hney new 100 gecs just dropped, time to simp
Gonna be honest, not a fan of the direction they are going with this album. Everything they have released for it so far has been mid at best. This song as been the biggest disappointment yet, and I listen to all of their unreleased and individual productions and sets.
The thing that made 1000 gecs hit different was that it was something you had heard before (happy hardcore and other internet genres) presented in a way that mixed them up and made them different and made you think about them differently as genres. This is just pop-punk. And not even interesting or obscure pop-punk. Travis Barker derivative pop-punk. Now, I like pop-punk, but we already have sooooooooo much of it and stuff like KennyHoopla (which was literally produced by Travis Barker) hits harder than this. I'm just saying that there is an obvious lack of PC Music influence so far here and the songs are weaker and less distinctive because of it.
It's tough to tell if this is them 'selling out' or they have just gone in a different creative direction. I'll have to see what the rest of the album is like when it drops, but like damn was I excited to see full studio renditions of live set bangers like "want U 2 love me" or "can U hear me now" and it looks like we aren't going to see those officially released, and instead it is going to be this mid stuff.
Atlantic is fucking awful. I’ve worked with/around them on and off for the last few years and their people are the most meddling of any major label I’ve ever dealt with. I have an artist I produce for that did a whole record for them that they’re sitting on (for the better part of a year) until they reach some arbitrary number of views on tiktok. Which is pretty common in the major label world nowadays but Atlantic and their subs have the most egregious standards of basically any of them. It’s ridiculous
which was literally produced by Travis Barker
Oh also wrt this, like a crazy amount of the pop punk stuff has barkers fingerprints on or his team around him lately. Sueco, mgk, Avril, like a lot of the pop punk records coming out of la are produced by the same people in a very Nashville country kind of way lol
I agree that the songs are decidedly less PC Music than before, which is disappointing. That said, I think it's just a different creative direction. If you listen to a lot of Dylan Brady's solo stuff he loves pop-punk and that general vibe, so it makes sense that's beginning to bleed over into 100 gecs. 747 on this album still sounds pretty PC Music, so that's good, and tbh I have totally loved Hollywood Baby since I heard it live like a year ago, it totally bangs in real life. Very good head-banging adjacent vibe when the whole crowd is going crazy.
What's more disappointing to me is that apparently 10,000 gecs has been finished for at least a year. They played so many of these songs on their last tour. The label (Atlantic, as always) fucked them and just decided not to release the album until now, putting them in a weird bind where they can't really move on, they can't make new stuff, they can't continue to evolve.
Honestly I thought I was going to get roasted harder for this opinion. Live HB is usually alot more distorted and bleeds more into gecs usual stuff, but this version does nothing for me.
It is absolutely more reminiscent of Dylan Brady's OG stuff, but even his og stuff is more artistically closer to the Melvins and grunge than to straight up pop-punk like this is. This really feels like an artistic regression to me, which can be interesting if it's re-exploring themes that aren't already present within the popular sound-scape, but it's exploring stuff that everybody else is already doing .
It feels like a gambit to really break into the mainstream ala stuff like what charli xcx does with her singles being completely pop oriented moneymakers and her albums being much more diverse and artistic, but I think it's going to backfire because the music industry is already over-saturated with this specific sound. Sure, hyper-pop is never going to be as big as it was in 2020, but it was never a distinct genre to begin with, which means you could go anywhere, but they chose to go backwards. I hope I'm wrong though. We'll just have to see.
I think you're right that there's a sense of artistic regression, it's evident with how uncohesive the singles for this album have been. I still like the songs but they're definitely a step down. I think they're struggling under the pressure of their first album being an unexpected critical darling. Where do you go from there? Hopefully they'll figure out where they want to go with their third effort.
I was primed to disagree with you, but after listening, I can’t say I do. Still looking forward to the album, but the difference is notable and it’s removing the parts I thought I liked the most
It's like you've learned to drink Vietnamese robusta black coffee to the point that you like the taste, but then someone gives you a frappacino. It's fine, technically a good product, but it's not what I wanted or what I expected to drink, and now I'm trying to figure out why I ever learned to appreciate the robusta in the first place.
I fully agree with this. Even the super hyper-pop stuff isn't always for me, but at least it was interesting and different. This song just... exists.
it's pretty wild to see the pop punk revival hit so hard...
