The Singles Jukebox

Out of the ice cream van and into the fridge…

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[4.40]

Alex Clifton: Behold, a list of sins in “Ice Cream”: 1) The backing track, which sounds like an out-of-tune ice cream truck circling the neighbourhood to spite me specifically. 2) “Sip it like a Slurpee” is not appealing in the slightest. Why couldn’t they have used literally any other word? 3) “Get it free like Willy” is a pun, I guess, but is this sexual innuendo or a plea to get the subject to unleash their love like an orca? I’m very confused. 4) “Play the part like Moses” is evidently meant to set the standard for the love interest because “if you can’t part a sea, then you can’t party with me,” but I’ve never heard of Moses referred to as an ideal boyfriend, and frankly I never wanted that mental image anyway. 5) Ice does not live in the fridge, but the freezer. I don’t care if it fits the meter better. Ice melts if kept in the fridge. Selena undermines her entire point here. 6) Jisoo only gets two solo lines and it’s the most exciting bit of the song because I have to listen for them. When one of your main band members gets fewer lines than the featured artist, it doesn’t look great. #justiceforJisoo 7) “Get it, flip it, scoop it” is sexual but also boring and mystifying. I recognize I’m taking everything pretty literally at this point to underscore the lameness of the central metaphor, but “scoop it” does not pique my interest. Scoop it is a terrible pickup line. Selena goddamn Gomez should never have to tell anyone to scoop her. Neither should you, so please don’t start using this as real slang. 8) “Get the bag with the cream if you know what I mean.” I don’t have the FOGGIEST as to what you mean! Cream doesn’t come in a bag. Is the cream money? But the girls of Blackpink are the ice cream in this metaphor. Are they ice cream made of money? I am genuinely befuddled. 9) This is not, nor will it ever be, the greatest K-pop song ever written about ice cream, so I have no idea why Blackpink was sent down this road anyway. 10) The post-chorus is a new intrusive thought on par with “do you ever feel like a plastic bag” and yet this is still, somehow, not enough to deter me from holding out hope for the entire album creatively titled, uh, The Album. Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
[3]

Brad Shoup: The Cher Lloyd revival continues apace!
[8]

Kayla Beardslee: Sure, this demo sounds pretty terrible, but the production will be filled out and the lyrics polished up before it gets released, right?
[1]

Alfred Soto: This compendium of secondhand pleasures is irresistible. Not a single person sounds as if she has (a) heard an ice cream van (b) tasted ice cream. Instead, Blackpink and Selena Gomez have heard friends describe ice cream vans and ice cream and recreated imagined delights — a bit like how, say, Talking Heads imagined Joy Division.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Previous Blackpink singles felt like getting hit in the head with a brick of sound. “Ice Cream” feels like getting hit in the head with a brick of sound, but FUN! This is the most Selena Gomez has improved a song since she fixed up “Psycho Killer.”
[5]

Michael Hong: It doesn’t beat you over the head with a gaudy hook, but it hooks you in all the same with its coyness. Lisa still raps “chillin’ like a villain yeah ra ra ra” because of course she does. There are at least a handful of other awkward English lines that probably could have been sidestepped if they weren’t so bent on capturing the US market, but oh well. Selena Gomez sounds like she’s having fun for the first time, but Blackpink, like BTS, would do a lot better if they didn’t compromise to appeal to the West.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: I wasn’t that big a fan of “Countdown” the first time around; adding “Bang Bang” and the same icky sweets innuendo of multiple K-pop songs past doesn’t help. Blackpink and Selena Gomez try their best to sell this freezer-burned pint.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Like a bag of Skittles, this is a rainbow sugar rush, but ultimately just amounts to empty calories. The track is too basic and there’s a little too much Gomez for my taste. 
[5]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Another Selena Gomez track, another song where none of the metaphors make sense. You don’t have ice cream when you’re “thirsty”! You usually don’t dip, much less “double dip,” ice cream! What the hell does “diamonds on my wrist, so he call me ice cream” mean when ice cream doesn’t have icicles coming off it? What kind of double entendre could “get a bag with the cream” possibly be? In the past, her odd declarations have charmed me; this Blackpink collaboration just seems sloppy in comparison. 
[3]

Jessica Doyle: Bekuh BOOM has gone on record to take credit for a lot of the lyrics of “Ice Cream,” and good for her for getting her name out there, but that means taking credit for a song that can’t decide if “ice cream” is a metaphor for sexual availability, or sexual unavailability, or conspicuous consumption. (The exception to the rule: “You’re the cherry piece, just stay on top of me,” which is exactly the cheerful smuttiness that the song seems to be aiming for.) Also, apparently we all keep ice in the fridge, not the freezer. Also, “part like Moses.” But at least it’s an actual song, rather than a chant coasting on Jennie’s ability to glare. Also, Jisoo is cute.
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