European dance hits, of course, have had many Jukebox outings, though not always with such complete credits…
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[4.62]
Iain Mew: A European dance hit without a hint of tropical, and where the (internet-discovered) singer gets a proper credit — that seems almost quaint at this point! The song is clever and pleasingly unusual by more than chart comparison, though. Pham’s understated vocal is a perfect fit for looking in on the small-scale mundanity of being a DJ (coffee, repetition, minor crowds) before she and C-BooL flip into a chorus about the compensating feeling of getting lost in the music, set to booming brass and beats that make the prospect sound worth it all.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: Kind of fun, like you’d imagine from something grafted from cuttings of Martin Solveig’s “Intoxicated,” Rune’s “Calabria” and Perfecto Allstars’ “Reach Up,” but I like all of them more than I like this. I’m glad the track isn’t tropical or “chill,” but guest vocalist Giang Pham wouldn’t have sounded out of place had it been.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: My God, what a horrendous set of lyrics, like that infamous 2013 New Yorker piece on Afrojack set to music. And as for the music, it’s the most simplistic EDM-pop imaginable, riding a fake horn riff that doesn’t even bother to attempt to sound like real horns.
[1]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Utterly generic EDM is harmless, but these lyrics are delivered in such lifeless, zombified manner that I imagine it will trigger distressing epiphanies when heard live of how forced the communal festival experience can be. Which is interesting in theory, but only when attached to a worthwhile song.
[3]
Ashley John: So weirdly meta, describing in detail the urge that would compel someone to listen a dance track like this within the song itself. I wish this song were interesting, but when everything in 2017 sounds like desperate dread, this song gives little to latch on to.
[4]
Stephen Eisermann: I appreciate the different take this song offers, with Giang lusting after the DJ’s connection to the music and position, versus lusting after him/her directly, but that’s not enough to make this song interesting. I prefer my house vocalists to be belters, and Giang’s voice is too soft and conversational for me to be at all engaged. Softness doesn’t belong on any dance floor I’m trying to groove on, sorry.
[4]
Will Adams: A watered-down version of Martin Solveig & GTA’s “Intoxicated,” all horn blarts and clubby bass. As usual, music-about-music needs to tread carefully or risk being too inward-looking. “DJ Is Your Second Name” is so caught up in the minutiae of tour life that it forgets to remind you of the important part of music: its ability to be transcendent.
[5]
Hannah Jocelyn: The first time I heard this and “Know Your Name,” it was Pride Day, but I was nowhere near the parade for various reasons. Something felt vaguely subversive about these lyrics — “I wanna feel the rhythm just like you” jumped out at me as the moment this went beyond a simple infatuation song into something strangely personal. There’s an undercurrent of jealousy that caught me off-guard, as I saw friends on social media, LGBTQ or not, celebrating in either defiance or denial of the backward steps the country has taken this year. The maybe-imagined subtext of this song — “I want to be with you but also be you” — is as queer as anything in that Mary Lambert song, if more introverted than what Lambert trades in. A song titled “DJ Is Your Second Name” probably wasn’t intended to be that sort of thing, but I suppose that’s what was so interesting about it to me. So I put on my headphones, walked down the street, and had my own little queer party between my ears.
[7]