We liked them when they didn’t care…

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[5.00]

Alfred Soto: With “I Love It” a menace as terrifying as tornadoes and John Boehner, I buckled down and instead got below-average starcrossed Ashlee/Rihanna pop instead of a rictus grin horrorshow. I feel cheated!
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: Somehow, this has ended up being released in the UK before “I Love It.” What a world. In the twelve thousand years since that song first appeared, specifically in the past few weeks, several pound-shop cover versions of it have breached the iTunes chart. Given that there’s a very real possibility that the original will never be released, it seems feasible that all possible takes on it eventually will. “Girlfriend,” then, is somehow simultaneously ahead of and past its time. Best calculations suggest it should be scheduled to hit the number 72 spot sometime in 2178, but not only is it already out, it sounds like it was found underneath Daphne & Celeste’s bottle collection. Maybe t.A.T.u. would be more apt — is the relationship described platonic or not? It could be intended as either, as ambiguous, or with any hint of ambiguity an oversight. Given its slapdash nature, it wouldn’t be a surprise to find it were the latter. The song, since you asked, is OK.
[6]

Anthony Easton: It’s like it was designed in a lab to be the hit of the summer, with the sing-along chorus and verses reminiscent of the Spice Girls at their least inventive. For a band that claimed the iconic, this is a washout. 
[4]

Brad Shoup: Was the ace structuring of “Nights Like This” really that long ago? All points are for passing the Bechdel test.
[5]

Iain Mew: Thanks to an online Swedish music shop, I have a copy of Icona Pop’s (flop) self-titled album released there last year. It is sporadically enjoyable, but a total mess. It varies drastically in tone and style from track to track, from the cool synth pop they initially made their name with to heavy dance tracks, sugary pop with incredibly unsubtle innuendos and a woozy take on “It’s My Party” featuring Smiler sounding even more lost than them. What Icona Pop doesn’t feature is any obvious candidate to follow up on the belated success of “I Love It,” which is where “Girlfriend” comes in. It shouts, swears, and thumps just like “I Love It,” and as if it wasn’t obvious enough they even go and sing “until we crash, we’re not going to stop now.” Unfortunately, where “I Love It” was powered by one amazing line after another through a roller coaster of bratty exuberance, the only memorable words in “Girlfriend” are the borrowed chorus.
[3]

Crystal Leww: It is totally okay to borrow hooks and snippets from 90s rap, but I can’t hear the song without wanting to listen to the source material (or the Beyonce/Jay-Z collaboration) instead. 
[5]

Daisy Le Merrer: “I Love It” didn’t reach the same scale as “Gangnam Style”, but Icona Pop’s and Psy’s situations are not entirely dissimilar, and the girls have done a much better job at balancing the constraints of following up a big hit. It’s familiar enough, but not a complete retread like “Gentleman” was. Plus, it adds a new talking point with the Tupac line: it’s not so much that people like to be reminded of “’03 Bonnie & Clyde” but that they like to speculate about the sexuality of any same-sex duo. As these things go, this is pretty apt trolling.
[8]

Al Shipley: This yelling-in-unison pop-in-scare-quotes bullshit is bad enough without digging up Pac’s bones. Fuck off back to Europe with this shit. 
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: I’m sure to someone out there this screams of heresy, but I think Icona Pop’s iteration of that chorus is my favorite yet. It really works as the pulsing heart of an EDM-pop song, the sort of hook designed to be screamed by a group of friends before they break out the camera phones. It lacks the intensity of “I Love It” — purging-disguised-as-good-time trumps good times only — but still surges with the same energy.
[7]

Will Adams: When I saw Icona Pop perform “Girlfriend” (for the first time) last Monday, I saw a brilliant performance, a knowing wink to the title’s ambiguity. I also recalled my coworker’s reaction to the song; she is hellbent on determining whether the duo are lovers. Caroline pointed at Aino during the song’s central line. Later, they bumped into each other and giggled. I wondered if my coworker, who was at the same concert, was taking notes giddily. But whatever definition of the word they’re using doesn’t matter. What’s important is how damn happy they sound. As a follow-up to “I Love It,” “Girlfriend” is genius, rolling that song in sugar and transforming the sentiment into “I do care, I love you.” I can see the smile when “We’ll never find ouuuuut” stretches across the flashing synths. There’s enough hinting at their current smash –- the grinding bass, sing-shouted vocals -– but also enough new material to keep things fresh. Here’s to Caroline and Aino’s friendship (or “friendship,” whatever floats your boat.)
[10]

Katherine St Asaph: If “I Love It” indelibly owes its indelibility to that appearance on Girls (don’t whine, it does), “Girlfriend” is its counterpart for the scene where Hannah writes “a friendship between college girls is grander and more dramatic than any romance.” Hannah didn’t write much more beyond that, mind; neither did Icona Pop.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “I Love It” got over on a let’s-do-it buzz, its destiny as a high-five confetti cannon anthem in the writing by the time the first chorus hit. “Girlfriend” is a safe bet for a follow-up, retaining the spunky vox and audio-war mastering of its predecessor while sliding in an attempt at an emotional core. These attempts to deepen Icona Pop seem like a losing battle. Icona Pop are surface-deep and live or die on their choruses’ power to trigger jock jam infernos; as on “I Love It,” the verses are placeholder soliloquies that exist purely because of song structure. This leaves “Girlfriend” sounding purely functionary, even before it filters 2Pac through Jay and Bey into a yearbook montage soundtrack. If any lessons are learnt from “Girlfriend,” let it be that the group’s debut album be released as a verseless high-BPM megamix. It’s the only way.
[5]

Jer Fairall: YOLO-pop with an unwelcome dash of sentiment; this stuff plays better when the unacknowledged sense of mortality that lingers just outside of the frame is not so pronounced. “Girlfriend” doesn’t overemphasize this point nearly to the degree that Ke$ha tends to, but the maudlin chorus hook holds it back from attaining the shout-in-your-face heedlessness of “I Love It.” Which, as far as I can tell, is the whole point of Icona Pop.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The music wants you to put your hands in the air, the rest of the song sounds too embarrassed to do so.
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