Summer Anthem 2017: Quarterfinals

The Thought-Process That Determines the Final Four

Karl Snyder
Aug 28, 2017 · 9 min read

Wild Thoughts v. Homemade Dynamite

Credit to Celebuzz.com

One of the most defining things about a great summer jam is that it must be mind-blowingly catchy, and both songs definitely pass that particular test. “Wild Thoughts” may actually be catchier overall, although the following discussion explains why it’s ultimately a worse summer anthem than “Homemade Dynamite”.

Rihanna is a veteran of pop, and I love her dearly. In particular, she is a genius of vocal delivery when it comes to sexy songs. And “Wild Thoughts” is definitely a sexy song. If you’ve never managed to actually listen to the lyrics because the bass line from Santana’s “Maria, Maria” causes you to immediately enter an other-worldly state of trance, I totally understand and envy you. Let me just quickly say: the lyrics are about wanting to have sex with someone quite a lot because they are very hot.

Unfortunately, even Rihanna’s vocals cannot save this song, because there is something irredeemably bad about it. That something is: literally everything other than Rihanna’s vocals. Santana’s guitar and bass are a perfect pairing for Rihanna’s voice, but ultimately they were stolen from a better song, and that feels like a cop-out on DJ Khaled’s part and bums me out. The lyrics, which are credited at least partially to PartyNextDoor, are super-yikes-level bad. From cringe-worthy lines like “you know this cookie’s for the baking” and “I’m carrying that water — Bobby Boucher” (yes, that is an Adam Sandler reference in 2017) to the moment when DJ Khaled ejaculates “Let’s go” about forty seconds into the song, the entire song comes across as an offensive series of distractions from what should be a steamy success.

Lorde’s “Homemade Dynamite,” on the other hand, is an adorable and ambitiously produced song about cutting loose, being unique, and flirting at parties, which are also perfect themes for a summer anthem. The beats and self-harmony are tight, and she really does tell us all her best lines. I guess we’re partying, indeed.

Takeaway: A true summer anthem can’t be the least bit annoying, because replay value is a major key, and annoying things tend to get more annoying each time.

Winner: Homemade Dynamite — Lorde

Want You Back v. Everything Now

Credit to mpr.org (top) and bandsintown.com (bottom)

In this part of the bracket, we have the best track from each of the two most highly anticipated indie albums of the summer. I am of the relatively common opinion that, with Everything Now, Arcade Fire has finally released its first truly mediocre album. On the other hand, HAIM’s Something To Tell You is a solid indie pop album from start to finish. I begin with this point because when I was first attempting to assess which song is better, I was mistakenly taking the quality of each album into account. However, the Summer Anthem is fundamentally a single separate from its album. As someone who is stubbornly attached to the Album as a musical format, it is hard for me to adjust to this idea, but I believe it is a very important point.

Before I make my judgment, which will be that “Want You Back” is a better summer anthem, I wish to recount my first time listening to each of these songs. I consider both times to have been iconically summery.

One sign of a good summer anthem is that it makes you feel nostalgic about being hot and sweaty. When I learned that “Everything Now” had been released, I was out having afternoon drinks with friends on a sunny patio. I proceeded to pretend — probably badly — that I wasn’t super distracted by how excited I was to listen to it. After all, it had been four years since the world was graced with new Arcade Fire. As soon as the happy hour disbanded, I got my phone out to listen and realized I had forgotten my headphones. Obviously I still couldn’t wait, so I walked down the sidewalk in a part of St. Paul that has almost no shady trees, holding the bottom of my phone up to my ear and dance-walking. Little did I know when I started to listen, this is the best possible way to experience the song — the BPM is perfect for walking, the bassline and synths sound better when your back is sweaty, and my impatient need to consume this song immediately through a sub-par smartphone speaker turned out to be perfectly in line with the subject matter of the song.

I was hot and sweaty the first time I listened to “Want You Back” as well. This time it was because I was helping my friend move his things into the basement as we all prepared to shuffle our living spaces. (What, indeed, is summer if not the experience of sweating profusely with friends for three months in preparation for the transitions that await in autumn.) The intense pop funkiness of this song hooked me immediately. The first part of the song, which is a dramatically layering harmonic build-up that culminates in a satisfied-scrunchy-face-inducing syncopated bassline around 50 seconds in, is still the year’s most masterfully crafted minute of pop music thus far.

The song’s pop funkiness and hopeful vibe are what set it apart and move it up the bracket to the Summer Anthem semi-final. In celebration, I invite you to watch the music video, which is highly cute because of dorky yet badass sisterly solidarity.

Takeaways: 1) the summer anthem is inherently a single — that is, the overall quality of the album from which a track hails should have no bearing when assessing the track’s quality as a summer anthem; 2) while it is a huge plus for the summer anthem to make you feel nostalgic for a specific summery time, place, or person, it is much more important for it to be unbelievably catchy and hopeful pop music

Winner: Want You Back — HAIM

Kill Jill v. Big Fish

Credit to captivebalance.wordpress.com / iamtheindustry.com

Both of these songs made it onto the bracket because they do especially well on the driving-around-with-your-windows-down test, so I put them up against each other.

I’ll start by talking about “Kill Jill”. Big Boi has reached the point in his career where it’s a pleasant surprise when he releases something that sounds super fresh. In fact, it’s fair to say he reached that point nearly a decade ago, since hip-hop artists are given an especially short age window unless proven otherwise (perhaps you have heard of “Jay-Z”). Big Boi’s newest album, Boomiverse, is one of those pleasant surprises. As usual, his music sounds even better if you let his iconic flow distract you from the misogyny and homophobia rampant in his rhymes. Yes, somehow, for me, Big Boi has always stood out for the extremely high level of overt misogyny in his lyrics, even in a genre and industry especially known for that problem. Maybe it’s that I don’t put up with misogyny unless the artist is outrageously technically skilled (in fact, that’s definitely it, as Eminem is the other artist who immediately comes to mind), and I think this is problematic, common, and thought-provoking. Anyway, “Kill Jill” is the lead single and best song on Boomiverse by quite a wide margin, mostly due to Killer Mike’s incredibly satisfying opening verse and the really effective and surprising beat, which samples virtual J-pop star Hatsune Miku. (She is a hologram. Yes, this is real. I saw her open for Lady Gaga one time.)

However, Mike and Miku cannot save the song when compared to Vince Staples’ “Big Fish,” and it’s not only because “Kill Jill” contains a moment in which Big Boi decides, entirely unprovoked, to assert his concerningly inconclusive stance on Bill Cosby’s past relationship to dozens of women. It’s also because the beat on “Big Fish” is the kind of perfectly West-Coast beat that unambiguously evokes the image of pulling up in your Caddie at the kind of summer cookouts that Biggie feels nostalgic about in “Things Done Changed”. One of my favorite parts of “Big Fish” is that Vince is clearly too brainy to unironically deliver a pop-friendly hook, so he gets Juicy J to do it instead, and somehow it works anyway within the song. That’s called being resourceful. The thing is, it’s still ironic in the context of the song, and I’ll explain that more in the next round…

Takeaways: 1) Misogyny and other forms of bigotry are wack, and they are factors when judging the value of a summer anthem, at least insofar as it decreases replay value; 2) the images a summer anthem evokes should, ideally, be inherently summery.

Winner: Big Fish — Vince Staples

4AM v. Humble

Credit to fuse.tv

Those who know me — as well as anyone who is paying attention to contemporary music— will have already correctly surmised that whatever song faces off with Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” in the first round was never really a contender. I will admit that the placement of “4AM” in this bracket is more of a shout-out to an underrated song than anything. Indeed, just as no 16 seed has ever defeated a 1 seed in March Madness, 2 Chainz loses to Kendrick in this round by a margin of 25–35 points. So, instead of comparing and contrasting, I’ll just explain why “4AM” is good enough to be in this bracket at all.

2 Chainz is the kind of guy you want to root for. I forgive him for producing so much mediocre material because it’s clear that he just loves having fun and is probably a really nice guy. Even though I get the impression he is his own biggest fan when it comes to his sense of humor, he still manages to be surprisingly funny at times (my favorite examples from “4AM” include, “For my birthday I threw me a surprise party” and “I used to sell drugs for a living / Got me a job sellin’ records / Had to use my jeweler as a reference.”) There are a couple of things that lead me to assume that 2 Chainz is a really nice guy: one is that he has collaborated with nearly everyone in the industry, and another is that he’s virtually never the subject of public drama. In fact, I just found that when you Google the phrase “2 chainz drama” the first page of results is devoid of scandals. Instead, it is a list of links referencing his collaborations with a hip-hop producer called DJ Drama. So, yeah.

Speaking of collaborations, including Travis Scott on your track is always a good call if you want to make a Modern Banger — one subset of which is, of course, the Summer Anthem — and “4AM” is no exception to that rule. One of the reasons for this is that a healthy sprinkling of Travis’s much-beloved auto-tuned ad-libs, including the ever-popular “Skrt-skrt” and, Scott’s absolute favorite, “Straight up,” removes any remaining doubt that the listener may have as to whether they should get wavy. The other reason is that Travis has excellent and consistent taste in producers. In this case he brings Murda Beatz with him to provide a beat which, though relatively simple in traditional trap fashion, manages to be one of the best of the summer. The slow upward bending of each note is paired especially well with 2 Chainz’ disorientingly unembellished style of delivery (always ever-so-slightly off beat, but he’s having such a good time!) and the combination evokes a cross-faded, dizzyingly humid Atlanta evening spent pulling up at various locations in your bullet-coupe spaceship. (Remember? A good summer anthem brings to mind summery images.)

Even for all its aforementioned synergistic virtue, “4AM” is a little too eerie and dark to be the one true summer anthem. Although Travis Scott’s chorus literally mentions driving around town, one gets the sense it may not be with the windows down, and the soundscape elicits feelings of either complacency or malaise rather than hope or empowerment.

Takeaways: 1) a great collaboration can add to a track’s value as a modern summer anthem 2) an overall dark or eerie sound takes away from a track’s value as a summer anthem, 3) you have to admit: using your jeweler as a job reference is a pretty funny thing to do.

Winner: HUMBLE. — Kendrick Lamar

Here’s the bracket going into the semi-finals:

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Karl Snyder

Written by

Music moves us through our lives in productive and spiritually significant ways. I write about that. See also: patreon.com/karlsnyder ; medium.com/@karljsnyder

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