A real burning issue…
[Video]
[5.67]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: brb, painting my nails black to match the graphic tee i just bought at hot topic 😛
[8]
Jeffrey Brister: There is something about MGK that makes me write essays that go on too long and use words like “hauntology”, but this song doesn’t do that. It just deals me psychic damage. It spits empty references and images at me and smashes the memory buttons too hard, too insistently.
[1]
Al Varela: This is garbage, let’s be honest. Cringy, immature, plastic fucking garbage. But let’s be honest, that’s true about a lot of music in our childhoods, especially within pop-punk. Not that those past songs don’t have their merits, but a lot of it was trashy, childish lashing out that appealed to our most rebellious and restless sides. We still hold those songs dear to our hearts because they spoke to us at a time when we didn’t feel heard by everyone else. Sure, most of them weren’t as shallow as lusting after the stereotype of emo girls, but then again, what’s wrong with indulging in that shallowness? The song still rips and has a really strong hook, WILLOW adding a bit of queerness to the song is always welcome, and the two just sound like they’re having fun with this ridiculous, overindulgent premise. I’m sure my peers will totally trash this song, and I can’t entirely blame them. I just think it’s fun! 🙂
[8]
Alfred Soto: Reveling in the received, Machine Gun Kelly and WILLOW understand nostalgia is most powerful when it manifests as a longing for unlived times and places; here it’s for Avril Lavigne’s sk8er bois and Dashboard Confessional’s devil women. The pleasures are in the guitar sound and how the acts avoid what’s worst about emo.
[6]
Katie Gill: Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith’s appreciation of pop-punk and mid-2000s era Hot Topic is based off a love for a subculture that I’d bet good money neither experienced in its prime. Case in point: this song, which builds its identity around emo, a subculture that’s been absolutely irrelevant for the past ten years, to the point where all their identifiers of an emo girl seem… kind of off? It’s like someone did a Billy on the Street segment, loudly asking randos what they think the “emo” look is, then worked that into a song. Anyway, this is blatant nostalgia bait for people who think Fall Out Boy peaked with “Dance, Dance” and as someone who went to an MCR album release party when she was 14, I can definitely appreciate the pandering.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: As someone who went to a high school in Monmouth County NJ in 2004-05, got the Geoff Rowley Vans, had wretched AIM away messages and got pissy with Anti-Flag fans bullying me (topical considering they’re one of Colson’s faves) I can tell you that I was there. I lived the life. I am the kind of trash that Hot Topic looked at like a walking lick back in the day. Do you remember how much Tripp pants used to cost? Even then it was expensive… Huh? The song? Oh yes, the song is… it’s not a song. It’s a novelty T-shirt like the ones you got at Hot Topic despite the fact you could easily buy a much cooler and more credible Siouxsie & the Banshees shirt at Kohl’s but y’know it just, like, wasn’t the same, ok!?!?!? Does that era deserve a tribute that borders on parody? Absolutely, that’s the only way to encapsulate how ridiculous a moment like that seemed so WORLD-DEFINING at the time. Anyway, if you need me I’ll be reading that Courtney Love manga, listening to “Nerdy” on loop and wondering where the one girl with dyed blue hair from my homeroom who kissed me on the cheek moved away to.
[5]