Welcome to 2022! We begin the year with our traditional overview of the BBC’s Sound Of… selection…
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Scott Mildenhall: As with every year, it’s likely that few to none of the acts we feature in the next few days will be anywhere near “the sound of 2022” in the vague yet grandiose way the BBC suggests. In the case of Baby Queen, that’s lamentable — she’s released several of the best pop singles of the past few years. Most of the time, she dances the fine line between self-aware candour and show-offy self-satisfaction with the utmost skill, but here the balance is tipped. Gone are the cutting and inventive lyrics in favour of Outsider Cliches 101, and it’s rarely remotely compelling. It’s still catchy, if a little lifeless, and perhaps is intended to serve as an introduction. But why not introduce yourself by simply making art pop music rather than spelling the process out?
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Kayla Beardslee: As someone who became a devout follower of the Baby Kingdom in 2021, this isn’t my favorite Baby Queen song — I prefer the songs of hers where the choruses feel like explosive revelations. But even a mid-tier Baby Queen song is still pretty good!
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Baby Queen’s ceiling is astronomically high and on “Wannabe,” she is self-aware and funny enough to break the fourth wall and admit as much. “To all the critics who listen to my lyrics/I’m totally prolific and capable of ruling the world,” she winks, as if staring directly into my self-aggrandizing soul and daring me to call her out. But as one of those self-described critics, it brings me no pleasure to say: this song doesn’t quite reach the heights of her earlier releases. Despite Baby Queen’s typical lyrical cleverness, “Wannabe” is too lazy and lethargic in its production and pacing to make maximum impact.
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Katherine St Asaph: “To all the critics who listen to my lyrics I’m totally prolific and capable of ruling the world, but to the bitches born into riches who think it’s odd that I kiss girls, I guess I’ll always be a wannabe” — is this the rare song that is pro-critic? Since that never happens, it feels like there’s got to be some irony there, just like how Baby Queen has to be on some level of ironic self-deprecation to drop “artpop” post-POP EMERGENCY without a wink. That’s a bit concerning, since the “we’re all losers together!” message, if you think it works, only works if it’s totally earnest. But even if you aren’t quite up to set yourself free, “Wannabe” is a near-note-perfect post-Imbruglia single with abundant charm and few anachronisms. (I’ve spent ages trying to figure out what specifically it reminds me of and whether it’s by Shelly Peiken — maybe this?) I guess I’m still a sucker for less obvious nostalgia; this could easily have been an interpolation of you-know-what.
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Alex Clifton: Effortlessly dripping in cool, to the point that I’ll forgive it for including the title of a Glee original song as a lyric. The difference between the two is that “Wannabe” actually makes you feel like a badass while you own your weirdness, whereas the Glee song is clearly written by people who have never actually been bullied.
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Tobi Tella: The “I’m an outcast!” line of thinking is played out, exhibited by the fact that this song’s conceit is pulled from a Glee song, but that beginning riff and her considerable charisma are the addictive quality to a very low-in-substance song.
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Nortey Dowuona: The lyrics are pretty good, though I am not scared of dying by royal decree.
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Alfred Soto: The song can’t measure up to its string-scraping opener — the vocal is the unattractive sort of blank — but it boasts an agreeable thump.
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Jeffrey Brister: Slacker-pop, lazy and hazy and swinging sixteenths, stuff that’s really easy to idly loll your head side-to-side to. That’s pretty much it. The whole thing coasts on vibes and cutesy lyrics and never builds itself out or changes its intensity. The recycling of culture always latches onto the aesthetic signifiers, but never pushes deeper into why it works, or how the hell to make it more than unmemorable wallpaper. It just sorta just flops and bobs and then ends.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Too laid-back to reach the anthemic status it’s clearly clamoring for, too broad to serve as incisive commentary, too annoying to work as background music. Almost great in a way that ends up deeply unsatisfying.
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Samson Savill de Jong: I’m probably a victim of my own inflated expectations that I’m coming away from this absolutely fine song disappointed that it’s not outstanding. The lyrics are more or less as sharp as ever, but I don’t particularly care for the production on “Wannabe.” Baby Queen at her best makes songs that are deep, but also just sound good on the surface. Here I don’t really enjoy the sound (the “ooOOo” is an example), and I don’t think it manages to crescendo in an effective way, especially compared to her best songs, which nail the big build. The chorus has managed to worm its way into my head though, so it’s still doing something right.
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Andrew Karpan: I once had a friend who would occasionally throw a “loser_beck.mp3” in the chat in moments of particularly downbeat millennial theatrics. I liked these moments because they made our comically incidental miseries feel like they were part of the same deliberate performance of aestheticized slackerdom that had existed for at least the past two decades and carried with it the promise of becoming something else. A long way of saying: thank you Baby Queen for putting a loser_beck.mp3 in the chat.
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