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4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

VICE Album Reviews, September 4: Rebecca Black, Amyl and the Sniffers, Chat Pile and More

The record review dog is back to piss and/or slobber over new releases from Mykki Blanco, Johnny Foreigner, and Natalie Imbruglia.

By Adam Christopher Smith

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Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin.Read last month’s album reviews here, here, here and here.

Rebecca BlackAge of The ExhibitionistSelf-releasedSilence, clout-demon streamer—Rebecca Black is talking, and make no mistake: she intimately understands how deranged this new age of exhibitionism truly is. At just 13, Rebecca achieved the increasingly rare distinction of becoming instantly famous without debasing, demeaning, or otherwise destroying herself when she released the devastatingly popular YouTube track “Friday”. This was (as she recently told Billboard) a one-time deal, and the incredible viral success she experienced in 2011 would no longer be possible today. Fifteen years on, this innocent little single about looking forward to the weekend resembles the apple in the Garden of Eden.

Today, fame has truly become the snake that eats its own tail, and the closest thing to being a pop star now involves catering to reptile-brained subs on OnlyFans. To be fair to Rebecca, she’s chosen the most interesting career path for someone with an origin story like hers; she’s become an independent artist who has no shame about laying into what it means to wear your image like a skin. On this second studio album, she peels back some of the layers of our modern preoccupation with seeing and being seen, casting her eye over what it means to be a private person with a YouTube view counter embedded deep within your very sense of self.

That........

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