Katherine’s concerns about grade inflation may have been a little premature…

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Jonathan Bradley: Father John Misty, evidently a lounge singer of some kind, tinkles his piano keys and tries to summate the State of the Union in the most fitting means possible outside presidential speechifying: that of the four-and-a-half minute pop song. He wallows in domestic apathy and existential ennui: “is this the part where I get all I ever wanted?” he asks, and then, in a conflation of spiritualism and capitalism too overt to be worth explaining: “Can I get my money back?” If you’re as self-pitying as he is, it might resonate. (Sometimes I am; it does.) But this isn’t only the sadsack blues; Father John Misty’s song is about a polity’s listlessness as much as it is concerned with a person’s, and he flails trying to enunciate the rot at the heart of the world’s superpower. Mortgage woes? Career-education mismatch? Advances in medical science? Is the prayer to a civic-religious figurehead too ironic to take serious or is the irony — accentuated when the savior becomes not “President” but “White Jesus” — the most apposite expression of American ambivalence? As the elegy crests, the canned laughter of a studio audience appears, spliced over the track: the singer undercutting the credibility of his liturgy as he delivers it. It’s a cheap move, but Misty mugs for his apparent onlookers, extending the pauses in his monologue and winking at his own camp. In “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” it’s patently ridiculous when Bono wails “tonight, thank god it’s them instead of you,” but his performance was earnest and emotional. “Bored in the USA” is a song that wants that charity song ridiculousness as well as that earnestness, and it can’t quite achieve either. How perfectly American.
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Josh Winters: Fuck this dude.
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Megan Harrington: I don’t know why Father John Misty thinks anyone cares at all what he likes or dislikes. 
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Juana Giaimo: The reason I like I Love You, Honeybear isn’t because of its sarcasm, but because of how that sarcasm alludes to levels of intimacy and shows his vulnerability too. But a social-commentary song by Father John Misty doesn’t sound as convincing. Maybe because I’m not American? 
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Patrick St. Michel: Can’t blame Josh Tillman for this song sounding dated a year since it first squirmed out into the world, or for how the idea of being bored in the USA at the end of 2015 seems crazy as the country appears to be a huge mess. He bears more of the blame for Father John Misty feeling insincere and artistically cowardly, a goofy act making fun of the privileged (“save me white Jesus”) that can also parachute into a sincere project if he needs to dodge questions. But he’s completely responsible for this sounding boring as shit, and even if that’s the point this is such a slog with no payoff beyond ripped-from-the-millennial-trend-piece lyrics.
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Katherine St Asaph: I’m adrift enough and affected enough by Tori Amos’s “Curtain Call” that I can appreciate a version by a working-class male writing a second-act ballad for a musical, one with cruel laugh cues. I’m sure it’d take only ten seconds in Audacity to get rid of “white Jesus.”
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Will Adams: I’ve listened to this five times now, struggling to unpack FJM’s cynical lament of the passionate millennial male or generational ennui or whatever this is about, but all I’m left with is wondering why his vocals are so loud in the mix.
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Alfred Soto: Just a little bored by this song. My soul’s supposed to be tickled by the mention of subprime loans.
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Iain Mew: “Bored in the USA” fails as an affecting ballad, gesturing towards intimacy but ducking out of it, never committing to much more than a lugubrious string arrangement. “Bored in the USA” fails as self-effacement, its horrid laugh track drawing pointed attention to Father John Misty’s witticisms whether it’s meant to be ironic or not. “Bored in the USA” fails as comedy, because mentioning prescriptions and then singing “I can kind of deal” is as funny as it gets, and that’s nothing like a strong enough pun to withstand the combination of mugging and the same laugh track. “Bored in the USA” even narrowly fails to make boredom its defining characteristic; it loses a tightly fought battle with smugness.
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Thomas Inskeep: Who knew that Gordon Lightfoot would have an artistic legacy?
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Brad Shoup: Take a decent concern. Worry it into bights and loops. Thread in some laughter, why not? This shit’s not getting any less thick. Drape with the ghosts of Warren and Harry, two more white dudes who loved turning white-dude pathos inside out. Look at what you’ve done. You’ve got a real nice knot there. Why don’t you put it in your pocket and jump into the sea.
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Edward Okulicz: When I say that this song perfectly encapsulates boredom and the pointlessness of life, understand that I don’t think the way it does this was quite how FJM intended it. The cries to White President Jesus are the stupid person’s idea of clever comment. Malaise forever!
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