Magdalene – Lucky Girl

Peter gives us the latest indie-act-gone-pop…

[Video]
[6.86]Peter Ryan: Magdalene (aka Maddy Boyd, fka Your Angel, also noted Cole Haden Fairy Godmother) has spent the last year speedrunning aughts-era dance-pop homage with a wink and strength of bit-commitment that keeps the exercise from feeling stale. “Lucky Girl” is the middle of her seven singles but clocks in as the project’s mission statement — the natural elaboration of the setup in debut “Delusional”, a force-of-will bullshit artistry opus, a “cuckoo girl anthem” for the age of manifesting. As Your Angel, she took a more earnest, indie-pop tack on the trials of a working musician trying to make it — the last Your Angel album was titled A Star in the Headlights — but I think the glitzier trappings here suit the thematic territory better. There’s a lot going on in just the first 30 seconds — grandiose spoken intro over moody undersea burbles and squalling ’80s guitar kneecapped by that fire-alarm synth jab (comprehensive mission statement in sound-effect form) and supplanted by some mix of reanimated backing track parts from 2009. Despite any measure of grab-baggyness, it’s confident and sharp-edged, gaudy and fun, thoughtful and precise about how it pulls particular sonic threads through the song to manage sounding current while being clear about its referents. My favorite bit of self-mythologizing of the year.
[8]

Al Varela: Eventually we’re gonna reach the 20 year cycle for the early 2010s’ club boom. This is a pretty good start, with the aggressively bloopy production and club bass thumping underneath Magdalene’s autotuned vocals singing a pretty infectious hook. I think it’s missing a little bit of that “nothing left to lose” energy that made that early club boom so cathartic, but it’s a really damn good song all the same.
[7]

Iain Mew: The chunky synth sound is pure pleasure, immediate and blaring enough to go beyond nostalgia. The best thing is that she knows it and builds from there, using a variation of it for a glorious delayed entrance and then making the song a balance between celebration of it and elaborate tease for when it might reappear.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: For an omnipotent being, Magdalene sounds remarkably wistful. That puts a crucial spin on an incredibly straight RedOne repro, something tempting to project as implicit nostalgia for 2010. Whatever her intentions, she makes it clear that no one has in fact yet danced til the world ends. It’s about time for another shot.
[7]

Claire Davidson: Magdalene’s “Lucky Girl” so perfectly replicates the kind of vapid, sanctimonious language associated with online #manifestation circles that I thought it had to be some sort of send-up, if only because there’s only so much talk of being aligned and in control that one could deliver while keeping a straight face. (The song is even named for a TikTok mantra so nakedly false on premise that it makes me wonder if Fiona Apple was right about there being no hope for women.) The press Magdalene has done for this song indicates that she did, in fact, intend for it to be satirical, but there’s very little irony in the song that actually suggests this, no lyrical subtext hinting at an inner darkness or insecurity lurking behind the rote repetition of these mottos. This isn’t a Poppy song, either, where the singer’s eerie monotone serves as cryptic enough social commentary as is—indeed, had this track fully leaned into its comedic instincts, I could see Magdalene’s half-jokingly blasé delivery capturing a kind of flailing self-absorption that would lead to some roaringly funny lines. As it is, though, “Lucky Girl” is essentially just a late-2000s Britney track, and not a particularly good one, either: while its densely shuffling hook could’ve been monstrously catchy if properly used, the song instead defaults to a mirage of emptily bleeping synths, so utilitarian in focus that it forgets the fun required in its commitment to delusion.
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: The smooth kicks that stroll comfortably through the mix, with the stark synth lines by the writer of this gem of earnest vulnerability combine with the foamy, bubbling bassline that carries the writing ably during the song, only pausing for distorted, vocoded chorus breaks. Boyd, as lead producer shines, her lyrics bland and trite but sung in the kind of voice makes one scramble for the Shazam when you don’t know it and for your phone if you do. If that doesn’t do it for you… you’re out of luck, as one who has listened to this 7 times and still cannot recall it.
[5]

Ian Mathers: I’m a little torn, on the one hand some of the lyrics seem like they’re doing The Secret-style law of attraction bullshit, which I hate. But on the other hand, the chorus is more than a bit of a bop. And I think this is the only music video using strippers that I’ve seen that gives them a moment during the credits (including the social media handles), and that’s cool. I think that edges this just past the [7] my reservations about the lyrics were aiming at.
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