The Singles Jukebox

But who is S-tier?

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[3.00]

Vikram Joseph: It’s almost exactly 20 years since I heard Hybrid Theory for the first time, and if someone had told me that in 2021 Mike Shinoda would be doing himbo pop-rap about trying to stay positive in a pandemic, I would have probably asked what a himbo is, and then gone back to downloading shit from Kazaa and playing Championship Manager 00/01. There’s a lot of this sort of thing around at the moment, and none of it is terribly good, but it’s nice to hear Shinoda sounding at ease (even when rapping about “bad fuckin’ vibes”). UPSAHL’s chorus is unsophisticated but admittedly hooky, and Iann Dior does that Machine Gun Kelly rapper-with-delusions-of-singing-ability thing — can we please let that die, and soon? “Happy Endings” is as reflective of the pervasive musical trends of 2021 as “Papercut” was for 2001; let’s all meet up in 2041 to look back on this with bafflement.
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Alfred Soto: I can’t remember why we made fun of LFO twenty years ago.
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Oliver Maier: Happy ending: Mike Shinoda’s verses (lots of fun, somehow Mike emanates boundless enthusiasm despite the subject matter). Sad ending: Upsahl’s chorus (I keep expecting her to start singing “Since U Been Gone,” and she does not). True ending: Iann Dior’s verses (fine).
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Katherine St Asaph: Could use more Mike Shinoda and less Iann Dior (but does have exactly the right amount of Upsahl — which, given that she only has the hook, isn’t promising). Also could use more dynamic variation, which is to say it could use a dynamic other than one unchanging guitar riff taking a mandoline to your earlobe.
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Samson Savill de Jong: “How can we make Mood again, again, but even worse?” “Get the guy from Linkin Park to rap, badly, and make sure to retain the most insufferable man in music right now for maximum effect.: Points exclusively for Upsahl’s bit, and even then I wonder if I’m being generous to her because of the shit she was surrounded by.
[1]

Thomas Inskeep: Mike Shinoda dropping a song like this at age 44 is like a guy in his 50s who still thinks he can pull off wearing A&F clothing. It doesn’t help that in Iann Dior he has someone who’s an awful rapper, and in Upsahl he has someone who’s an awful singer.
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Hazel Southwell: Do I really need a new Gym Class Heroes album but with the enormous weight of being middle-aged on the decks? The answer is “maybe,” but I don’t feel good about it.
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Juana Giaimo: I get the economic reason why Mike Shinoda would like to work with the new trendy generation of emo-influenced artists, but I don’t see any other reason. He sounds exactly like an adult pretending to be a teenager with lines like “Yo, this whole last year was a shit show” and “I still feel like I’m totally nuts.” Iann Dior and Upsahl put so little effort into singing that his straightforward rapping makes it seem like he was the only one excited to be doing this.
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