I learned something new today…
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Will Adams: I love dance music. It has always been with me, at my desk, at the gym, in the car, through my whole life. During my senior year of high school, I went to a school dance that featured house music only and danced for two hours straight, next to a strobelight and with two friends who shared my love of the beats. A few days later the rumor mill churned out the word that those two had been rolling on ecstasy then. I lamented their dependence on a pill to enjoy the night and felt chillingly alone. Fast forward a bit, and that same sense of dread creeps in thanks to the existence of “Molly.” Both Madonna and Cedric Gervais have proven themselves equally arrogant in their lame deflections for how this doesn’t constitute an endorsement of party drugs. How stupid do they think we are? This is a woman who titled her album MDNA and a man who released a track called “Pills” a few years ago. Even worse is the video, where this drug becomes a beautiful woman you must seek out. This drug will give you pleasure, it says. It’s the only way, it says. It takes everything from crass to reckless, and it is so infuriating to see reasonably big musicians act so carelessly. Worst of all, though, is that I’m getting this angry about a track that is so fucking boring, exactly the example the naysayers point to when denouncing house music as nothing more than dumb, drugged-out thumping. “[Molly] makes my life happier/More exciting/She makes me want to dance,” says the Macintosh vocal that sounds suspiciously like Madonna, and I bury my face in my hands, feeling the loneliness again.
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Anthony Easton: Those guttural beats, those electronic, sub-arcade expanses, those wide prairies of ambient texture, that computer voice talking about not being able to find drugs like it’s a more problematic discussion of what the problems of pleasures are, the historically minded house history, without the complete wallowing in nostalgia. Waiting for Jarvis Cocker to write a withering pop song in response.
[8]
Iain Mew: With how much it sounds like a watered-down version of Deadmau5’s haunted house, I was going to suggest that this song was trolling him after his argument with Madonna. Then it turned out that this was already around, since MDNA used it as an excuse at the time, so it’s even less interesting than I thought.
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Jonathan Bogart: The dull ecstatic-rush-interrupted-by-voice-simulator track was bad enough, but it was the nauseating male-gaze video that lost Gervais his remaining point.
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Katherine St Asaph: Imagine that literally no guest vocalist would return Cedric’s emails, forcing him to resort to old tech. Probably not the case — normally when this happens, the dudes sing themselves — but it’d explain a lot.
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Alfred Soto: Next is the E!
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Patrick St. Michel: The thinnest Xtranormal-video premise ever.
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Brad Shoup: “You’re off the case, Gervais! Turn in your badge and FruityLoops.”
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Michaela Drapes: It’s not the massive multi-million dollar festivals, or the endless “So, this EDM thing is popular now…” chinstroking thinkpieces in the squarest of publications, but an anthemic track with a straight up drug reference that’s the surest sign that we’re headed straight to the bottom all over again. Welcome to the Third Summer of Love, everyone!
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