I can’t find a photo of these two ever actually together, so here’s Tinashe with a bunch of Pokeballs…
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Katherine St Asaph: I think I’ll always be a fan of pop music, but I’ll doubt I’ll ever be a fan of pop stars, at least not in the Media Fandom sense that’s been the Trojan Horse for their being talked about in the music press. It’s a certain performative sort of fandom, less a fan of the artists than the Strong Female Characters they resemble in soundbites. It retcons entire discographies, relegating conflicted songs like “Russian Roulette” and “Disturbia” and “Sweet Dreams” to second tier. Everything has to be confident, a conscription-via-song into a war of who loves themselves the loudest. Vulnerable singles exist, and fans clearly connect to them (exhibit A: Lana Del Rey’s career), but the only way Media Fandom knows to parse them is C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-T-THAT’S-ME, and the effect is jarring. Media Fandom calls Selena Gomez’s “Good For You” sexyflirtyawesome rather than a requiem in male gaze minor; to Media Fandom, “Party Favors” is seductively fierce. The song is something else entirely. Like “Run Away With Me,” “Party Favors” is constructed on an off-key synth; unlike “Run Away With Me,” there’s no way the drunkard’s walk around the pitch was accidental, it’s too pronounced. The beat lurches and stumbles. Each section of the track is a non-sequitur against the last. Tinashe’s chorus sounds like she’s singing to herself, but she’s not; she’s talking to some guy (“what you feeling like?”) and whiplashing between narcissism (“I feel like I could fucking kiss the moon,” “I’m the truth”) and incoherent fear (“I’m so dizzy, they can’t save me, I’m gone.”) She compares a dude to a bowl of ramen. She compares a dude to a bowl of ramen. There’s only one time where all this surfaces, this emotional lability, hyperawareness of being watched, obsession with how high you are right now, fixation on hangover broth: it’s when you’re so wasted that the only moral response to your offering someone “party favors” — an icky pun — is for them to call you a cab and text you to make sure you got home OK. This is where critics are supposed to stop and check themselves for being patronizing, and no, I don’t have a better answer to why “Party Favors” feels exploitative while “Can’t Feel My Face” does not except pre-existing gender dynamics. But I cannot imagine any other interpretation of the song. Every element seems so deliberate, so perfectly crafted to make this scenario as vivid as possible. And it’s consistent, at least, with “Pretend” and “All Hands on Deck,” even “2 On.” It’s just not a scenario I like revisiting, even less when I’m told it’s fun.
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Jonathan Bogart: Drunken, or otherwise narcotically altered, beats and melodies and phrasing have been enjoying popularity in the 2010s for reasons I’ll leave to the pop-sociologists. But the reason why people make them seems to have increasingly less to do with Brave Artistic Choices and more that it’s a cheap and easy way to infuse your music with Meaning, the same reason comics and movies and TV shows “go dark.” Expressing — and maybe feeling — the full range of human emotional experience is too hard. Let’s just wallow forever.
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Daisy Le Merrer: A real missed opportunity. Past that great hypnotic loop, the production is filled with little off-putting details like a strangely goofy bass on the intro and pre-chorus. Tinashe still has that dark sexy stoned in the club thing down, and Young Thug does his thing on automatic, which is at this stage in his career still sufficient. They’re an obviously great pair, but you wish their performances were really intermingled; it sounds like they’ve never met IRL.
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Micha Cavaseno: Tinashe has opted not to hand us another “All Hands on Deck”-styled mediocrity after radio has re-embraced her but instead provides a song that sounds like lemon haze and ice cream goo. It starts off loopy, with this incredible dork trying to kiss moons and steal girls, and her newfound accomplice Thugger Thugger whoops and cheers her on shoulder-devil style.
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Ramzi Awn: It’s hard to describe “Party Favors.” It might suffice to say that it’s an obvious 10. It might be helpful to point out that it’s stacked with layers, or that Tinashe’s higher register is slinky like no joke. It might do it justice to say that the “hook” is as slow and as hard as it gets (if you can call it a hook.) But all that can really be said about “Party Favors” with certainty is that whatever Tinashe’s bringing to the party — you want to try it.
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Brad Shoup: Do artists not host anymore? The poor soul throwing this bash gets usurped by Tinashe, tottering around the duplex, playing this thing she just learned on the melodica, handing out snacks. At least her friend seems pretty cool.
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