Oh, we found out…
[Video]
[5.00]
Alfred Soto: How many demographics can one act target with one single? Let’s find out!
[4]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I hear Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, and Katy Perry, but most of all Ashnikko. This type of hybrid between the guitar-strummed early 2000s and the auto tuned, depressive zeitgeist of 2021 is a good look for them.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: There are about 40 different things I might expect an Extremely Online pop artist to sound like these days. None of them are “What’s Up.” From Linda Perry it’s one more step to Pink, who in her prime (i.e. before she started sounding like OneRepublic’s guidance counselor) owned this kind of wryly angsty, highly hooky confessional. But where Alecia’s songwriting voice was unpolished and unapologetic, Ashnikko’s — for all their blown-out vocals and trolly photoshoots — is calculated poise. That’s not a bad thing. Nothing on Missundaztood — the title alone is worlds away in earnestness — was packed this full of perfect pithy phrases, from “panic attacks in paradise” on down.
[7]
Oliver Maier: We’re at a point where it is no longer just acceptable but nigh-expected for musicians to spill the beans about their mental health on record. Scarcely a major album cycle passes now without an invocation of therapy and/or trauma in the lyrics or press. Whether this has done anything to tangibly improve the wellbeing either of these singers or their audiences is a mystery to me, but we must at least acknowledge that its direct qualitative impact on popular music has been boring fucking songs filled with clunky, painfully literal lyrics. Surely the kids deserve better.
[3]
Andrew Karpan: If I were a striving, misunderstood soundcloud David Bowie, I think I would also probably put out my own touching take on “‘Delete Forever’ vibes” around about now too.
[5]
Katie Gill: I say this with all the love in the world, but do you know that feeling when you hear a song, listen to the lyrics, and you realize “ah, this person spent a decent chunk of their teenage years on Tumblr”? This is very much the sort of sad-girl alt-pop type of music that post-Younger Now Miley Cyrus and early Halsey helped pioneer and shape. It’s catchy, it’s fun, and it’s precisely the sort of song that teenagers will quote in their social media profile and make semi-joking semi-serious memes about. (Tag yourself, I’m ‘sucker for a little devastation.’)
[6]
Alex Clifton: It’s the least irritating song I’ve heard from Ashnikko yet (I’m still haunted by the “hentai boobies” line in “Sleepover”), but it’s not exactly enjoyable. I applaud Ashnikko for taking a more vulnerable approach to mental health–it’s been great to see a lot of younger artists doing this. But at the same time, you gotta make it interesting, dude. At least “Sleepover,” cursed as its lyrics are, sticks in my head.
[2]
Ian Mathers: At least in previous appearances she went “red hot like a demon”. Here she’s just the Lana Del Rey of Olivia Rodrigos (or vice versa).
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: When the Barbie impression echoes through the guitar drift, it makes me more depressed than any of the anguished lyrics wrung out by Ashnikko’s keening voice. There’s nothing but looped bass plates and a lonesome coo, so the lyrics just hang there, hovering above your open mouth, as you wait for the boom to drop. You die waiting.
[6]