Today we’re choosin’ (more) duets, you can tell…
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Al Varela: I love covering mainstream popular music on our good platform we call The Singles Jukebox, but it also means some artists don’t get covered until they’ve made a sizable hit. In this case, Koe Wetzel has only appeared one other time here through his biggest hit, “High Road,” a decent song dragged down by the presence of Jessie Murph, one of the worst new artists of the decade. Now he returns to the Jukebox with “Jaded”, the poppiest, most mediocre, nothingburger of a song that leverages his longtime friendship with Ella Langley to save his underperforming album from earlier this year. I wish I could overlook all of that and just appreciate the song itself, which is mostly fine with a decent production job and fairly sticky hook. But I can’t. Because I know what Koe Wetzel is capable of. He can make some wild party songs that toe the line of good taste. He can make a perfect soundtrack to your next crash out where getting better is the last thing you want to do. He can make some of the nastiest, yet tragic breakup songs you’ve ever heard. Anyone who loves a good modern grunge banger will get a kick out of Koe Wetzel’s older stuff. “Jaded” is just him looking for a quick and easy check. It’s not worth it.
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David Allun Jones: Now perhaps I’m jaded too, but if a potential suitor was to initiate a conversation with “Well I wanna want ya” before bombarding me with an endless series of inquiries about who or what broke me in the past to lead to my current guarded state, methinks that I would be so irritated those walls would never come down. Because who are you to think that the way to winning my heart or nether regions is calling me “lonely,” “damaged” and “cold”?! It doesn’t help that Koe Wetzel seems to care less about the answers than he does figuring out a quick way in – note the way he rushes through those “Just tell me tonight”’s. Perhaps the point is Koe is just a caring dude with the best intentions dressed in bumbling execution; that seemingly would have provided the perfect opportunity for our international chart king Langley to provide some type of counterpoint or detail deepening, but her presence is relegated to glorified background singer (also: streams-booster) here, her honeyed harmonies and ad-libs acting as the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Nit-picked annoyances aside, “Jaded”’s melodic shimmer gleams in all the right ways, and I could definitely see it winning over drunken tavern crowds as a killer karaoke duet.
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Nortey Dowuona: Gabe Simon, who handles the piano, electric guitar and percussion, shares producer credits with Jordan Schmidt, who handles the synths, drum programming and slide guitar. Both the electric and slide guitar sidewind next to each other, so smooth and lush, easy to clutch at while Langley’s warm, caramel alto and Wetzel’s tinny, thin tenor somehow cannot blend for the life of them. And even Carrie K and Miles McPherson‘s drums alongside Schmidt’s (which smush them together) cannot create that blend.
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Callie Petch: Came for Ella, stayed for Koe. My first time listening to “Jaded,” I was humming along until the chorus first hit, where Langley moves to the forefront of the mix, and it felt like somebody had ripped the edges off a 4:3 aspect ratio into widescreen. She and Wetzel’s voices blend superbly, both bringing an audible wounded desperation to break through these walls that befit the spiky relationship of the characters in the song. But the more I sit with the track, the more that Wetzel stands out. Sure, “and I like it, how you’re damaged just like me” is a minor red flag, and the beer can crack just before the first chorus is an unnecessary pander, but he makes a line like “who lied and told you that you don’t deserve your wings?” transcend cliché through his vocal delivery. The way he oscillates between vulnerability one moment and messy self-defence the next, as with the immediate follow-up “it damn sure wasn’t me” adds surprising nuance that catches you off-guard. And then there’s a tasteful little guitar solo made for the kind of drivetime speeding that leads to you belting along the final chorus despite yourself. A real “these two are the best at what they do” coming together.
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Charlotte Gaze: I swear this dude was once a real singer-songwriter capable of touching my soul. You could not engineer a more soulless, checklisty set of lyrics about the cold and hurt Koe Wetzel used to embody with such humanity. It’s an insult. And why does the music sound like a beautiful, sunny day out in the neighborhood?
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Ashton Arbus: Essentially a Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac demo with a mild country twinge. This is mostly a compliment.
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