The Singles Jukebox

But maybe not worthy…

[Video][Website]
[2.00]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I can’t believe this dude sings, with a straight face, “Don’t I make you cringe?”
[3]

Stephen Eisermann: White man with guitar gets high and says you’re mad because he can’t just live his life how he chooses, bro. He doesn’t understand that what makes you mad is the Phillip Phillips and Kris Allen of it all. Lack of originality is the real cringe.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: Those dragons aren’t going to imagine themselves. I’m sympathetic to the argument that all the scorn and dismissal no longer directed at pop has just been re-directed, pre-conceptions intact, to also-popular alternative radio fare; that furthermore all the energy that’s been drained from pop-pop has been conserved in stuff like this: the big stomping chorus, the percussion whirring like Butch Vig might’ve done in 1999. I certainly can’t call “Cringe” lazy or lifeless. I just also can’t call it “good.” Docked a point because Googling the lyrics to “Cringe” misidentifies it as a Sharon Van Etten song, which is a crime against women.
[1]

Alfred Soto: Imagine a singer-songwriter spending his dolor like dollars, making Bernard Sumner sound like Richard Thompson. 
[1]

Ian Mathers: Hey, Billboard Alternative Songs chart: I got a fucking meme for you.
[1]

Kylo Nocom: From the swamps of iHeart Radio alternative comes hell on Earth. I don’t trust any man who tells me his “head’s on the fritz” because nobody talks like that, let alone a man that tries to fit the word “cringe” into a song now that it’s been drilled into the heads of a thousand clickbait-indoctrinated teenagers who call anything sincere “cringey.” He obviously doesn’t mean it like that, but the overuse of the word nowadays seems to be the only reason it’s the title of this otherwise unremarkable piece of shit. Gotta get that engagement somehow, so I don’t blame him.
[3]

Will Adams: As with “Triggered,” I find it hard to get on board with a song whose title is a term that’s been twisted by the internet’s worst denizens to mock people. (Funnily enough, sourcing and editing a 30 minute video of clips and uploading it to YouTube with the title “SJW CRINGE COMPILATION 29” is, uh, pretty cringe.) Even without that, though, there’s the list of alt. radio tropes to deal with: turgid arrangement, vague gestures to gospel, hoarse shouting throughout.
[4]