The Singles Jukebox

A meme-based, quick-spreading social media smash for which we really need a new metaphor.

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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Since this site’s inception, we have covered Drake 71 times. Every 51 days, give or take, an average of 8.8 of our writers sit down and review a Drake single. What’s the point of it anymore? We’re a decade-plus into both his career and this website, and while the highs were thrilling, especially the “Trophies”-“Worst Behavior”-“Hold On, We’re Going Home” run from 2013-2014, those days are long past. We have entered the long nadir of Fucking Drake. “Toosie Slide” breaks through the monotony by being worse. It’s imperially bad Drake, tyrannical mush that has consumed the pop attention economy. It’s the kind of dance track that only works in an environment where people are legally barred from going out to dance, a rhythm-less, formless song that idles in sub-0PN synth work while Drake mutters some drafts about shooting dudes. He references Michael Jackson, but every one of Jackson’s hits felt burdened with extraordinary effort. Drake, instead, managed to make something out of nothing for so long that he can no longer tell when he’s making nothing out of nothing
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Shamelessly Trying to Go Viral Drake + Sad Boy Toxic Masculinity Drake = the Cha-Cha Slide on Xanax. 
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Thomas Inskeep: aka the Electric Slide for the TikTok generation. Only with Drake going on over top of it in his emo sadboy fashion, of course.
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Tobi Tella: The aforementioned slide must be a slide away from dignity or artistic ambition. I joke, but this has to be the least effort he’s put into anything in a while — and this is the man who released Scorpion. It’s almost at Bieber levels of thirst for virality, angling obviously to be a TikTok dance when the best of those come somewhat organically from bored teenagers. The song isn’t even fun! It’s a mid-tempo with no sense of life or energy, where Drake calls out dance moves like he’s on Ambien. The rest of the song is filled with throwaway lines of his signature call to arms for basic girls and douchebags (I’m sure SOMEONE has captioned an Instagram post “I could dance like Michael Jackson”). And despite all of this, it’s a hit, because of course it is.
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David Moore: Why submit to this depressive Stockholm Syndrome-dependent excuse for a line dance when the Ciara remix of “The Git Up” is sitting right there in mint condition, still in its original packaging?
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Alfred Soto: The Auto-tuned falsetto bit aside, “Toosie Slide” compresses Aubrey Graham’s lack of affect into four bloodless minutes. Most people dance alone to a better rhythm.
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Alex Clifton: Drake made his own TikTok music video with the most boring dance in the world. “Toosie Slide” is pretty bland just as a song, but the dance itself is foot up, slide, foot up, slide, and that’s it. It’s designed to go viral because the dance is so easy that you don’t have to be Charli D’Amelio to learn these moves. At least the “In My Feelings” challenge was interesting — I get that we’re all social distancing, so dancing outside cars is not the best move currently. But Drake is meant to be an entertainer. Entertain us, then.
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Katie Gill: 1. Who was breaking quarantine to film those damn outside shots? Get yo ass indoors. 2. Does a song going viral on TikTok really count if it’s designed from the ground up to go viral on TikTok? 3. Does it even count as going viral when previous viral TikTok dances are these beautiful, intricate things and yet “Toosie Slide” is so basic that even the “Cha Cha Slide” has more complexity? This feels like something that was quickly pushed out to be timely it, the way that every single podcast you listen to quickly pushed out a COVID-19 themed episode in the past few weeks. Look, kids, Drake’s self-isolating! Isn’t that trendy?
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Katherine St Asaph: A thought almost as harrowing as “what would you have done during the Great Depression”: what did you do, past tense, during the Roaring Twenties, which in this century were the Roaring Tens? How did you spend it? Would you have spent it with more roar? Nobody ever thinks they’re thinking this will never end. Lately I can’t stop listening to 2010s dance-pop — the more viscerally nostalgic the better, the more love in this club seconds away, the more desperate Blackout death drive. It is a fleeting substitute for a unattainable rush, because now you and I are furloughed from rush, new career in global anhedonia cosplay (unless, of course, it wasn’t cosplay for you). Not even Drake is immune. Probably I’m not the only one who recalls the 2010s as Drake’s decade: soundtracking all yesterday’s parties, making every year’s memes, being appointed by millions as the liver of their vicarious best life. He defined the decade, which is to say he’s a relic. What could a Drake song even be right now? An energy drain, Drake likening himself to Michael Jackson as if he hadn’t already one-upped himself by sampling the man; bringing back YOLO as if these were remotely YOLO times; answering the chorus “don’t you want to dance with me?” with “no”; dictating steps for a TikTok dance that already seems played-out, while pacing through his palatial Masque of the Red Death quarantine palace. He sounds as defeated as the rest of us. (A Billboard headline: “Drake’s ‘Toosie Slide’ Turned Into a Springtime Pop Anthem.” Springtime? Anthems? Did they lay off everyone who experiences real life?) It must sting Drake that his former protege Abel Tesfaye has outdone him once again, if not on the charts anymore then in the mood. The city is cold and empty. Another month of this and we’ll all be turned on by just a touch. And we’ll be on our own for long enough, sliding right foot, left foot into limbo.
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