No puppies or mud harmed while posting this screenshot.
[Video][Website]
[4.12]
Josh Langhoff: Two bewildered doofuses, trying to make sense of manic pixie dream girls and thieving gypsies and women who read, somehow create the year’s best pop country single that isn’t by Sam Hunt. The challenge of my life now is figuring out why I love “Nothin’ Like You” and hate Rascal Flatts. I think it’s the vocals. Foregoing Gary LeVox’s emo exertions for something fluffier, Dan + Shay + Girl Who Dances In Silence float away on the crisp lines of Chris DeStefano’s production like untouchable heavenly marshmallows, rockin’ that rock ‘n’ roll t-shirt solely to enjoy all those delicious consonants. Although I gotta say, “rockin’ that Okkervil t-shirt” would’ve deepened the character while providing equal snap. Not their kind of different, I guess.
[8]
John Seroff: Dear Dad: Well, you were right, college is TOTALLY different from home! The girls are completely CRAZY out here! I’m not sure you’ll approve, but last month I met a gal who has completely changed my worldview. It all started when I saw her at a Starbucks and she was carrying a stack of books. I mean, sure, she was going to class but we’re talking about a whole STACK of books! The madness doesn’t stop there; try to guess what she was wearing. Whatever you guessed, you’re wrong! She had on a Ramones T-shirt, worn out jeans and shoes with PURPLE shoestrings! I don’t have to tell you that shoestrings are supposed to be WHITE! Every day, she does something else nobody’s ever seen. She occasionally moves in a rhythmic fashion when there’s not a song playing! And get this: I once caught her wearing sunglasses…in a rainstorm! She said it was to protect her contacts but I’m not buying it. She’s like a GYPSY or something! Anyways, don’t worry about me. It’s probably good that I’m having all these experiences now. Imagine how it would sound if I were, say, a pair of men in their mid-twenties spinning half-assed revelations into a country song instead of being a homeschooled fifteen-year-old boy on his own in public for the first time. Why, that’d be more embarrassing than TWO stacks of books!
[3]
Thomas Inskeep: If Rascal Flatts were better.
[5]
Anthony Easton: If someone is going to be this smarmy, I would want less subtlety. I can’t reward passive aggression in fuck songs — this and the possibilities of harmony disappearing, the racial slur midway through, and the compiling of clichés make this unforgivable. But the guitar picking intro is intricate enough, and they do match harmonies in a few spaces, and I like how they sing “rock and roll T-shirt.” Points for potential.
[4]
Megan Harrington: Dan + Shay are almost supernaturally generated to appeal to heterosexual women. The music video for “Nothin’ Like You” is framed as Shay’s dream, a dream of Dan and him running through fields with puppies, then covered in rain and mud with puppies. The song is in every way the video’s equivalent, full of details but general in the way they apply to almost every woman. Dancing when there’s no music playing and wearing concert t-shirts are traits that belong to the titular “you,” but they’re traits that belong to me too. Sure, they wear suits and grow facial hair, but aren’t Dan + Shay pretty much a boy band for women? As women age into undesirability there’s a corresponding unspoken rule that they no longer desire for anything but youth. The raptures of teen girlhood, the kind of flame that makes you scream until you cry when Harry Styles sings — this doesn’t go out, it just goes unacknowledged.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Racist, misogynistic, anti-intellectual, lazy: Dan and/or Shay’s best man has his speechwork cut out for him.
[0]
Katherine St Asaph: The poignant tale of a man falling deeply in love with a Live, Love, Laugh koozy.
[3]
Alfred Soto: If this cute duo want a girl “on the right side of crazy,” their well-strummed tune complete with peals is on the comfortable side of normal. I mean, double-tracked vocals espousing the verities of a “rock and roll T-shirt” and a “party dress”? Details, please!
[2]