It’s Scandinavian Tuesday!
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[5.09]
Anthony Easton: Songs about being young and drinking champagne have never sounded so leaden.
[3]
Alfred Soto: At first I feared a Vibrin-infused cover of the dreadful fun. megahit, so take some of my enthusiasm as relief. The arrangement is pure 1994 fodderstompf, assembled by citizens of a country who have demonstrated this skill for two generations. Certainly I’ve heard worse, but I’ve heard less generic musical representations of the ineffability of white youth.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: More like “we are biting Icona Pop while also hoping a few lost fun.-seekers click our YouTube link.”
[3]
Brad Shoup: I guess “Mercy Mercy” was a long time ago, popwise. But so was “Hello,” and yet there’s that insistent pizzicato, overlaid with nods to “I Love It”. With two shouty singers, the refrain should have that Icona feel, but there’s something very indie rock about the way they hold fast to each note of “Cos all/I wan-na/Feel,” inflating the phrase like a blimp. It’s the seed of anthem, and could have bloomed proper if they’d strayed any further from the sentiment of a number-4 Swedish hit. It’ll do as an earworm, but they could have had the whole monster.
[5]
David Lee: This is just evidence that Icona Pop’s “I Love It” — which is finally gaining traction on the charts — is a perfect template for making up drunken lyrics with friends or for singing to over Skype/in the mirror/on a roadtrip. In other words, this functions as inadvertent product placement.
[5]
Cecily Nowell-Smith: Is there a Swedish TV series that’s equivalent to Skins? I’d like to propose a subgenre, here, this and Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and a fistful of other tin-washed electropop tunes. I can’t think of a catchy name right now but it all sounds like it should be soundtracking a montage on a Channel 4 teen drama, photogenic stage-school kids in improbably interesting clothes doing something wildly youthful like joyriding drunk in a field with paint in their hair. A verse of demands, a shouty chorus, a looped hook woven from chug and echo: how relentless, how one-note, being young in someone else’s imagination.
[5]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The blog-pop blast of “We Are Young” is solid, if unspectacular, but Le Kid have an ace up their sleeves: the ability to see the big picture. This is a song that loses its mind over being young without caricaturing the uneasiness of the youth experience as teen-movie irresponsibility and nothing else. It’s good to hear a vocalist who offers disconnected images with twinges of disillusionment and frustration — bloodied knees, drinking away condescending advice, being relegated to the back seat of the car — then swings for the cheap seats with an optimistic chorus. The negatives are as necessary as the positives, and Le Kid give them enough attention to point out that giddy hedonism only makes total sense when accompanied by tedious teenage bum-outs. They get it, even espousing a motto to seal the deal: “Feel it all. Want it all.”
[6]
Iain Mew: I love the harsh roars of fuzz. That aside, though, “We Are Young” is really flimsy, even the looping chorus, and it isn’t charming or fun enough to get away with it. Also, the continuing lifespan of “I Love It” makes it difficult for anything to be its successor as this was possibly intended to be, because it doesn’t need one yet.
[5]
Rebecca A. Gowns: There are a lot more annoying ways to blend these of-the-moment elements: a manufactured stadium singing a chorus, heavy four-on-the-floor with hi-hat, oscillating electronic bwips weaving in and out of each other, lyrics about being young and free and ready to consume. This song is perfectly pre-packaged for an Urban Outfitters ad, but it’s not so bad, even so.
[6]
Ian Mathers: Well, unlike fun. these guys pass what I call the Benetar test, but some pedantic part of my brain can’t help but getting stuck on the repetitions of “cause all I wanna be/we are young,” which makes even less sense than most choruses. It still sounds fine, which is the important part, but if the song was really working for me I’d be too swept up to care, even unwillingly, about those lines.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: You can’t feel bad for Le Kid, exactly, as they know exactly what they’re doing; but you kinda do feel bad that they’re up and coming (sort of; they did Melodifestivalen, but the blogs won’t play that up) with a reprise of Icona Pop’s “I Love It” immediately after “I Love It” became déclassé. (It’s “overplayed,” apparently, which is usually code for “it was on Girls and on the radio for flyover Macklemore fans and therefore I can’t like it anymore.”) But fuck that; “I Love It” is great, having more spangle-brat anthems like it is also great, verses sung like Bratz-doll Kylies are, yes, also great; and as a rallying chant, “All I wanna feel! We are young!” is no less galvanizingly silly than “We are girls!” or “Uh-oh! We’re in trouble!” or really anything by Oh My! — or, for that matter, “tonight! We are young!” Le Kid hasn’t quite got the pacing down — this trips and thuds where it should throb — but otherwise? I don’t care. I love it.
[6]