5 Seconds Of Summer - She's Kinda Hot

I apologise if I am unintentionally and unknowingly repeating something that has already been said. Also the song portion of the review starts 6 paragraphs down, if that's all you want to see.

The '90s boyband model really makes no sense in the present environment. Really in hindsight, it's bizarre that it even was a concept to begin with. It amazes me to think how much went into getting adults to convince teenagers that they really want to know all of these 5 or so guys names and their favourite foods and everything.

But in a digital age, the image doesn't work the same way. Because now everyone's on social media and in order to stay in people's minds, you need to be there everyday. And the key to that is that you need to be more relatable; the idea of a pop star being a 'larger than life' monolith is just about dead. And imagine if the peak of *NSYNC's fame happened in the Twitter age: What would a nearly 30 year old Chris Kirkpatrick come up with that doesn't seem like a forced attempt at keeping in touch?

So the boyband model of today makes a lot more sense. Guys that are potentially still teenagers, and along with that, still feel like regular kids growing up the same way their fans are.

Of course, you can debate whether or not 5 Seconds Of Summer really count as a boyband. Sonically there's a clear difference, but marketing & image-wise, they pretty much fit the bill. If I can appreciate them for one thing, it's that they clearly know how to connect with their audience, and write songs with their own distinct character.

In fact it's probably most logical to compare them to Blink-182 at this stage. I remember seeing the video to "All The Small Things" as a kid, and though I identified them as a rock band, the parodical elements of the video slipped past me. But given their popularity then and now, it's hard to say that at that point they weren't in some way pulling a similar demographic to what 5 Seconds Of Summer do now. I've no idea what the future holds, but it's fair to say that in a similar way, 5 Seconds Of Summer are going to endure in the minds of their fans now.

"She's Kinda Hot" pulls these boyband & pop punk elements to their full effect. I was a bit concerned seeing the title of the song because it drew to mind all those awful posts some of my friends are always sharing that boil down to 'DAE women are objects?!' For my fortunes, they smartly drop that angle after the first verse and never revisit it.

But at the same time, I can't totally blame them for doing it. Pop punk is ALL about sneering, obnoxious teenagers that want nothing more than to irritate their elders. If I'm being offended by it, they're doing their job!

After that, the rest of the song feels like a codifier for boyband ideals. Granted there's still the punk element of ignoring fair advice, and of course the live fast, die young attitude it seems to embody. You can tell they're in on it and it's a bit amusing. The main thing I've always got from it though is how inclusive it is. When they say 'we', it feels like they're talking about their fans as well. It's not just their moment but it's yours as well, how cool is that?

I personally don't enjoy the song. The interjections get more cringy upon each successive listen. It also still sounds a bit flat musically, with that guitar solo in particular being too muddy to get anything out of. I can see them improving on this in the future but they're not there yet.

But I give it a bonus star because I can get what they're doing. And I mean, there are surely older music fans who see Green Day as filling the same role 20 years ago as 5 Seconds Of Summer fill now in my eyes. Why repeat the cycle?