We end nostalgia day with a band that debuted a whole nine years ago…
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[3.44]
Katherine St Asaph: Choruses are mouthy bastards. They shout down their verses, cut them off entirely; they’ll take over an entire song if a writer’s not careful. Sometimes this is benign — it’s why radio works. Sometimes this is profoundly annoying, the reason why pundits insist — still! — that “Blurred Lines” is a one-sided flirtation or “Bills, Bills, Bills” is about something other than a loser spending his girl’s money and wrecking her credit. But sometimes they do something really cool: let listeners take songs to heart for the exact opposite scenarios. It’s why songs like “He Loves U Not” are secretly the best pump-up music for pursuing or at least pining for your loves-u-not crush, and why songs like “Cold” and “Girl Got a Gun,” breakup whines that are at least semi-misogynist, make such wonderful cold/wounded-girl anthems. It helps that Bill’s voice is so processed — the distortion literally shuts him up when he gets too harsh — and that this is so scant on verses. They are ignorable. What’s not: a steely synth break, a Guettafied spaghetti-western riff without actual Guetta, New Age panpipes because why not, and a chorus — girl got a gun, boys gotta run — that’ll repeat until there’s vitriol and bullet in everything that’s wronged you.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Who needs lyrics when you have alliteration? The chorus is a gradual reduction to pure syllables, and to all intents and purposes the verses are too. There might be a coherent narrative if you squint, but it’s perhaps best read as “noises meet rhythm”. You could also read it as a poorly pronounced tribute to Borussia Dortmund’s recently revived midfielder İlkay Gündoğan, but that would just be silly.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: But I thought that Tokio Hotel were a rock band? Because this is some awful shit like what I imagine Fred Durst would do if someone gave him a sampler. Not that “Girl Got a Gun” sounds anything like Limp Bizkit, but it’s just as inept, sounding an awful lot like “look at all the cool things this computer can do!”
[1]
Alfred Soto: I’m OK with these fools recording “Rock Me Amadeus” for the indie EDM set, but find a better catchphrase.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: If you take Muse’s brostep fascination of the last few years and place it over “Knights Of Cydonia” and in relationship to singer Bill Kaulitz’ fascination with trying to pass as Chester from Linkin Park, you get some ugly malformed brat version of EMF’s “Unbelievable” apparently. It’s funny, in science, when you get a formula turning out something so poor, you go back to the drawing board…
[1]
Edward Okulicz: This is unintentionally hilarious, but I can’t say it’s a complete failure because it’s not even obvious what was being aimed for. The riff could have been the foundation of a nice little technogoth stomper, but much as the lyrics are more or less darts thrown at random, so too are all the weird sounds and stutters. Is that a pipes preset? Really?
[4]
David Sheffieck: The vocal effect — and probably the vocals themselves, if there were a way to approach them without dealing with that filter — is supremely annoying and the hook seems to mistake repetition for catchiness, but I can’t deny there’s a certain charge to the way the guitar and harmonica (can we blame/credit Avicii for this?) play off the dance-focused elements. Impeccably produced, but I can only wish the sound had been used in service of a better song.
[5]
Iain Mew: A curious mix of emo drama swagger and weak dance beat, it ends up stranded ineffectually between the two. It’s like a meeting between Kasabian and Panic! at the Disco where they each brought not their best or worst tendencies, but their most worn out.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Somehow, in 2014, these guys attained peak levels of twerp.
[2]