Track listing
Show track credits
- 1 Wide 3:08
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producer, writer
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- 2 Magicians Wand 0:54
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producer, writer
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- 3 Rid of All 4:16
- feat. Count Baldor
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producer, writer
- 4 By My Side 4:26
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producer, writer
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- 5 Here With Me 5:04
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producer, writer
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- Total length: 17:48
Rate/Catalog
Catalog
Set listening
Review
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3 Reviews
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1
Wide
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2
Magicians Wand
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3
Rid of All
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4
By My Side
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5
Here With Me
Published
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GFOTY is back baby! But with a less conceptual album and more of a straight forward pop album and while its not my favorite GFOTY album it's still pretty great! Really love Rid of All and By My Side. Wide also is nice, almost a call back to her earliest Pc Music stuff, same with Magicians Wand. The last song is also a very somber beautiful ballad. There really isn't anything i dislike on this and i could see it growing more on me because its just real fun.
The undisputed queen of bubblegum pop and conceptual pop music! Really deserves more credit for jump starting the newest hip trend that she 100% started.
The undisputed queen of bubblegum pop and conceptual pop music! Really deserves more credit for jump starting the newest hip trend that she 100% started.
Published
A vast improvement from past releases
Polly-Louisa turns away from the overly hyperkinetic satire of GFOTYBUCKS and Gfotv to embrace a more traditional and palatable take on bubblegum bass and dance pop. Past releases have been a crapshoot of good ("Poison", "Friday Night") or even brilliant ("Let's Do It / I Don't Want to Do It", "Tongue") material mixed in with cuts that are often too off-the-wall for their own good (the entirety of Gfoty.) On this record, we get to see a new version of GFOTY -- a living, breathing, and emotional GFOTY capable of passion that lives beyond caricature and cheeky swipes at white bimbo culture. The album opens up with the mellowed out but experimental synth pop piece "Wide". While I loved the crazy synths fading in and out of existence and the grimy nod to Italo dance midway through the track, it comes off as a bit stale. The track isn't saved by the heavy sawtooth synths or even its noisy, somewhat industrial outro.
"Magician's Wand" isn't a saving grace for the record, either. It comes off as a haphazard afterthought to close out the first quarter of the short EP. Here, we get a clapping groove that is clearly leading to something fun, but fizzles out to act as an awkward filler/interlude masquerading as another track.
"Rid of All" features Count Baldor, who brings an awesome bubblegum bass edge to the track that GFOTY alone has seemed incapable of replicating since her GFOTYBUCKS compilation. The ambient passage starting around the halfway mark is refreshing and, suddenly, the record doesn't feel like a complete mess anymore. Pounding and punchy 4-on-the-4 kicks drive the song onward, mixed with distorted, autotuned crooning and EDM synth lines. This serves as a highlight on the EP.
"By My Side" interpolates the classic "Blue (Ba Da Dee)" by Eiffel 65 and shows a more "normal" appreciation of dance pop than "Rid of All". It's catchy, but heavily relies on its source material to generate head bobbing. It manages to keep the EP going, but the joy mainly comes from the nostalgia.
"Here With Me" comes out of the blue to both subvert and play straight the classic GFOTY subversion of cliché. The chorus hits hard with a soaring melody and emotional refrain that reeks of dependency issues. It's such a twist that I would call it a genius move -- a yearning ballad that is self-aware enough to recognize that one loses their individuality when they are incapable of enjoying space in a relationship.
So at the end of the day, is this a good record? Yeah, it's worth a couple listens. But it's short, and hard to follow at times. The first two tracks weren't all too great, and the last three don't exactly flow into each other. But, compared to Gfoty, this is a welcome addition to the GFOTY discography and I hope Polly-Louisa continues to push out her odd take on subversive pop music. As a whole, I continue to be confused and delighted by the project.
Rating: 6/10 - good
Highlights: "Rid of All", "Here With Me"
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Catalog
6 Nov 2023
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