Jessie Murph – Blue Strips

You will be surprised to learn that this song title does not refer to a Listerine product…

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Claire Davidson: I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that “Blue Strips” emerged out of a studio session where Jessie Murph and her producers deliberately attempted to make the most annoying track possible. How else to explain a song that, despite including only a single verse and extended hook, seems to double down on its most irritating qualities, multitracking Murph’s braying until her already poor enunciation of the line “Boy, I ain’t mad, boy I ain’t mad at you” turns to mush? This song isn’t even convincing in its obnoxious revenge fantasy: in no way do I believe that a 20-year-old has the funds to purchase a new mansion in Malibu, or the experience to brandish “bare tits” in a strip club. Really, the dead giveaway that this song is little more than childish posturing is the way Murph seems to relish calling her ex’s new paramour a “bitch,” sung with enough pointed venom to suggest that she still thinks she’s getting away with something dirty by using swear words. 
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Taylor Alatorre: I like that the song’s version of a revenge fantasy is so far abstracted from real life that it starts to take on the qualities of a video game mechanic: “Press ‘F’ to Throw Ones at Two-Timing Skank.” It’s less logical than the Dantean punishments usually meted out to male cheaters in country songs, which is paradoxically what makes it credible as a form of idle wish fulfillment. I wish Murph had leaned even further into the hazy unreality of this debutante fantasia, instead of letting her transgressive impulses stop at “being the country girl who says ‘tits,’ and has listened to at least one Future mixtape.” 
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Her last single was a tribute to Gucci Mane, so maybe it’s right that this reminds me of early Future singles. It’s not nearly as fun, though — the few accomodations to Murph’s prior genre trappings limit this from being a true weird pop banger, though getting a DAMN-era Kendrick affiliate to produce is an inspired choice.
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Nortey Dowuona: Kendrick needs to fire Bekon and Tyler Mehlenbacher immediately. not for actually being bad producers but not having the presence of mind to layer the hi hats or snares properly, to play a stronger melody for Murph and Veltz to build off, or put in better synth riffs to fill out the mix. If I’m Anthony Saleh or Dave Free, I’m making the call to Bekon to offer him a choice: cut ties with those other two and work on the next album…or you know the rest.
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Al Varela: If y’all miss Doja Cat so much you might as well have made one of her deepcuts go viral on TikTok again. I’d rather have that than this hideous, gentrified version of her. Worthless.
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Jel Bugle: I like the boing boing me bit! Reading the YouTube comments it seems like it’s quite an anthem of hope, so that’s good. I felt a grinding misery whilst listening, like there’s a beautiful song trapped in here somewhere.
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Ian Mathers: It’s like she’s taken two subgenres or scenes (both ones I’ve heard enough to recognize but not enough to name) and sewn them so finely together I can’t see the seams or separate them out. Every vague comparison I can think of feels faintly deranged. Also it sound very much like she’s singing “bad tits in the strip club” a couple of times, so bonus like .5 a point.
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Mark Sinker: That Dutch kid keeping all the sea from flooding the reclaimed lowland with just his finger is, as you know, a metaphor for never listening to the words in songs (once you start you can’t go back, trust me, my lovely lost lyric-less Holland now lies under the wave). Anyway, what this would possibly remind me of if I didn’t understand language is PiL’s “Radio 4” viz a curious yearning glimpse from a spiky place of comfy unbothered very mid utopia… 
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