RuPaul’s new song “Smile” is a rake dragged across the chalkboard of my soul. It’s pure, cold-pressed, thrice-distilled, artisinally-autotuned peepeecaca. And that’s what I get from just the first minute. I didn’t get further than that before furiously closing the tab, bleeding from both ears. Somehow this song manages to encapsulate everything I loathe about a lot of today’s popular music, which is pretty impressive, so…congrats? Even the video (linked in the article) is kinda lame, looking like someone shot it live on Zoom. What happened, Roople? Also, get off my lawn!
Anyway, NPR recently featured this song on “Now Listening” and read it to absolute filth. They listened to it so you don’t have to! I do love a good public service.
The most egregious rip-off comes in the form of the third track, “Smile,” a song that could be mistaken for a karaoke version of Charli XCX’s “anthems” if I heard it from outside of the club. To say the song is exactly the same would be an insult to Charli: It’s like if Mamaru’s producers heard how i’m feeling now and tried to recreate it from memory after a blackout-inducing hit of poppers. Everything feels lifted, from the overprocessed Auto-Tune to the jittery synth riff in the chorus.
Note: I sometimes call him Roople just for fun. We’re big Drag Race fans, despite the very real possibility of burnout from all the international variants…
Total Obscurity 