Selfie

''Todd lets out an exasperated sigh, turns on an EDM beat on his piano, and plays "#selfie".

THE CHAINSMOKERS - #SELFIE A pop song review

Finished with the sample, Todd turns off the beat.

Todd: So...the Billboard charts have been doing something amazing lately—nothing.


 * Clip of Pharrell - "Happy"

Todd (VO): Up until about this last week, the charts have barely moved for about the past three months. Now usually, things bump up, drop out fairly regularly, [articles from Hitfix and Music Times about "Happy" at #1] but lately the Top 10 have basically remained the same in the exact same order for weeks and weeks. Maybe #8 will move to #10 and vice-versa, but that's it.

Todd: And that's bad news if your job requires a steady stream of bad popular songs on which to provide witty and insightful commentary.


 * ''Clip of John Legend - "All of Me"

Todd (VO): Now I've reviewed half the Top 10 already, and the rest of them, I'm not even sure what there is to say about them. [Clips of...] "Happy"—he's happy, don't know what else to add to that. [...and DJ Snake and Lil Jon - "Turn Down for What"] And this barely has any lyrics. What am I supposed to do with this? Clearly, I'm running out of meaningful outlets by what I need to be making pop music reviews.

Todd: And so in April 2014, I was forced to settle on not anything I had any thoughts about, but simply the one I got the most requests for—[long pause] "Selfie".


 * ''Video for "#selfie"
 * Alexis Killacam: But first, let me take a selfie.


 * Single cover

Todd (VO): "#selfie", actually. But it's okay because it's an ironic hashtag.

Todd: More accurate, an "ironic" hashtag.


 * Alexis: Let me take a selfie
 * When Jason was at the table, I kept on seeing him look at me while he was with that other girl. Do you think he was just doing that to make me jealous? Because...

Todd (VO): God, I don't wanna review this song.

Todd: I'm not even sure this counts as a song.

Todd (VO): Because if you can't tell, and I have no idea why someone would do this, it's a song specifically designed to be obnoxious, filled with the noise of the most vacuous idiots doing the most vacuous things... Well, let me...

Todd: ...let me set the scene for you. Imagine you're at the club getting your drink on, just trying to enjoy yourself, have a night out, but you can't because...

Todd (VO): ...then all of a sudden, your space is invaded by the most annoying, most vapid sound...

Todd: ...in the entire universe—club music!

Todd (VO): Oh, God, it's so irritating! It's stupid! It's like nails on a chalkboard! Make it stop!

Todd: There's a lot of reasons I don't want to review this, but honestly, the biggest isn't that it's barely a song, it's that it's an EDM barely-a-song.



Todd (VO): It's not a secret I don't really get techno, house music, and club music especially. Every time I try to talk about EDM, I get a bunch of people telling me whatever I was talking about isn't even real EDM.

Todd: I assume because it was too artificial and had too much studio polish?

Todd (VO): Now I have always had my own strategy on...

Todd: ...how I review EDM.


 * Todd: [with fingers in ears] La-la-la, I can't hear it, la-la-la, it doesn't exist, la-la-la!

Todd: And that's always worked for me in the past, but I'm starting to get the feeling that my aversion to the genre is becoming a serious detriment to my work.

Todd (VO): EDM is popping up more and more while rock and rap seem to be receding. House music is gonna become the dominant form of pop music, if it isn't already.

Todd: I mean, let's face it, the future of music probably does not belong to [brief clip of "Ho Hey" by...] the Lumineers. So I need to actually start getting a taste for this genre and start understanding it.


 * Video for "#selfie"

Todd (VO): So this episode will be like my training wheels. I'll get to bash an EDM song, and no one's gonna get mad at me for being ignorant and not getting the genre because...

Todd: ...no one likes this song anyway.


 * David Hasselhoff: Let me take a selfie

Todd (VO): Okay, that's an exaggeration, right? It's a Top 20 hit; obviously someone likes this, right?

Todd: Actually, no. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that no one, in fact, actually likes "#selfie" for two reasons.


 * Alexis: That girl is such a fake model
 * She definitely bought all her Instagram followers

Todd (VO): The first is that even calling this an EDM song, a club song, a house music song is wrong. All wrong.

Todd: The song's real genre is the growing trend of...


 * Clips... of PSY - "Gangnam Style"...

Todd (VO): ...viral novelties that become actual chart hits not because people like it in the traditional sense, but because it's [...and Baauer - "Harlem Shake"] either hilariously awful or unaccountably weird. And people...

Todd: ...can still appreciate things on those terms, I guess, but...

Todd (VO): ...the second thing is that "#selfie" doesn't even live up to those standards. Because I hate to break it to y'all...

Todd: ...this is not a real viral hit. This is viral marketing.

Todd (VO): This was carefully packaged and promoted behind the scenes to look like a viral meme, but isn't. This is AstroTurf, through and through. [New York Times article: "A-Listers, Meet Your Online Megaphone"] See, there's this company started by [pictures of the actual people played by...] started by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network (Sean Parker) and Jeremy Piven in Entourage (Ari Emanuel) that specifically shepherded "#selfie" into popular consciousness.

Todd: You're sheep! Sheep is what you are!

Transcript in progress