The Singles Jukebox

Pop, to two decimal places.

Beastie Boys – Make Some Noise

Video features cameos from Every Talented Person In America Today…



[Video][Website]
[4.44]

Zach Lyon: Bin Laden is dead! The past ten awful years never happened! Party like it’s August 2001! But not to the Beastie Boys! They’d still sound way too old for this shit!
[3]

Doug Robertson: It’s not earth shattering, but it is body moving, and it ticks enough boxes to keep the idea of new Beastie Boys material as a good and exciting thing and not that of a group whose best days are behind them.
[6]

Alfred Soto: If this sounds like it belongs on Hello Nasty, consider it progress: most of To The 5 Boroughs sounded like nothing at all. From sipping prosecco to opening a restaurant with Ted Danson to cowbell to Elijah Wood, Danny McBride, and Seth Rogen, this is the most exhilarating kind of retro-made-new.
[7]

Jer Fairall: I wonder what came first: the anachronistic Ted Danson reference or Danson’s equally anachronistic appearance in the celebrity-laden video? Sadly, “Back on the mic it’s the anti-depressor” aside, the song gives me little else to notice.
[5]

Martin Skidmore: If you’d have told me when they were one of the most exciting acts in the world, 25 years ago, that they’d still be going now and would have made so few records I liked, I’d not have believed you. This has perkily squawking synths, and their hopelessly dated rapping, and feels entirely redundant.
[3]

Mallory O’Donnell: I can’t really dislike this on an objective, purely musical level, but, honestly, how hard did they have to work to come up with it? It’s fine, in a barer year it might be decent, but at this point in the history of music what 15-year old with a working knowledge of the canon and some credible gear could not have delivered as good as this or even, easily, so much better, given two weeks to create a believable “Beastie Boys” number?
[4]

Al Shipley: The Beastie Boys were not my personal white suburban rite of passage into liking non-white suburban hip hop, but I respect that they were for enough of my peers that there’s a certain reflexive nostalgic attachment to any new output from the group. But as someone who only kinda cares about the Beasties even when they were at their best, I have no reason to give a shit about their diminishing returns.
[3]

Chuck Eddy: As a throwback to the point in their career when I first stopped paying attention (that’d be Check Your Head), not unlistenable. At least if you ignore MCA’s voice, which to the distortion’s credit is too concealed here to be really painful.
[5]

Kat Stevens: Wickee-wickee-waa! Fun fact: I can totally gargle the opening bars of ‘Voodoo Chile’ after 3 pints of Ordinary.
[4]