We generally DON’T.
[Video]
[3.62]
Thomas Inskeep: The sound of congealed vomit on your kitchen floor, littered with cigarette butts. Of course Travis Barker is drumming on it.
[0]
Elisabeth Sanders: For the love of god someone please tell me why we as a culture are letting these adult men take us through another “xXx iM pSyChO XD xXx” phase. Are teens with depression just the same no matter the year or is something dark and regressive dredging 2003 back up into the light?
[1]
Ian Mathers: Just like Simple Plan’s “Welcome to My Life”, I’m still sure some kids out there will find this some sort of help and comfort, and I’m genuinely happy (and giving this a single point) for them. But taking out the only good thing from the last time (sigh) YUNGBLUD and the again practically invisible Barker collaborated and substituting Machine Gun Kelly summoning up the ghosts of Hot Topics past with “I hurt myself sometimes, is that too scary for you?” sent my ears right to hell.
[1]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: These 2000s emo revival hits are really just a matter of matching the right artists with each other. Compared to the miserable Ellie Goulding & Juice WRLD single, “I Think I’m OKAY” is masterfully coherent. Most of this comes from Machine Gun Kelly’s neutered performance, ensuring that his typically “hard-edged” rapping isn’t manifested in awkward flows, but a defensive “I suck, my life sucks–you got a problem with that?” attitude. He finds a good foil in the more expressive and romantic YUNGBLUD, whose mix of singing and shouting is a dead ringer for The Used’s Bert McCracken. Together, they represent two sides of the same person: someone who hopes romance will be a panacea, yet doesn’t think they’re deserving of happiness. This idea is fully realized in the song’s most crushing line: “I hurt myself sometimes/Is that too scary for you?”
[6]
Tim de Reuse: As catchy as the syncopation of the chorus is, it just isn’t convincing against this swell-obsessed arrangement. If you’re gonna have a party celebrating self-deprecation, then give me some good Billie Joe Armstrong pop-punk teenage angst, none of this overdesigned stadium rock fluff!
[4]
Iain Mew: I am all for the kind of thinking that gives us a vaguely hip-hop song that sees “Welcome to the Black Parade” emo and EDM-via-“I Gotta Feeling” as equivalent sources to draw on and patch together. Novelty is nothing to be scared of. I just wish the results had a bit more welly, because the beat especially is feeble. If everyone involved had followed YUNGBLUD’s lead and gone full “Saxofuckingfon” it could have been a minor classic.
[5]
Will Adams: MGK plays Mark Hoppus to YUNGBLUD’s Tom DeLonge, and only one succeeds. But succeed YUNGBLUD does; the reward for sitting through the Joker-level edginess of the first verse is the song becoming a convincing slice of modern pop-punk. By the time the half-time outro hits, I’m sold by the histrionics.
[6]
Kylo Nocom: Yungblud’s gross aestheticization of mental illness and corny songwriting has always killed any interest I could’ve had in his music. How funny is it, then, that it takes the whiny-yet-monotonous singing of Machine Gun Kelly to get me to warm up to him as a performer? Contrasts are so powerful! Even my bias aside, he sounds great here, evoking all of the pop punk bands my sister used to play for me when she was in high school. By the cathartic finish of “I Think I’m OKAY”, I’ve ascended into Myspace heaven and I’ve forgotten the slog of the alt-pop intro.
[6]