They ain’t holding pomp poms.
[Video][Website]
[5.27]
Patrick St. Michel: 1. This entire song hinges on a marching-band theme, yet “Pom Poms” sounds nothing like a Friday night halftime show. So many artists before the Jonas Brothers have pulled this off well – “Lose My Breath” and “Hollaback Girl” cartwheel to mind – that hearing this flimsy take becomes even lamer. I’m convinced nobody involved in this has ever been to a football game, or even accidentally flipped by College Gameday. 2. The girls-vs-boys breakdown reminds me of “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy),” which is not OK. 3. Is this about boobs? Geez, these guys start having sex and their music somehow gets even worse.
[1]
Alfred Soto: Hair shorn and sunglasses updated, they graft the horns from “A View to a Kill” to a distorto-riff variant on U2’s “New Year’s Day” and a chorus their teen audience can understand too well. Will boys admit they like it? It’s the Jukebox’s mission to preach it. But let me preach to them: lose the falsetto.
[7]
Anthony Easton: Like jerking off to that reality television show about the Dallas Cheerleaders or to a Dallas Cheerleader official calendar instead of Debbie Does Dallas, the irony-gree, orally fixated (that whistle in the beginning), brassy (in ever sense of the word), mall breed simulacra of porny pleasure is shinier, sweeter, and more exquisite in its excess than anything more penetrative could deliver. Makes me want to go to Hooters for wings, unironically.
[10]
Brad Shoup: I spent a few days last week digging through the 1970s’ one-hit wonders. Surprise, surprise: now I hear ’em in the Jukebox. The Bros. Jonas offer ruthlessly pared hooks, just like the ones cast by acts with names like Tycoon or Hot or Ace (it really didn’t fucking matter). The whistle is a call from “Morris Brown,” the meat is Jeremih’s “Down,” the mention of revival drops like a Taser victim.
[5]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Every time feels like a revival,” Joe Jonas sings, the meaning of “revival” caught somewhere between religious fervor and horndog giddiness. Sonically, “Pom Pom” has everything to do with the sports meaning of the word, all marching-band horns, chant-a-longs and arena-friendly uptempo stomping. It’s pop music with a ticker tape cannon attached for when the key changes kick in. It feels as fun to listen to as it must have been to write, even while the Jonas Bros sidestep having to define themselves as believable adult heartthrobs. It explains the cheerleader imagery of the title – planting both feet in a make-believe adolescence has served the Brothers well thus far, why not simply allude to the fantasies of adolescence in the meantime?
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: An attempt at exuberance, and if exuberance is something you’re attempting then you’re very clearly doing it wrong. It is successful in evoking the movie screen image of the American high school “experience”, though – cheerleaders, marching bands, “jocks” wearing “varsity jackets”, “bleachers” – all things that surely can’t really exist (can they?), but are at least reference points, albeit ones that read as “all-American”, a label that – not to intend a sleight on the US – is often given to people who are quite boring.
[4]
Crystal Leww: I can’t tell if it’s more creepy or pathetic to be singing about pom poms and cheerleaders when all your band members are too old now. Other points: this kid wanting a milkshake metaphor has been played out and draws attention to the fact that they are too old to be singing about cheerleaders anymore; the girl vs. boy sing off is atrocious vocally; and yelling over your brothers in the outro does not equal good ad-libbing, riffing, or harmonizing.
[2]
David Lee: July 4th compressed into a firecracker of a song. Though this is anything but compressed.
[9]
Katherine St Asaph: I do not hate this terrible song by the Jonas Brothers. Perhaps it’s the key change, or the sexless innuendo (ooh, her hands are free…?) or the mini-Gokey scream, or the way it sounds like a boy band full of three Matt Bellamies, accompanied by four Polly Pockets, all seven thinking they’re in “Good Girls Go Bad.” You’ve gotta respect a good hard failure.
[5]
Will Adams: There are just so many little things about this that I hate. There’s way too much reverb on the horns. There’s very little commitment to the marching band sound. Same goes for the metaphor. The lyric, “Like a kid just wants a milkshake.” The female vocals evoke a much more fun song that I could be listening to instead. These boys sing the shit out of every line. The key change makes no sense. As a whole, the song isn’t bad, but each of these awful elements pricks at my skin when I hear them, and it happens too often for me to ignore it.
[1]
Jonathan Bogart: Sure, it’s the soft bigotry of low expectations that makes me pleasantly surprised to find the Brers Jonas sounding relatively capable of grown-up pop with massive hooks and big-time production, when one-time peers like Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato have accelerated light years beyond. But there’s a brass band part, and I am helpless against a brass band part.
[7]