Want strong opinions on PC Music? We’ve GOT strong opinions on PC Music…
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[2.50]
Iain Mew: The high-pitched synths stretched taut quickly identify it as a Sophie production, and it’s a pretty standard one. Liz and the playful toughness of her performance is enough to make it amount to a little more, but there’s only so far she can take it. The bizarre enjoyability of the song he produced for Namie Amuro and Hatsune Miku earlier this year may be a one off.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Oh, great: another rote take on empowerment produced by a man who thinks gunshots and bubbles are good sampled effects in 2015. By comparison Meghan Trainor sounds like Laurie Anderson.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: Sophie, the rampaging singularity of bad and stale ideas, and Liz, pliant delivery system for every trendy aesthetic but her own, reimagine Rugrats‘ Angelica as Death Team and petplay, an elevator pitch plummeting straight into hell.
[1]
Edward Okulicz: “When I Rule the World” has all the hallmarks of being made cognizant of what makes pop music tick, but is exaggerated not so much to the point of parody to make a point about the fine line between catchy and annoying, but parody to assert superiority. Like, say, Lily Allen, Sophie wants to eat his cake and have it too by getting the benefits of something déclassé (pop music) while archly attempting distancing itself in a supercilious fashion. Fortunately, nobody outside the Internet gives two fucks about any of this posturing or nonsense, and the kids of the world will continue listening to shiny, annoying pop music, happily unaware of mouth-breathers who incorrectly believe they should do otherwise.
[0]
Thomas Inskeep: Insufferably stupid dance-pop that sounds as if it was made by a couple of 8-year-olds with access to ProTools and lots of cash. The lyrics are moronic, the singing is worse (think of Britney at her most cutesy-poo), and PC Music must be destroyed.
[0]
Will Adams: PC Music has been on my shit list ever since I encountered the still-abhorrent “Hey QT.” This year alone, they’ve continued to inflict terror on my ears: first, Sophie and A.G. Cook ruin one of my favorite Yelle songs; then, I overhear this abomination while attending Pitchfork Festival; later, I find out that PC Music aren’t finished destroying Charli XCX. And now there’s this Liz song, produced by Sophie, sonically related to “Hey QT,” and with an over-saturated, confused video (so it’s nostalgia-inspired but there’s an emoji in it? …gotcha). And yet… I don’t hate it. My problem with PC Music is not just that it attempts to ridicule pop music while benefitting from its use, but that it’s poorly executed and cheap pop that doesn’t even exist in early demo versions. “When I Rule the World” sidesteps that and teeters on the precipice of being a classic. I credit Liz with this development; with a rap that out-brats Gwen Stefani and a chorus that resembles a Carly Rae Jepsen deep cut, she clamps down on Sophie’s contempt for pop with gusto. There’s still the poor mixing and stale synths to contend with, but in a rare case I’m willing to un-cross my arms and allow this HFCS injection.
[7]