If you are a human person that exists, there is a ridiculously high probability that you’ve heard Snakeships’ “All My Friends” featuring Tinashe and Chance the Rapper, and Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza (SeeB Remix)” played in a frat basement, at a house party, in a bar, or on the radio at some point in the past few months. Now don’t get me wrong, both of these songs represent some top-quality tunes, but it seems as though their popularity as club favorites is painfully ironic.
Listen to “All My Friends” here:
Lyrics like “All my friends are wasted and I hate this club. Man, I drink too much. Another Friday night I’ve wasted” don’t necessarily seem consistent with the archetypal party anthem. Rather than encourage drinking in excess and reckless substance abuse, “All My Friends” critiques the culture that sucks young adults into a cycle of seeking relief from the tedium of everyday life in bars and clubs.
On the song’s RapGenius page, Tinashe, who sings on the track, reflects on the authenticity of the song’s lyrics that deal with what it's like to not be having fun on a night out with friends, writing “We all have those moments of vulnerability and those moments of weakness. To say that it never happens to any of us would just be a lie.” Chance the Rapper’s verse on the song especially highlights some of these vulnerabilities while taking aim at the hip-hop industry’s glorification of substance abuse in spite of how dangerous and destructive the kind of reckless behavior propagated by the media is. One of Tinashe’s favorite lines from Chance’s verse is when he says “The nights we won’t remember are the nights we won’t remember.” According to Tinashe’s annotation on the song, there is nothing glorious about not being able to remember last night because “You can party it up to where you don’t remember the night but you’re not going to remember the night. What is the good of tomorrow when you don’t have any stories to tell?”
For the song as a whole, Tinashe believes that the juxtaposition between a party energy and honest lyrics “is magic. It is teetering on the edge of light and dark—it’s sonically bright but then lyrically feels a bit darker, and that makes it really special and creates an interesting dialogue.”
Listen to “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” here:
The SeeB remix to Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” is similar to “All My Friends” in that it juxtaposes authentic lyrics that deal with the downsides of party culture with a party anthem energy and sound. The track features upfront lyrics that make it hard for it’s audience to miss the point: “You don’t want to be high like me, never really know why like me…all I know are sad songs.” The irony of this song’s popularity at parties should be lost on no one considering that the track’s RapGenius page finds it interesting that “a song about the sad emptiness of the music industry became so much more successful when dressed up in the clothes of a big-house EDM festival smasher.” This phenomenon of catchy songs layered with thought-provoking lyrics may suggest that it has become trendy to be aware of one’s own self-destructive patterns. But what does that really mean for the generation that has allowed for these song’s meteoric rises?
Songs like “All My Friends” and “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” are refreshingly honest reflections on how the millennial generation has attempted to cope with the hardships of life through participating in a party culture with which many are disillusioned. The thought-provoking lyrics in these songs are incredibly important because they beg the question of why we are all so desperate to find some intangible anesthetic against loneliness, however I find it a little unsettling that many of my peers will belt the lyrics to these songs while continuing to pursue these avenues of existential relief that these lyrics highlight as imperfect and dangerous.
The fact that these important social critiques are being made and are ultimately accepted in popular music is remarkable, but what does it mean if we don’t take these warnings to heart? I’d like to think that upon reflection, songs like “All My Friends” and “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” can allow us as millennials to reevaluate our priorities as we continue to pursue fulfillment in our futures. Are we content accepting temporary relief in the form of drugs and alcohol in lieu of true happiness? Are we actually happy making nights we won’t remember just because it’s something to do?
