The Chainsmokers

Obviously, there is no denying the uplifting Pop power of songs that made The Chainsmokers famous in the past, like “Something Just Like This”, which captures jubilation to great electronic and rock effect, and features soaring vocals by Coldplay’s dynamite vocalist Chris Martin. While I personally think it’s Martin that makes the song work, I have to tip my hat that The Chainsmokers have a knack for blending styles to produce sellable Pop music. They are doing their job, and just because I want them to do better at their job across the board doesn’t mean that their music is any less successful. Their EP’s seemed to be focused on whatever was hot at the moment of its release, and even if I felt that singles from those collections were annoying; they all touched upon or combined elements of Pop, Melodic, Acoustic and Future Bass, as the duo became the keeper of this genre mash-up of a sound, which seemed to be just what the audience wanted to hear. It’s light, motivational, sometimes quiet, and sometimes deafening. All along though, never did I say, wow, that’s some clever songwriting. It always sounded like a cash-in to me. The album Sick Boy perhaps tones down elements of EDM and Future Bass, and turns up the Rock – but not so much more than what already was happening in their last album Memories…Do Not Open. I guess this time, they thought that putting themselves out front was an even better idea than the better sounding option of leaving the vocals to the experts (like Chris Martin).

If The Chainsmokers were trying to achieve world domination, they basically succeeded, whether they touched my soul or not. Yet if they want to evolve, they will need to stop singing, or get much smoother at their delivery, vocally, while sonically, they would do well to pick whether they are a ballad band or a dance band. I present the question of ‘what they are trying to achieve’ because their same bag of tricks is still in use throughout Sick Boy, from the same melodic patterns of vocal hooks, which rise and fall the same exact way as they do on their biggest hit “Closer” from that 2016 same-titled EP. Just listen to “Closer” and Sick Boy opener “This Feeling” – it’s almost the same exact inflection, note for note. Where, I ask, is the evolution? That Tropical House meets Pop Vocal meets Future Bass familiarity is quite devoid of creativity or originality – all I hear are predictable noises, time and again. I offer, by way of playing devil’s advocate, that The Chainsmokers fill a need which was met by a New Wave Synth Pop band such as Duran Duran in the 80s – who, musically speaking, could out sing, out play, and out write this duo, yet perhaps, against competition from very solid songwriting from other genres, themselves may have come under some sort of critical backlash. I wasn’t around back then, yet I can hear the songs that they produced were equal parts sophisticated and money-grabbing. Flash forward, and to my ear, The Chainsmokers are a pale comparison of the same concept. So, while I don’t have an answer, I ask, what is their particular songwriting style leading to, except for exercises in ‘mash-up-ology.’

For almost the same reasons that I didn’t dig The Chainsmokers when they came out, I didn’t dig Pop meets Electro artist Mike Posner. But the thing I have since enjoyed about Posner’s work is that he progresses onward, developing upon a sound that I found a little too generic, towards a sound that has further depth – whatever style he is tackling – even if it is as disparate as EDM to Acoustic Pop. I don’t have the same feeling about The Chainsmoker’s progress, and while they will rake in continued dough, I doubt that we can have a serious conversation about their blossoming from mediocrity. I do like the digital shaping of explosive sounds on “Beach House”, and feel that the guitar work is mixed well within all of this synth, yet am bored of the chords used and reminded that I have heard a song like this so many times before, by the myriad copycat acts, following a line of musical reasoning laid down by a truly generic form of Pop act, who exhibit an inability to transcend their own music by themselves. They need their features, and more of them moving forward, plus better writing, and not so typical conventions (how many times can we hear the same damn notes on the horn stabs) to succeed in a future where they play and I listen.

Upon first listen, it’s actually quite difficult to find anything truly captivating with Sick Boy, as it undoubtedly uses many of the same techniques that made The Chainsmokers household names to begin with: You get plenty of easygoing Tropical Pop sensibilities in tunes like “Hope” & a painfully underwhelming Dance Pop love stories in others like “This Feeling” with Country popstar Kelsea Ballerini, not to mention a healthy dosage of glitchy, head-splittingly obnoxious EDM & Dubstep spirit in tracks like “Siren,” but these thankfully account for less than 30% of the sonic profiles at play on Sick Boy; The rest is made up of surprisingly soothing Electronic Rock fusion jams like the clearly Ratatat-inspired “You Owe Me,” sad, ethereal Wavy Pop songs like “Somebody” & plenty of other colourful tracks with distinct structures to them, making for a much more entertaining record as a whole that gives listeners much more melodic variance than nearly everything the group had released prior – Sure, you could make the argument that they’re still leaning far too heavily on the EDM side of things, still churning out Dance Pop-centric Dubstep numbers even though that side of the industry died back in 2016, but there’s enough changed up in other locations that you end up just viewing the whole record as an electronic music industry sampler-platter, getting a little bit of everything here & there.

As I had mentioned earlier, I’ve held a furious disdain for The Chainsmokers for the majority of their time on the scene, finding their music to be particularly boring & uninventive, especially considering how terrible front-man Andrew Taggart’s personality is as one of the industry’s biggest festival-heads. While a bit over-the-top, that hatred was shared by many patrons of the electronic world, eventually making it back to Taggart to affect his personality heading into Sick Boy, which miraculously led to a much better narrative focus for the album; Now, instead of being so god-damned full of himself, Taggart was a bit more insecure in his lyrics & a lot less trusting of the world as a whole, tearing into audiences with the song “Everybody Hates Me” & delivering an anthem of self-reliance on the tune “Save Yourself” – Unfortunately, Taggart may have actually been his own biggest critic, trying desperately with the tracks on this album to present himself as a ‘cool guy’ who doesn’t align with the mainstream opinion of him whatsoever, releasing songs like “Beach House” try to latch on to the quirkiness of Indie culture & the sensibilities of the Lo-Fi realm, trying to align himself with those comminutes by making remarks about how much he enjoys listening to the band Beach House & producing a soundscape full of airy Synth Pop nonsense. The problem is, he’s clearly not that kind of guy, getting called out by fans all over the internet for ‘appropriating’ a scene to convince people his personality is much different to what it is, coming off looking like a fool on this & many other tracks for the same sort of behaviour – It’s not entirely disingenuous, but you can always tell there’s something a little off about Taggart’s lyrics, even when the songs themselves slap.

At the end of it all, Sick Boy definitely represents a much-needed departure from many of the things that brought The Chainsmokers down in recent years, but it’s not exactly perfect; They still repeat a lot of the same melodic mistakes & patterns from their first outing & have yet to fix their notoriously shitty attitudes, yet it almost doesn’t matter because there’s much more to build upon with this album than what they had before – Take, for instance, the song “Side Effects,” a track that beats unrelentingly with a delightfully funky groove: This track is produced with some of the best fidelity on the scene, beautifully recreating the powerful French Disco & Progressive House vibes from the late-nineties & early-noughties electronic scene, almost out-Daft-ing Daft Punk as this roller-disco odyssey rolls on; If they can continue in this direction, producing a full-on House album with old-school systems & modern recording techniques, they could be a much more impressive creature come album number three, completely wiping away their tumultuous past from the eyes of mainstream viewers & using their celebrity for good to push the industry in a direction it could truly benefit from – Only time will tell, but I for one am more excited about The Chainsmokers’ future than I ever have been about their past & it’s all thanks to Sick Boy.