The lads who were once mocked for being just another novelty act has now become Y101’s biggest international artist of the year.
It has been a very good year for the electro duo Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall, a.k.a. The Chainsmokers. They’ve proved to a lot of doubters, naysayers and music critics that they’re more than just a novelty act, able to produce mature hits worthy of radio airplay for months on end.
Before 2016, the duo were just another average EDM-loving nobodies, remixing popular songs in a generic and formulaic methodology, spewing out electro remixes after remixes that get lost in the sea of blandness.
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So one day, in order to get attention, the duo decided to take advantage of the current trend at the time, (which was the selfie) and created a sure-fire viral novelty song that will have people playing for weeks until it gets tired out. Fortunately for Taggart x Pall, it worked. Their 2013 “#SELFIE” became a viral sensation. It got their name popular. People jumped in on the bandwagon, and helped launch the song’s music video to almost 5 million views.
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Unfortunately, the song sucked. Even the boys admitted that they only wrote the song because they wanted to take advantage of what was trending. What resulted was a drab EDM mix added with spoken word containing monologue from a narcissistic female clubber about taking good selfies. The spoken word aspect of the song is the only interesting thing about it, and so it was what made it popular.
The song received a lot of negative reviews from music critics who treated the song as just an excuse to deliver a meme. Obviously hurt by this, the duo promised that they could do so much more.
Flash Forward to 2016, The Chainsmokers blew up with chill electro hits like Roses, Waterbed, New York City, Closer, and All We Know. SELFIE might have put The Chainsmokers on the proverbial music map, but it was with their 2016 releases that their credibility strengthened.
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The Chainsmokers topped most of their songs on Y101’s Weekly Top 20. Closer being everyone’s favorite release. The track is also noted for being the most millennial song yet. The nostalgic collab with Halsey narrates a couple's first sparks of rekindled romance following a four-year absence.
Boasting an earworm chorus and evocative verses like "play that blink-182 song that we beat to death in Tucson," "Closer" captures the millennial zeitgeist in brilliantly infectious fashion. Also the lyrics are not that brilliant and doesn’t really make sense if you think about it, still able to reflect what millennials were like in the early 2010’s.
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