Post Malone ft. Ty Dolla $ign – Psycho
I guess we like psychos a little more than rockstars…
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[4.71]
Ryo Miyauchi: After setting his eyes on Travis Scott’s croons and 21 Savage’s gloom, Post Malone now tries on the “aye” flow, which traces him back to his first reference point: Chief Keef, the model for “White Iverson.” It’s an adequate take on a party life that’s trashy and more depressing than glamorous. In other words, it’s yet another Post Malone single.
[5]
Crystal Leww: Do you remember that meme video where all Nickelback songs are the same song? I feel that way about 2018 Post Malone. “Psycho” sounds the same as “rockstar,” which was also a song that just sounded like an unending melody sung in a half-assed way. Who knows, maybe he will actually make a good song someday, too.
[3]
Julian Axelrod: Post Malone presents a glassy-eyed lullaby that sounds like “Tha Crossroads” drained of all passion and pathos and converted into a Windows 95 desktop background. But the beat is an 8-bit beauty, and its hypnotizing shimmer matches the mind-numbing verses oddly well. Post and Ty are clearly on auto-pilot (or the Post Malone equivalent of auto-pilot) but they’re emotive enough to make the dumbest possible lyrics blend into the backdrop, like Bob Ross fucking up a beautiful winter landscape. It’s remarkably restrained for a guy who looks like a rabbi selling coke at a Kid Rock show.
[6]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: The misleading “Official Audio” for “Rockstar” that Republic posted to YouTube was a three and a half minute loop of the chorus. It was eventually taken down, and YouTube declared that all similar videos would be removed. How apt that it’s only now that Post Malone releases a song that needn’t rely on such a gimmick to feel hypnotic. “Psycho” cleverly employs a beat that many will associate with wistful video game nostalgia. It’s the chisel that rounds out the mood of a specific but ephemeral experience–one that’s peppered with enough details to be vivid, but far too nebulous to dispel any of its magic. The words and phrases that catch one’s ear (“Lil mama bad like Michael,” “Diamonds by the boatload,” Post Malone’s “whoooaah”) may be generic but they accomplish the task effectively. Best of all is how the chorus’s lines are structured such that end words are accented, spoon-feeding listeners with rhymes that are agreeable enough to sustain passive interest.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: In a couple of days I’m going to talk about how much I love the new Ladytron single for its narcotic nihilism. (If you think that’s a spoiler, you don’t know me at all.) So why am I indifferent to Post Malone and imitators, despite their schtick being neatly, exactly summed up by “narcotic nihilism”? Maybe I lived through years of Kid Cudi already. Maybe I’m just old.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The leads compete for Most Annoying Sing-Song About Tony Romo and Diamonds by the Boatload.
[4]
Iain Mew: “Can’t really trust nobody” as lullaby — even before the feeble cruelty of the line about ugly girls it’s a long way from working as a dream, but they don’t have the imagination or conviction to actually go for the nightmare either.
[3]
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