Fuck that new Bleachers song.
I hate it so much. It’s so gruesomely against my own sensibilities and so specifically irritating. It has shook me to such an extent that I honestly thought I had essentially grown numb to; you know the “performatively disjointed/disjointedly performative angry rant ‘who-the-fuck-thought-of-this’ bullshit” mode that gets I like to think all of us? into this dyin field of nonwork. Guess Antonoff really does treat his songs like therapy, huh?
“Modern Girl” is madman producer Jack Antonoff’s return to his spontaneous Americana recovery band that essentially has grown to being a side hustle over the past couple years, as his priorities shifted to, uh, altering the sound of pop music forevermore. That sentence might sound uninformed and basic to cryptically online Wise Folks™ who find a new perfect pop song every couple days, hype up bands they never heard of like Effigy (or was it Sprain?) because they look like they make Statements, long juicy Statements, and also secretly shamefully believe deep down that Ariel Rechtshaid is still the sound of the future. But — and I do apologize, for I must shift gears for one quick second to discuss the ososickening world of visual media — leave the elitist prestige circles for a little while, step outside of your Letterboxd/HBO-pilled brains and witness shows like Heartstopper or The Summer I Turned Pretty, you know, for young people whom pop music is made for, and you shall find worlds of fresh youngsters living the life fantastique, being soundtracked by Antonoff, his posse, and his faraway land of imitators.
Simply put, the man’s production can be characterized as the feeling of wind flowing through you, multiple open tracks of vocals, organic instruments and analog synths, meshing with each other to the point they’re near indistinguishable, forming a wider, all-encompassing experience. But just like the wind, it may be sweeping, but it is fragile — stopping many things from settling and being stopped as well. And so Antonoff makes way for his sounds to be characteristically shaky, with flimsy flailing mixes that feel like holding on to a balance that looks more uncertain by the second. The effect here is crucial for it actively involves the listener: it is partially up to you to keep that balance, and to not let the precious song slip and fall through the cracks. It is a conscious rejection of passive consumerism, daring you to get involved and mentally add to the foundation of the track — maybe you’ll find yourself so inspired by the experience that you’ll act on its behalf in real life! A truly noble profession.
Counterargument: Antonoff can’t do shit on his own. Any Swiftie or Lana fuckhead who complains about his omnipresent sound taking over their pop faves and stripping them of their identity or whatever, let me clue you in on something: Antonoff’s job is constricted to plugging in instruments, playing them, and working within a sonic mix. His stylistic fingerprints take over, yes, but he cannot work up a musical idea of his own. He is a brilliantifnotgenius arranger, but he is not a curator nor a mastermind. Once you strip him down of an artist above him, someone he can create for, and he’s left to his own devices, he is a clueless man in a world formed by his own will.
I never liked Bleachers. Even the songs I was told I should like from Bleachers, or the ones I can claim as ‘good’, I don’t like. No “I Wanna Get Better” or “Rollercoaster” or “Stop Making This Hurt” or “When the River Runs” or “Wild Heart” ever did it for me. (I guess I don’t mind “Don’t Take the Money”, if only for the last minute or so where Lorde does audible backing vocals.) Why? Too shouty. Too wordy. Bad vocals. Too many odd attempts to poke fun at postmodernism while still sounding earnest. Too many attempts at irony while still sounding earnest. And in essence all the songs fit one seemingly never changing mood of “bedroom Springsteen” which why the FUCK would you want “bedroom Springsteen”? Those words are antithetical to each other. You either go out on the town with all your loved ones and your demons, or you make a little indoor party for yourself, you can’t do both. His body of work is a sickening attempt to ‘twee’ up American popular music’s widest landscapes. Born To Run with an air fryer.
“Modern Girl” is a cool song to hit the town to and dance and for girls to “shake their ass tonight” to (hah! Isn’t it so random that a guy like that is saying that stuff? Haw haw, how wildly insolent…yet endearing!) but hey, if you’re scared of the big bad outdoors, you can stay in your widdle room and jam out, and oh my, it’s like you’re outside! It really is the consolidation of Antonoff’s traits being used for an empty husk: somewhat distorted sloppily double-tracked vocals for a garage feel, upfront sax, keys and guitars blended in and out of each other, those ****in’ smoothed out drums made to sound like pads, and — a rather crucial aspect — everything sounding like that the second you hit play, which means that if you don’t like the tonality of a particular instrument, tough luck ‘cause that’s how it’s gonna sound like The Whole Time. Whereas the composition relies on Jack hitting as many 80s clichés to form a blurry collage of ideas where no one melody particularly sticks but it’s the ‘feel’ that does — in other words, the writing sucks and there’s no clear idea on where to take it. Might not’ve been tragic if he’d given this to The 1975 a year ago, but this is what happens when you surround yourself with session musicians-turned-yes men.
What I hate about this song, from first glance, is that the act of using and tackling a ubiquitous personal style, which once used to come effortlessly and had a facade of being thoroughly in-the-moment, has turned into grotesque mimicking of his own ticks and fascinations. So it plays as though the sound is actively commenting on its very aesthetic, and even making fun of its existence. Note the quick sighting of Jack’s vocals on the second verse to nonsense verbery and off-tempo ranting, like a nod to his own new muses and record label pals mentioned on the paragraph above, with no vague sense of poetic gesturing, and calling himself “New Jersey’s finest New Yorker” to the amusement of the In crowd that littledoesitknow is being secretly mocked by a brand new improved In crowd who might read the line that comes next “Pop music hoarder” and scoff (‘I’M not immune to you, Four Eyes! I listen to FKA twigs!’). These terrible vomitive hyper specific images come to my brain when I hear this song, and I might yes be one of those too online types, but that is unfortunately the desired effect: too online types finding ethos in mocking other too online types discouraging other too online types! Antonoff’s no fool, nor a cynic. Or maybe he’s smarter than us all and he’s finally realized what no one else can, which is that lyrics might be, in the grand scheme of Art, useless (would certainly make a lotta sense and make a lotta things easier). Either way he’s smug and I don’t care for his tone.
Also of course I hate, you know, the way it sounds. The sounds so blatantly separated from each other while also forced to cave to each other’s grooves. The lack of bass, replaced by a synth. Antonoff’s terrible growling, acting macho and disowning it at the same time (‘Rghnnouttonight’). The drum playing, live but ultimately mechanical. The central line “we play it like a heart attack”, something Fall Out Boy would’ve written in 2008. The phrase “don’t you dare touch the dial” coming out of a Christian musical theater impression of rock n rollers. The insistence to fill up the chorus with backing vocals leaving no room to breathe in the middle part. The insistent ‘LALALALALALA’ which reminds me of the most pitiful vocal performances this side of 15 year old music school showcases. For that matter, the sax lick that’s the main melodic component of the song — they dedicate a whole ‘oh oh oh’ bridge to it — is a childish, unremarkable ditty that loses its novelty by the second run.
But the worst part of it all, the thing that really makes me hate this song, is that I can’t quite totally dismiss it. That there is enough of the innate talent in Antonoff’s DNA that I can recognize good ideals and thought processes being well and properly incorporated into the song. Like how, despite the lyrics’ aimlessness and forced cuteness, there is a general openheartedness to them, exemplified by Jack working out rhyme schemes to shout out fellow Bleachers members playing in the song: sax player Evan Smith, guitarist Mikey Freedom Hart, drummer Sean Hutchinson, to let them and us know that they’re there, and without them the song would sound different; whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter. Or how the song has a relentless structure that ties the end of the verse to the start of the chorus and vice versa by sheer force, so that they can’t be so easily separated and fragmented — notice how the mixing, courtesy of Laura Fisk, doesn’t make the song louder as it goes on, so it’s all on an even sonic field — as well as removing a bunch of structural fat present in many Antonoff productions (not to mention all the wannabes). Or that, and this is a prime feature of his style, the song feels so up close to the scene it’s portraying, with no aggressiveness or forced zooming in, simply focusing on the little details, so you’re left to envision sweat and dance moves and shut eyes and wrinkles in faces. Or how they clearly don’t feel like writing a bridge, but they perform one anyway, and they take advantage of the little mise en scene they’ve put on to cheer each other on their playing, the first time it really feels like a group of buddies, and then closing the bridge with a tight triplet cutting on to the chorus, which gives the song even more of a driving momentum if that was even possible.
And I do, actually, gotta salute the last 20 or so seconds, the outro if you will. What happens is a new melody enters the mix, the first proper hummable tune on the song, and it is filtered through many sounds: first it’s performed by the sax, then slowly voices in the background start to humbly sing it; second and final time it comes around, it’s accentuated by a xylophone (a child’s mind is dawned with its first original idea) and the voices in the background have fully entered the front of the mix, and not only that but they’re harmonizing and believing they are the driving sax. And when all the sounds have entered the same frequency, they briefly open up the melody to a cheerful rejoicing, to drive the song out. And then it ends. And it’s a small thing but in the driving race of the song, it acts like time is stopping, like a bunch of people finally realizing they were all in the same room and singing the same song, now united in a tearful embrace. And no amount of irony or masquerading can tear away that moment of communion. It’s the disarming ‘I love you too’ you never quite got to hear. And hell, if this is all happening in your bedroom, it’s as committed a discovery of self-acceptance as you’ll find nowadays. Because it understands that the process doesn’t involve just you.
Real pity that it’s all in this song and Antonoff might just be the greatest bad producer who also happens to be a kinda genius. But that’s where we are. Lately my appetite for new music has grown so dialed back and distant, I can’t stand any of the noise people are telling me it’s supposedly good. In some cases, the more they tell me it’s good, the more I just quietly assume it’s bad. And the other way around too — actually I listened to “Modern Girl” on a whim after hearing a little too much fuss about how supposedly bad it was. Guess they were right (but of course not in the right way, y’know?). It often feels like standards are dropping a little too much, or that audiences and critics are doing free marketing without even realizing it, and we’d all be much happier if we consciously attempted to not know shit about anything. It’s quite tiring but hey, what can you tell them? It’s the world of Validity over all, overprotectiveness of others and oneselves at the expense of standing one’s ground, the ‘why bother’s turned into a chant for positivity. And memes. So many fucking goddamn memes. The SEO of language. We’re not cartoons, we don’t have catchphrases. And I’m supposed to believe it’s all positive and for the better. Fuck off.
Not like a silly little song like this could change anything. It’s not meant to anyway, but maybe because it’s not meant to, it was the first piece this entire year that made me get off my ass and claim my own thoughts as mine. That’s gotta be indicative of something, but I don’t really know what. Not sure if I really care either. I think I’m just not a “music fan” anymore. I’m just into what I like, and I take neither pride nor shame in it. Your heart’s gotta be in it I guess, and if that’s gone then what’s left is a bunch of shadeagreys. There’s a strong and probably rightful case to be made that Bleachers’ “Modern Girl” is the song of the year, and if so it’s quite on brand for me to fucking hate it.