The Singles Jukebox

Let’s just stomp on it now before it goes Top Ten or something…

[Video][Website]
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Mallory O’Donnell: In the long and storied tradition of “DJ Whore,” this year’s novelty electro hoedown with a “hilarious” stupid club chick monologue. Maybe some century these bedroom producers (strangely, they’re always men) will turn their hands to creating a track that pokes fun at the asinine shit dudes say in clubs.
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Crystal Leww: Haha WHITE GIRLS, am I right?
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Alfred Soto: This song is rising fast on the Hot 100, thanks to its EDM cliches, “Valley Girl” sprechgesang, and exploitation of an up-to-the-minute term. I have faith that the American public will punish this thing soon.
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Katherine St Asaph: Uptalk deployed like snuff porn: mundanities that’d probably sound fine in context turned into novel ways for girls to hate girls for going out on Monday (so do they, so does fucking Jason, but no, it’s anygirl-as-punchline) or being short. (Oh my god, can you believe her, it’s like she didn’t even… call up Procrustes?) The kind of thing that makes Sheryl Sandberg suggest that middle-school girls tug their earlobes to police their friends sounding anything like this and makes me spend at least a half-hour a day worrying whether I’m irredeemably vapid. The music is nothing.
[1]

Brad Shoup: I thought something could be made of the Jason saga, but even taking into account his liking the selfie whilst in the club, it’s not that great. Neither is the bit about the filter — how far is your tonearm up your ass to think this girl wouldn’t already be a filter connoisseur? The bit about “Summertime Sadness” is… fine. The motif is deviliciously naughty. Remove the dialogue and you’d have an OK Thursday-night DJ transition. Otherwise, you have a tragedy.
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Will Adams: Fine, you go take a selfie; I’m gonna punch that asshole DJ in the face for not taking my “Summertime Sadness” request and playing this sad excuse for holier-than-thou social commentary instead.
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Jonathan Bradley: Silly Chainsmokers, only journalists may write vapid trendpieces. Please redirect your single to the editor of Sunday Styles.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: “#Selfie,” more so than most viral music, is doomed to become an artifact quickly, its mish-mash of cultural references fated to be passe by October. Everything about it is depressingly cynical, from the forced, not-even-original viral hook to the fact this only exists because selfies were a thing last year. If this was simply hedonistic EDM in the mold of LMFAO, you could at least have some fun.
[0]

Scott Mildenhall: Last month a sub-Lee Nelson “Vine comedian” called Dapper Laughs made the UK top 20 with a song called “Proper Moist” (key line: “don’t be hating on me for having a bit of fun”) that would have been exactly the sort of banter-skewering satire pop could do with were it not that the listener was meant to be on its side. Intent is the thing, and while no doubt as many people will be laughing with as at “#Selfie,” its definite crime is being so boring.
[3]

Jer Fairall: Lacks much in the way of sophistication as either music or satire, aside from a Lana Del Rey gag that says more about the weirdness of our particular cultural moment than any of the zoned-out nods to photo filters and Instagram followers. Fond memories of the Zappa’s “Valley Girl” keep me from finding this to be as obnoxious as I reasonably should.
[5]

Anthony Easton: This kind of asshole self-indulgence is kind of expected if one half is from Darien and the other half went to art school in New York. Maybe this marks my growing decrepitude, but self-loathing club culture has been much more clever.
[3]

Megan Harrington: When I was in college, the equivalent of “#Selfie” was “Homecoming” by the Teenagers, and all my friends loved it because it was so funny and so dead on. Because girls are dumb, right? And guys just wanna fuck, right? It’s massively dispiriting that we’re still playing this game. I know there are plenty of barely drinking-age listeners who will find “#Selfie” hilarious because they selfie and they can’t read the tone of a text message, but that doesn’t mean the Chainsmokers aren’t laughing at them, using their cultural capital to paint them as useless idiots. Maybe it’s because I am a real life older sister, but I just want to shout at everyone that there’s nothing dumb about being a girl, or even being this girl. Put down your ice bomb!
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Madeleine Lee: I’m loath to be on the same side as people who hate this because “this bitch is so annoying” — after all, this is my gender, age and education bracket we’re talking about — but the whole song is engineered to make you think that anyway, so why bother defending it when that time could be spent fixing my face in Perfect365 and not listening to Melbourne bounce?
[1]

Edward Okulicz: When you go out to make a joke out of something you consider stupid by imitation, all you end up doing is create something stupid yourself. Irony doesn’t automatically generate the laughs — white girls in the club can be loud and vapid, who knew? And who cares — where is a better place to be loud and obnoxious than a night out? While nobody’s listening to The Chainsmokers’ total whatever of club music cliche, it’s not like you don’t hear worse done with the serious aim of actually making people dance. The combination does make me fondly remember my obsession with this Greek pop song from 10 years ago about freaks met while “on the road” (as opposed to “in the club”) that does cheesy dance with slangy spoken word and does it 50 times better than “#Selfie.”
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Iain Mew: There was only one possible format for this review.
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