The latest from the Singles Jukebox Cinematic Universe…
[Video]
[4.44]
Isabel Cole: Oh man, have I ever told you guys that I used to know someone whose fiancé proposed via LARPing?
[3]
Hannah Jocelyn: My original blurb was “I see this as an absolute sin,” referencing Bruce Banner’s half-human half-Hulk form, but “I Love You 3000” is too sweet and harmless for that. Every aspect seems genuine, like a middle schooler impressing her friends with wordplay and referencing movies they’ve seen. Okay, it’s by a 19-year-old songwriter/influencer, but that weirdly makes me like it more. Similar to Crystal Leww’s view on Kasher Quon, it takes a certain amount of intelligence to make something this knowingly pandering.
[6]
Ian Mathers: I have no doubt there’s sincerity here — hopefully outweighing any concerns of (sigh) “brand synergy” or whatever the correct term is — just as I have at least some of this song’s “viral fame” is from people who find it genuinely charming. But this reminds me so much of the weird societal pressures around marriage and specifically weddings/wedding tropes that lead us to elope in the first place, and by the time I hit “no spoilers please” I felt like I was having an allergic reaction.
[1]
Vikram Joseph: Your scientists were so preoccupied with finding out whether a single song can give you diabetes, they didn’t stop to think whether they should, and frankly with the likely implications of a no-deal Brexit on insulin supplies this is a terrible time for me to have heard this.
[1]
Katie Gill: You KNOW that once mouthbreathing comic book twitter finds this song, they’ll use it as ammo in some terrible “fake geek girls!1!” argument. Which is a pity, because this song is really cute. Nothing to write home about, but at least it’s nothing to write home about in a background coffee shop music sort of way. But the ham-fisted Avengers: Endgame references somehow simultaneously date and cheapen the song.
[4]
Juan F. Carruyo: There’s a clarity of emotion present in the message of the tune that makes this song hard to resist. The fact that the backing track is so minimal only helps.
[7]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Takes me back to college, where I met a shockingly large number of (Asian) people whose music taste largely consisted of YouTube acts. If the musicians they listened to weren’t acappella groups, they were 1) traditionally good singers who 2) often just performed with a piano or guitar and 3) made decent but ultimately boring covers of pop and R&B. I used to be completely bewildered by people who chose to listen to these artists. When I hear “I Love You 3000,” I miss walking through dorm halls and lounges, talking with strangers-turned-friends about whatever would spill out our mouths at 3 am.
[6]
Kylo Nocom: If 88rising are going to bring back the corny acoustic YouTube pop that AJ Rafael, JR Aquino, and dozens of other lovely folks were pushing out during the first half of the decade, I can let their meme-y culture vulture crap slide. “I Love You 3000” would be annoyingly childish if it wasn’t so dedicated to its concept, even if its family friendliness ends up with a line as puzzling as “Hulk outerwear.” Though not clever, nothing here is as insultingly dumb as “you can be the apple to my pie/you can be the straw to my berry.” A comment says this could have been written by a kindergartener; sure, it could have, but isn’t that why this works so well?
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Has the edge over Ruth B’s “Lost Boy,” its closest recent kin, in that it mostly doesn’t hammer too hard on its conceit — sort of a Lana Del Rey whose Hollywood is the Marvel Cinematic Universe — has a pleasant lilt, and “I see you standing there in your Hulk outerwear” made me genuinely laugh. Only toward the end does it start stretching the metaphor. What does “no spoilers please” even mean in this context? “I’ve already married and divorced you in my mind”?
[5]