The Singles Jukebox

Checking in with the Internet-anointed “sad prince of Gen Z softboy pop,” which goes about how you’d expect…

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[3.75]

Katherine St Asaph: Here we see a little-known variation on the Ruy Lopez opening: the Fuckboy Lopez, derived from the Tween’s Gambit, emphasis on “twee.”
[2]

Kylo Nocom: Conan Gray is the idol of zoomers too sensitive to bother with Billie Eilish and too aesthetically conscious to look up to somebody like Shawn Mendes; one look at his Twitter page is enough to understand that he’s gotten this softboy image down to a T, flocks of accounts replying to him and engaging with every heartbroken lowercase tweet he makes. “Checkmate” would be a nasty vengeance fantasy in anybody else’s hands, but Conan’s writing is too blissfully immature to be more concerning than a lame finsta rant. I’d imagine a blend of fellow YouTuber Tessa Violet’s sound FX-ridden “Crush” with millennial whoop indie rock choruses would sound horrible to anybody over the age of 20; luckily, I’m still in high school, so I’ve got a few more years left before I have to apologize to people for liking this stuff and being the kind of emotionally messy teen that Conan Gray is writing for. Through all the whining and stupid metaphors, he latches onto a certain adolescent anger that comes out with “no one’s ever gonna love you anyways.” Yes, he sounds like a terrible boyfriend. Yes, he’s actually 20, so here’s to hoping he actually starts growing up sometime soon. Yes, I’m going to regret this eventually. But for now, this hits a weak spot in me that I’m embarrassed to admit resonates way more than should be healthy. Boys are the worst.
[8]

Hannah Jocelyn: The lyrics are horrific — “holding a loaded gun” is a standard metaphor rendered worryingly literal when other antics include setting fire to someone’s lawn and maxing out their credit card. “Cry me a river ’til you drown in a lake” sounds like she’s going to disappear under Mysterious Circumstances. The production is fascinating, bouncing between Blackbear bro-pop and mid-2000s pop-punk before resolving like a One Direction song. There’s an interesting song somewhere in here, and Daniel Nigro’s other productions have been uniformly great, but this is a complete mess. (A point for those Pedestrian Verse harmonies in the final section, though.)
[5]

Juan F. Carruyo: A somewhat ungainly mix of electronic pulses that collapses on a pop-punk chorus. And I don’t know about the rest of my peers, but after three straight listenings, I had to turn it off because I felt threatened. Hope he tries to make it as an actor instead. 
[2]

Ian Mathers: “Now I’m gonna ruin your life” hahaha get it? It’s a totally healthy and proportionate response to heartbreak! It’s never gone terribly wrong in the real world, and certainly nobody who talks like this has ever been someone who’s sinned more than they’ve been sinned against who still decides to harass, abuse, and torment whoever’s unlucky enough to fall in with them. Right, right, “I’m holding a loaded gun / Yeah, baby, you should really run” is metaphorical, which makes it art, it can’t possibly have any ramifications in that aforementioned real world. From “you think you’re funny, right?” to “no-one’s ever gonna love you anyways” this totally doesn’t sound like random abusive boyfriend #618, and that kind of abuse isn’t a plague upon too many people. Nah, this here, this is just japes and tomfoolery.
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Will Adams: This hybrid of bloopy, Tove Styrke-esque material and power-punk fuzz is as appealing as the lyrics are mean-spirited. The conflation of post-breakup revenge plots ranging from “Hit ‘Em Up Style” shenanigans to attempted murder is worrisome, and the prospect of all this being dismissed by the post-post-post-irony-irony-irony defense makes the great instrumental feel all the more wasted.
[5]

Alex Clifton: This is a song that could only be written by someone who is 20 years old, who still feels like every glance with a love interest is a life-or-death situation. The concept could have worked in other circumstances, but mediocre lyrics kill the execution (“I saw you kissing someone else’s tongue” is Ed Sheeran levels of bad and also reads like he garnered inspiration from this infamous video). I also have literally no reason to care about Gray in this song; he’s not overly sympathetic nor can he channel catharsis like Icona Pop, so much like watching an actual game of chess I am extremely bored.
[3]

Joshua Lu: I think I’d enjoy this spunky spin on the pop-punk teenage angst anthem if A) the line “I saw you kissin’ someone else’s tongue” wasn’t too obviously written by someone who hasn’t kissed anyone before, B) the lyrics about murdering his lover didn’t bring to mind real-life atrocities that have occurred, and C) I were maybe six years younger.
[5]