1.5/10
Favorite Track: "half alive" Least Favorite Track: "i felt that"
In the everchanging pop music landscape, there has always been and always will be artists that are so lowest-common-denominator that it is truly astonishing that people could enjoy music so unoriginal and uninspired. I believe blackbear has done that better in recent years than anyone else. blackbear’s sixth studio album, Everything Means Nothing, is the bible for people looking to have the most boring, unoriginal and subtly misogynistic lyrics they have ever heard spoon-fed to them from a silver bowl of recycled Chainsmokers-esque beats. They retain that “Something Just Like This” vagueness that hits in just the right spot for people drunk enough to believe the song could have been written about them.
While I find nearly everything about this record completely and utterly insufferable, the big standout issue is blackbear’s lyricism. Nearly every song sports a lyric that strikes me as some of the most shallow and immature viewpoints I have ever heard in the mainstream. Whether it be the laughably childish line “You’re like a college grad who majored in the art of fucking over everything we ever had”, or the endless selection of lines across the tracklist that blame women for issues that blackbear so clearly has caused himself. Even songs that claim to hold a more centric viewpoint on real life issues for blackbear like “i feel bad”, which he claims to have written about his struggles with pancreatitis, there are endless lines describing the end of a relationship with no genuine emotion in the delivery. Every single song seems to be about heartbreak or sadness, but none of them feel genuine, which is emphasized by the incredibly basic and dime-a-dozen pop production on the album that just plays into the shallowness of it all. There are also points here where bear is just borderline insensitive, like on the track “i felt that” where he describes heartbreak in the most childish and painfully insensitive way I have ever seen, essentially spitting in the face of anyone who has ever had thoughts of suicide with the lyrics “Kill me, kill me, kill me, all I hear from you are lies, you made me wanna live forever, now I wanna die”.
The instrumentation across this LP is also quite pathetic, but isn’t as laughably offensive as the lyricism. Pretty much every song present on the record sports basic pop production with either melancholic guitar leads and a sad, whispered vocal delivery, or a blatant rip-off of almost anything off of The Chainsmokers’ Memories...Do Not Open, minus some of the more attention grabbing EDM style beat drops on the choruses. The track “sobbing in cabo” is a painfully derivative latin-trap style track, where blackbear sings yet again about another relationship that has ended. The flutes on this track are tolerable, but the transition from a latin-trap style during the verses to a sped up, basic pop sound on the chorus is a little jarring and in turn makes the track feel disjointed and unfinished. The track “half alive” has one of the only halfway-redeemable instrumentals on the entire LP, with some funky bass riffs over the chorus that almost sound like an instrumental you could have found on Dua Lipa’s newest LP. Unfortunately, the end of the track brings in a horrendously ear-piercing synth solo, where the synths are mixed incredibly high and are distorted as hell, and it feels like my ears are being assaulted by early 2010s ametuer dubstep drops.
The narrative of the record also seems to get to me in a way few others manage to. blackbear seems to play the victim card in the relationships he is describing time and time again, while also writing lyrics so painfully basic and unimaginative that it is hard to believe he has put any coherent thought into his own issues or blame. The only track that bear manages to put any sort of self-reflection into, “if i were u”, is so painfully confusing that it sounds as though bear is blaming the other side. This track shows him role switching with his partner and saying that he would leave himself if he was his partner, but he manages to switch the roles around so many times that it becomes nauseating to follow along with the message he is trying to convey.
Everything Means Nothing is the embodiment of my gripes with modern pop music. It is so painfully surface level that it is hard to believe it took more than twenty minutes to write any one song on the tracklist. The beats are basic and rehashed, making every song sound like something I have heard a million and one times before, and even blackbear’s vocal delivery is nothing new in the slightest. This album is perfect for people who want to lose their mind in music that aims to be deep, but ends up being the most shallow and underwritten music they will hear this year. If you are someone who is looking for substance of any kind in your music, however, avoid this record at all costs.