We really are transforming into the Travis Barker Jukebox, aren’t we?

[Video]
[3.29]

Jeffrey Brister: I came into this wanting to laugh at the TikTok teens making pop songs, but the more I listened and paid attention to the lyrics, the more I could relate. I wanted to smugly chuckle at the line, “I’ll be dead at twenty-seven/Only nine more years to go”, before remembering that I spent a good portion of my twenties assuming I’d be dead before thirty. Does that make the song better? Not by too much. Barrett’s voice is the standard affected coo, and jxdn doesn’t add anything of value. I’d like more of that earnest, florid, teenage angst, please.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Boy, the hairpin turn into Linkin Park or something threw me out of the car when I was already looking to jump out as soon as “jxdn” rhymed DEPRESSION DEPRESSION about sixty-eight times.
[3]

Tim de Reuse: I think, maybe, just maybe, if you preface it with something really profound over an instrumental that doesn’t sound like a half-remembered Linkin Park B-side, you could use the line “Loving me is suicide” in a way that doesn’t make me retch. Unfortunately…
[1]

Thomas Inskeep: “Edgy” music for top 40-inclined teens for whom Machine Gun Kelly is too much. 
[0]

Samson Savill de Jong: Nessa Barrett’s parts of the song are fundamentally alright. Her singing voice is decent, and it works with the track and the lyrics (which are a little teenage, but she is a teenager, so it’s ok). It’s  maybe a [5] or even a [6], but every second you can hear jxdn is a [0]. Annoying in all the ways Iann Dior is (“Mood” has a lot to answer for), jxdn is utterly self-obsessed, completely incapable of expressing himself to an audience, and doesn’t fit this specific track at all. Nessa Barrett sounds depressed, worn down and tired, struggling to even raise the emotion to tell you how empty she feels. Jxdn is performing depression, screaming and hollering and whining over the track. I’ve no idea how the real person feels or what he’s going through, but his performance doesn’t make me feel sympathy for him or relate to his struggles; it makes me want to never hear his voice again, and his presence destroys a potentially alright song.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: Perspective: 10 years ago this would be produced by Alex da Kid. Linkin Park with a “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” interpolation is an objective improvement. Don’t act like what you listened to as a teen wasn’t just as embarrassing.
[6]

Vikram Joseph: Interpolating the nagging vocal hook from “My Happy Ending”, this is a pretty convincing reconstruction of Under My Skin-era Avril Lavigne; hugely derivative, of course, but quite enjoyable (at least until jxdn turns up to add his name to the long list of interchangeable hoarse-voiced boys contributing not a great deal to angsty duets.) But the contrast between the restraint of Nessa Barrett’s verses and the churning guitars in the chorus is pretty satisfying — route-one stuff, but effective.
[6]