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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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