line — but everything else about this (up to and including the “Shut Up And Dance” gender switch for the chorus) is either not great or lazily derivative. “There’s something tragic but almost pure” sounds like one of those Tinder screenshots that goes viral to demonstrate the failure of masculinity as a whole, the “trust fund baby” line fails to hit the radio rock sweet spot between vague and specific, and even the bridge is nothing that Julia Michaels didn’t do more sensitively last year with “Issues.” Meanwhile, the gang vocals sound like they’re being held at gunpoint, putting front and center the weakness of those lyrics. It’s ultimately not the worst song to ever find success on alternative radio, but it’s definitely in the lower tier.
[2]

Alfred Soto: The vocal distortions, use of a sound effect as hook, and camp approach to heartache are redolent of another time — the start of the decade, perhaps, when the kids loved “Pumped Up Kicks.” But “I like that you’re lonely like me” — pure 2010s, man. Guys are dumb.
[5]

Julian Axelrod: Right now, in a tiny bedroom in the middle of nowhere, a teenager is watching (500) Days of Summer for the first time and having their mind blown. This will be their favorite song. For the rest of us, let’s leave this manic pixie dream girl bullshit in 2009. 
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: Granted, “This song and this band feels primed for the soundtrack of the inevitable Suicide Squad sequel” doesn’t sound like a proper musical descriptor, let alone a complimentary one. Nevertheless, lovelytheband are precisely aware of how they come across as pitiful sleaze and oily self-loathing. It’s a worrying sort of grander trend in how there’s apparently so much resonance to be found in presenting oneself as damaged goods and that self-pity is in equal commodity as bath bombs as far as what’s attractive to wallow in. But this hasn’t been pioneered by records like “Broken” nor do I fear they’re the last of it.
[4]