Let’s play Count The Comparisons!
[Video][Website]
[5.73]
Scott Mildenhall: Do The Kids Of Today really believe in rebellion? Certainly they’d be hard pressed to believe in this: Rebellion with a capital R, its most heinous crime the hitting round listeners’ heads with its schtick. Nonetheless, girls transgressively shouting about transgression is a successfully trodden path in pop music, so placing some over an “Operation Blade”/”Time To Burn”-lite production is a logical step, and a nice one to listen to as well. Take that Thatcher!
[7]
Iain Mew: The chorus is incredible, unstoppable, the first song taking after “I Love It” to hold a candle to it. It’s obvious that no one knows how to fill in the rest of the song even before they resort to the worst Lady Gaga impression on record, but it’s worth trying to filter that out.
[7]
Alfred Soto: My niece does a better Gaga imitation. Trouble indeed.
[1]
Will Adams: It’s a hook that the Paradiso Girls would have killed for, and it’s production that’s as heavy as dancepop will get this year. But it’s not much of a song.
[6]
Anthony Easton: A squelchy, atmospheric reworking of Shampoo’s main tropes, especially how it edges between super catchy and terribly annoying.
[8]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: This is a very good way to introduce yourself: four English girls, repping their schoolgirl age like some would throw up sets, peppily strutting over robot-house beats. Lyrical nonsense abounds — “I’ve got so many eyes! I’m a Gemini!” — but it only adds to the feeling of dropping in on a clique as they laugh at their own in-jokes and pout knowingly at the cutest boys about. “Trouble” is as natural as bubblegum gets.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Like a set capper from an alternate-universe EDM festival where the headliner was Mis’Teeq covering Icona Pop.
[7]
Brad Shoup: So goonish! If Icona Pop doesn’t get it together they’re going to be the old guard. Provided you write more than half a song next time, of course.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: Somehow I hadn’t realized that of course there were going to be a lot of unison-shouty, cute-bratty, clipped-waveformy imitations of “I Love It” this year. I suppose it’s an improvement on the Saturdays.
[5]
Crystal Leww: This is really loud! It sounds like something that might have been made by Icona Pop and then thrown away because it doesn’t really work as a song with a climax but no rise or fall. The “finally legal!” vibes are also a little weird.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: A lot of people joke about certain words being overused as band names… foxes, wolves, crystals, beaches… but I feel “neon” never gets included in that list. In the last few years we’ve had Neon Indian, Neon Trees, a slew of outfits who used the witch-house name generator to end up with that word in their names, and now Neon Jungle. Let’s stop with the neon, shall we? And while we’re at it, can we cut off this growing trend of just trying to copy the “I Love It” approach to pop? The returns are getting more and more diminishing.
[3]