The Chainsmokers - "Summertime Friends"

A spectacular inversion

The Chainsmokers are a band that I don’t feel I need to introduce. They’ve been at the top of mainstream Electropop/EDM in the US for nearly a decade now, since that collab with Halsey.

Rather, I would rather revisit the monumental praise I gave them last year in my review for So Far So Good; I’m going to pull, specifically, from the blurb I wrote for the album when it ranked, shockingly, at 27th in my 2022 Top 40 list:

This one is fire. Like, this is the sort of album that defines a genre for the decade going forward. EDM may generally be seen as sort of “popcorn” music, but this sets the standard, and it’s proof of how seriously EDM artists take their artform. Moreover, it’s proof that taking a little more time is the easiest way to improve the quality of an album. It’s glossy, it’s boppy, and it’s full of interesting little auditory candy bits. 16 tracks spanning 55 minutes, and it’s all very good.

Summertime Friends, on the other hand, feels like a half-baked concept. It’s like it got rushed out the door, and I’m hoping that maybe they just needed to get an album out to satisfy a record deal they wanted out of or something.

There’s deep emotion here, right at the foundation, and with the album starting with its title track, then being followed with titles like “Think of Us”, “See You Again”, “Self Destruction Mode”, and “My Bad” — clearly, there was some sort of vision here, but most of the tracks feel half-complete, at best; hell, the album, as a whole, is only eight tracks and TWENTY-ONE MINUTES long. And in that 21 minutes, the majority of the sounds worth hearing are from the featured artists.

In fact, the only reason this one isn’t rating red is because I don’t want to disrespect the featured artists.

In summary, you wouldn’t watch a half-finished movie or play a half-finished game. Don’t bother with this one.

Rating: Orange