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Pitchfork Review – Katy Perry: Waking Up in Vegas
Score: 7.9 (Best New Hangover)

If Hunter S. Thompson had written Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a sugar-coated rom-com, Waking Up in Vegas would be the soundtrack. Katy Perry delivers a glitter-fuelled ode to bad decisions, late-stage capitalism, and the kind of hangover that makes you question both your life choices and whether you’re wearing someone else’s pants.

The production is a strange hybrid of ‘80s arena rock bombast and Disney Channel pep rally — Max Martin and co. essentially weaponise cymbal crashes and four-on-the-floor drums until you feel like you’ve just mainlined a slot machine jackpot. Perry’s vocals bounce between faux-indignant girlfriend and motivational speaker who’s had three vodka Red Bulls for breakfast.

Lyrically, it’s a manifesto for the YOLO generation before YOLO was a thing. Lines like "Why are these lights so bright?” and "That’s what you get for waking up in Vegas" feel less like pop hooks and more like your friend’s drunken Instagram captions from 2010. This is not a song about Vegas so much as it’s a song about waking up anywhere with glitter in your teeth and an inexplicable hotel charge.

When Perry shouts “Shut up and put your money where your mouth is”, it’s not just a chorus — it’s a philosophy. The song is basically a musical dare, telling you to make the bad choice, own the bad choice, and then write a three-minute pop banger about it.

By the end, you’re not sure if you’ve listened to a breakup song, a pro-gambling PSA, or a piece of subtle anti-tourism propaganda from the Nevada Health Department. But like a $4.99 all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet, it’s cheap, loud, and will haunt you for days.

Verdict: The perfect soundtrack to putting $50 on black at 3am, losing, and telling yourself it was “part of the experience.”

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Pitchfork Review – Joe Dolce: Shaddap You Face
Score: 8.7 (Best New Meme)

Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face is the kind of song that makes you question not only the nature of music, but the nature of civilisation itself. In 1980, while the rest of the world was contemplating the looming nuclear winter, Joe Dolce decided to weaponise a mandolin and a catchphrase to wage war on taste.

Dolce’s delivery—equal parts comedy uncle, regional theatre understudy, and man who’s just been told “the karaoke machine’s broken, can you sing it a cappella?”—is the song’s driving force. The accordion wheezes like a pensioner after walking up three steps, while the rhythm plods along with all the swagger of a Fiat Panda in second gear. It’s not music you dance to so much as music you gesticulate wildly to, preferably while wearing a checked tablecloth as a cape.

Lyrically, it’s a work of minimalist genius. Dolce doesn’t waste time with metaphors or subtext—every line is a conversation between him, his mama, and an imagined chorus of Australian radio listeners in 1981 who were too polite to turn it off. The repeated hook, “What’s-a matter you?” isn’t just a question—it’s an existential howl, a postmodern critique of the immigrant experience, or maybe just a man yelling at a cloud.

When it was released, Shaddap You Face dethroned John Lennon’s Woman on the UK charts. Yes, Joe Dolce beat a Beatle. That’s like if Subway released a tuna melt that outsold the Mona Lisa. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the masses don’t want enlightenment—they want an accordion, a bad accent, and a chorus that gets funnier the more you sing it.

In the end, Shaddap You Face is not a song you listen to because you want to—it’s a song you listen to because it will find you. In the supermarket. In a taxi. In your brain at 3am. And you will sing along, because resistance is futile.

Verdict: A masterpiece of cultural persistence. Like herpes, but with a mandolin.

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Simple Plan – “Shut Up!”
Lava Records; 2004
2.1/10

If teen angst were a currency, Simple Plan would be Canada’s largest export. And “Shut Up!” is perhaps their most shrill, sugar-coated contribution to the pop-punk economy: a three-minute tantrum in skinny jeans, flung onto CD like a Hot Topic receipt someone refused to recycle.

Released in 2004, a golden era when every mall had at least one screaming adolescent with gelled hair and an authority complex, “Shut Up!” captures the essence of adolescent rage with all the nuance of a fire alarm taped to a skateboard. It’s not a song—it’s an eye roll set to power chords.

Frontman Pierre Bouvier delivers each line like he’s been grounded for the weekend and just discovered Linkin Park exists. “Don’t tell me who to be!” he cries, in the tone of someone who just got told to take their shoes off in the house. It’s an anthem for misunderstood kids everywhere—by which we mean, mostly kids who got a B in maths and think that counts as oppression.

Musically, it’s the equivalent of punching drywall after being asked to do the dishes. The guitars chug dutifully, the drums go “boom-boom-tap,” and somewhere in the background, the ghost of Green Day sheds a single tear. There’s an attempt at a bridge that sounds like it was written in the back of a maths book, and it ends—mercifully—with more shouting. It's unclear whether the listener is supposed to feel empowered or just relieved it's over.

Lyrically, it’s as if every line was workshopped in an MSN chat room. “Just shut your mouth / Who do you think you are?” asks Pierre, clearly directing his ire at a very rude parent, teacher, or perhaps the concept of adulthood itself. It’s emotional depth, brought to you by a packet of Sour Skittles and a half-watched episode of Degrassi.

Still, “Shut Up!” did serve a noble purpose: it was the soundtrack to at least a dozen bedroom door slams per suburban household. And in that sense, it’s historically significant—if only to warn future generations of what happens when you give a Fender and a recording budget to five dudes who just really hate being told what to do.

Best Lyric: “There you go / You never ask why” — bold of them to claim introspection in a song called “Shut Up!”
Worst Lyric: “Don’t tell me how to live!” — accidentally sums up the entire album.
File Next To: Broken skateboards, discarded diary entries, and that hoodie you wore every day in Year 10.
RIYL: Thinking the world doesn’t understand you (it probably does, and it’s fine).

— Chaz Voxworthy, November

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