Review Summary: My Drake problems, my fake problems
Waterparks’ new album is titled
Greatest Hits. That’s pretty funny, because it isn’t a greatest hits compilation. It’s their new studio album. It’s a collection of, f*ck me, seventeen new songs of bottom-of-the-barrel pop music, attempting to appeal to everyone yet somehow pleasing absolutely no one.
Seriously: what is Waterparks hoping to achieve in 2021? Sure, the band’s pop punk-meets-obnoxious-electronics style of half a decade ago wasn’t exactly good or even remotely pleasant to listen to, but at the very least it targeted a specific audience of preteens not quite ready to explore the immense depths of the Simple Plans, Neck Deeps and State Champs of the world just yet. Even the more recent abomination
Fandom was a lengthy celebration of vocalist Awsten Knight’s immense ego and still managed to pump out a few catchy choruses, appealing to a slightly older demographic by including Edgy words such as ‘sex’ and ‘f*ck’.
Greatest Hits tries to continue this trend of pumping out TikTok-ready choruses, but my God, can we
please not do this to the poor kids on there? The album is glitchy without sounding cool; obnoxious without ever coming close to being interesting; sparkly without being smooth. Early album banger ‘Fuzzy’ fires
skrrrts, iNdUstRiaL drums, pop-metal choruses, rap verses, falsettos, presumably the entire Belarusian army, probably twelve motorcycle mechanics, and ‘du-du-du’s at you during its brief three minutes. It’s not pleasant; it’s a saturated attack on the senses with no distinguishable elements to attempt to pick apart and find any hint of meaning in. There’s no level of intrigue to the song and album as every sound is an incredibly surface-level attempt at being as obnoxious and direct as possible, to absolutely horrendous effects.
When the band isn’t attempting to beat the life out of any sonic element within their reach, they’re either rehashing their own songs or trying to appeal to the hip, trendy and epicsauce youths of today in as obvious a manner as possible. ‘Numb’ is nothing but a worse version of their 2016 single ‘Royal’; ‘You’d Be Paranoid Too’ and ‘Violet’ rip off Waterparks
classics ‘I Miss Having Sex’ and ‘Dream Boy’ respectively. Yet, this blatant creative bankruptcy is nothing compared to the offenses committed by the likes of ‘Lowkey as Hell’ and ‘Crying Over It All’. The former is, you guessed it, an attempt to fit as many zoomer buzzwords into a single track as possible. The song mentions Drake, parents, blue hair, highkeys and lowkeys, without a single memorable melody to redeem any aspect of the absolute horror show. ‘Crying Over It All’ is a ballad and features strings (yes, strings!) and hints at some #relatable emotional lyrical content. However, Awsten Knight has never been known for being a particularly emotionally mature writer: here, the primary reason for his sadness is revealed to be the possibility of people forgetting about his albums. Super relatable, right, fellow kool kidzz? How do you do?
This is the point where I’d write a paragraph about how
Greatest Hits does have some tolerable moments, but is it even worth it? Why should anyone point out that ‘Snow Globe’s chorus is mildly enjoyable and ‘Ice Bath’ puts forth a decent beat behind the pulp when it’s clear that Waterparks have no intention of treating such relative highlights with the minimum care of not incorporating them in some of the most obnoxiously paper thin walls of sound? The few instances when the lyrical content appears to discuss mental health and suicide are quickly thrown out and dismissed in favour of another synth-infused meltdown, making it incredibly hard to, you know,
feel anything. Waterparks have potential, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that they are not interested in making anything worthwhile when smashing together random sounds and tacking on trite self-references, ramblings about fame and the occasional rap verse secure the bag just fine.
Greatest Hits is Waterparks’ worst album to date. It’s 47 minutes of highly unpleasant sensory onslaught to anyone who’s not a six year old with ADHD and the emotional maturity of a twelve year old, and trust me, that target demographic may be even smaller than you think. TikTok kids are people too and deserve to be treated with respect, not f*cking Waterparks. On ‘American Graffiti’, Awsten Knight directly addresses his fans and calls them dumb for liking him and his music. It’d almost be funny if it didn’t sound so ridiculously awful.
