Meghan Trainor
I’ll Be There for You
Friends just turned 25. Meghan Trainor just turned 25 and nine months: the show is to her as the ruins of the Statue of Liberty are to the Planet of the Apes. Which must be why the millennial problematising of Friends finds its echo in her version of the theme tune. Recycled with the same mentality as modern Hollywood blockbusters, airbrushed to Snapchat filter standards, it is the truest anthem of our age, Westfield in a can. Single of the Week? Single of the Decade.
Hemlock Ernst & Kenny Segal
Down
Remember Sam Herring? The singer from Future Islands, who totally saved music with that performance on Letterman in 2014 where his neck bulged out like a toad on poppers, and it looked as though he’d shat himself through the sheer spiritual power of Music Itself. Well, he’s a rapper now. Down is built sparsely around a few gloopy melting piano keys and a ticklish breakbeat, as if the floaty songs on Kid A had all been “ft Q Tip”.
David Hasselhoff
Head On
Who knows why David Hasselhoff is covering the Jesus & Mary Chain, with a guitar solo by Elliot Easton of the Cars? We are all trapped inside an infinite improbability drive called the news cycle; just deal with it and move on.
Lindsay Lohan
Xanax
Lindsay compiled the video for Xanax from clips from her personal Instagram. Sadly, there is no space in the reel for the time she videoed herself following a family she believed were Syrian refugees, demanding to know whether they’d kidnapped their own children. “Social anxiety”; cloud rap synths; an artfully muffled hook from a 90s dance banger to lend it a subconscious air of the familiar; lyrics about how the LA party scene is, like, fake and boring: LiLo’s first release in 11 years is more of a tropes bingo board than a bullseye.
DJ Shadow
Rosie
Starts with some bloke barking the word “Rosie” at you for two minutes for no particular reason, as if your neighbour locked himself out and is banging on the back door, then Shadow does that never-fails trick where he explodes the vocals into a thousand tiny sub-syllables, before setting out on a magical underwater voyage through vintage Moog textures. It’s as Mo’ Wax as they come, and definitely the most 90s thing on here, even in a week headlined by the Friends theme.
