Has a pop star ever simply snuck up on you out of nowhere? How weepy is that new Sombr tune? Get in. Let’s discuss it. Six months in the past, I, you, perhaps nobody, had ever actually reckoned with the creative output of Sombr. And proper now, Sombr has two songs within the High 40 on the Billboard Sizzling 100. Sombr simply turned 20. He’s tall. He’s bought razor-sharp cheekbones. That is somebody who’s a full bundle earlier than you even know that you just’ve acquired the bundle. Each Sombr tune is about hookup tradition indirectly, however largely it’s about how unhappy hookup tradition makes you are feeling. It’s about how darkish it makes you are feeling. It’s about the way it places you in a tunnel of emotional vacancy. Oh come on, canine, this tune is a sense. It’s saying, “We did this factor. It didn’t work out. Now what?” Is it little bit dry to hearken to? It’s. The emotional palette will not be that broad right here. All of Sombr songs are in this type of, like, moody grey colour. The best way that it marches, it’s nearly funereal. The foggy high quality of the music actually jogs my memory of CHILLWAVE but when it was made for arenas, not smoky little rooms. There’s additionally a bunch of ’90s Britpop in right here, that tunefulness actually remembers a variety of the perfect British bands of that period. The true query for me is why is Sombr so well-liked proper now? Positive, I hear a variety of Sombr on TikTok: breakup TikToks, unhappy information TikToks, household trauma TikToks. However to me, that doesn’t account for the broad-base recognition that he’s experiencing. As a critic, a part of what I do is attempt to perceive what takes one thing from a curio to a phenomenon. Sombr, and “Again to Mates,” is clearly heading in direction of phenomenon territory, nevertheless it’s nonetheless obscure and fuzzy to me. Canine, there’s a Passion Foyer down right here? Wild.
