2-4-6-8, who do we appreciate? You all! This wraps up this month’s coverage — see ya in November!
Alfred Soto: Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is a sparkling collection of moods and passing desires, best when euphoric. The ballads might have been even stronger had she spelled out their choruses.
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Dave Moore: Spelling is fun!
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Grace Robins-Somerville: It’s been too long since we’ve had a “spell the words out with your arms” song in the zeitgeist, and seeing people do the H-O-T-T-O-G-O dance at weddings has cemented its staying power. It’s nice that lesbians have their “YMCA” now.
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Katherine St. Asaph: “Hot to Go!” is a crowd chant-along that shouldn’t work at all as one. The template is “YMCA,” but the difference and the problem is that “YMCA” is instantly parseable when spelled out, while “H-O-T-T / O-G-O” takes a moment’s reassembly. The other highlight line in “baby, don’t you like this beat? I made it so you’d sleep with me” is endearingly blunt — more musicians should be that honest — but nevertheless cannot honestly be chanted by anyone but Dan Nigro or Chappell Roan. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that “Hot to Go!” is hugely effective at getting crowds to chant along.
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Aaron Bergstrom: Retroactively furious about the idea that one or more of the Village People potentially did or did not endorse Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Presidential election.
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Scott Mildenhall: Who or what is a hottogo? The chant falls short of total clarity by going two steps further than succinct, but therein lies the charm. Bursting at the seams of some slightly thin fabric, Chappell Roan carries this so far and fast that she might struggle to find her way back.
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Leah Isobel: There are about five perfect hooks on Chappell’s debut album. “Baby don’t you like this beat?/ I made it so you’d sleep with me” is one of them, precise and funny and melodically flawless. I think that was the moment that sold me on her whole project: the bluntness balanced by craft, the expertise made human by the raw and embarrassing vulnerability of wanting sex, wanting recognition, wanting anything at all. Also, have y’all heard the fanmade Rhythm Heaven edit for this? Banger!
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TA Inskeep: Every generation gets a new cheerleading-cheer anthem — think Toni Basil’s “Mickey” or Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” — and here’s the latest, with a bit of “Y.M.C.A.” thrown in for good measure. It’s hard to ignore Roan’s joy on this chorus; this is also a rare pop single where its meme-ability actually draws me in (cf. “Call Me Maybe”). How can you not smile when you hear this?
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Of all the guises that Chappell Roan inhabited on her debut album, this always felt like the truest — she sounds like Devo if they slayed, still gawking and midwestern and not quite fitting a perfect archetype of pop stardom but still, nevertheless, a star. The weepy ballads (some of them great) fade away in the face of this, the goofy chant-a-longs and dance instructions wearing one’s resistance down on the strength of pure charisma and craft. There are hooks upon hooks here — I think I’ve had just the synth chord on the prechorus stuck in my head before.
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Ian Mathers: I took the number of times I’ve caught myself humming this song since I first heard the record last year and divided it by a very large number and got this score. I am not currently interested in Discourse beyond that.
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Nortey Dowuona: You’re trying to take out Chappell Roan the way you took out Amy Winehouse and I don’t like it. Not one bit. Also, the ’80s actually kinda sucked — let’s not go back. (This song is great btw.)
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Jel Bugle: I know everyone loves Chappell, and I’ve not really bothered to get too excited. I like the Casio keyboard sounds, and spelling out words in songs is always a good trick (see “D I S C O,” and I’m sure Olivia has a spelling words out song?). I can see why Sabrina is winning the chart battle here in the UK. I just feel like this song is okay, warm rather than hot — a sort of personality over the strength of the song. Plus, I’m getting tired of this song constantly being pushed to me by Spotify — if it happens again the [6] becomes a [5].
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Taylor Alatorre: For all the talk of Chappell Roan hailing the return of “recession pop,” this strikes my ears as more of a grasping imitation of the real than most of what PC Music was accused of putting out. Maybe that’s unavoidable given the generation gap, as well as the decline of the universal pop star – Chappell covers “Bad Romance” on tour, but she doesn’t exude the belief that she can be a legitimate successor to Lady Gaga. She’s ambivalent about the compromises required for mass appeal, even on songs like this one which are structured, at least internally, toward that end. It’s all the external festooning and DIY-style pageantry which redirect the song’s course toward a cozier ideal of attainable imperfection, a glitzy and glammy take on self-sabotage. Which, in the end, is its own kind of earnestness. “HOT TO GO!” is confident enough in its own gangliness to bill itself as a coming-out party where everyone, even the normies, is invited, despite the singer’s doubts about the long-term viability of this promise.
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Tim de Reuse: The appeal of “Pink Pony Club” was immediately evident to me on first listen. But this one’s a silly Chappell Roan song: The narrative here is buried under catchy turns of phrase and the hokey pokey-ass pre-chorus, leaving us to wring pathos out of a few scant lines in the verses. So, what’s the draw? The simple build-and-release drama of a I-IV-I progression? The energy of a jittery, unkempt synthesizer-driven beat? Is the chant of “H-O-T-T-O-G-O” sugary enough to overcome my pop-pessimist cynicism and light up my long-calcified dopamine receptors for once? Eh, kinda. It’s well-constructed, but it just isn’t aiming all that high.
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Will Adams: Silly fun pop that doesn’t require much thought — just do the little dance and enjoy yourself!
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