Joji expresses his heartbreak on his new album Smithereens but fails to draw a tear from the listener.
I’ve been a follower of Joji’s work for quite some time. As an adolescent, I frequently watched his videos on his infamous YouTube channel TVFilthyFrank. Despite both he and I growing out of the humor which was featured on his channel, I’ve still followed him throughout his ventures since leaving YouTube.
I remember listening to his “comedy” rap album Pink Season when it came out and enjoying it (I was freshly 15 years old at the time). I also remember being 19 years old and listening to his 2020 album Nectar and finding some tracks I enjoyed.
Now being 21 years old, I don’t find myself returning to those albums very often. Despite that, they do both have a charm which sticks out even after having listened to them years ago. So, I was at least somewhat intrigued when I heard Joji had released a new album.
Joji has cultivated a “sad-boi” music style which has leaked into literally every single one of his songs. So, the lead single being a piano-driven breakup ballad was unsurprising. I’ve heard the song on social media super often as many people seem to be infatuated with the track.
Yes, Joji’s Glimpse of Us was certainly an achievement. I’m not necessarily in love with the song, but I do see its good qualities. Joji is best served lyrically when he’s self-flagellating and placing the blame for a lost love at least partially on himself.
On the track, he croons about being in a relationship with another woman but still fawning after a woman he is still in love with before speculating whether she still remembers or thinks of him when she’s with her new boyfriend. The heartbreak lies within his own inability to move on, and I think that’s certainly when he’s most relatable.
When listening to the album, I had some appreciation as well for the closing track 1 am Freestyle. While I didn’t like every aspect of the song, there were some things I did like about it. Joji’s vocal melodies were solid as were the harmonies accompanying him. I appreciate the little production quirks which pop up throughout the album as well, such as the little pause in the percussion before the refrain.
Similarly, to Glimpse of Us, Joji is reflecting on a relationship which has ended and how he feels about it. More specifically, he’s telling us that his partner couldn’t have moved on from him because he hasn’t moved on yet. At face value, it’s a very defensive and arguably bad message, but I view this more as a defense mechanism as opposed to a genuine observation on his part.
In a similar vein to the second verse of the lead single where he ponders whether his former flame reciprocates his feelings of regret and longing, this track feels like Joji is convincing himself more than he’s convincing us and that does have a relatable twang to it.
It’s kinda pathetic, but sometimes we all have moments where we do things like this.
So, we have a good opener and a good closer. What is left in between?
…Not much.
I promise I gave this album a chance. I saw the rave reviews it receieved from Joji fans online and was even pushed to listen to it by a dear friend whose opinion I respect. However, I cannot deny that this album just stinks.
It’s only twenty-four minutes! Anyone who has read my opinions on music will know that I am much less inclined to pursue long albums. Even albums I enjoyed this year suffered in my eyes from long winded track lists. Twenty-four minutes is a sprint; I should be heralding this album as a masterpiece!
Let me make this perfectly clear: Joji has nothing to say on this album. He seems to have gone through a breakup recently and had some serious emotions he wanted to express in his music. The problem is that there only seems to be one emotion he feels about it: bummed.
I can’t even dignify most of this album by calling it sad because it very rarely reaches emotional investment which could be considered sad. Tracks like Feeling Like the End, Dissolve, and BLAHBLAHBLAH Demo all feel like vague cliches about the ends of relationships.
For an artist who wrote a song as fantastic as Slow Dancing in the Dark in his past, I somewhat find it hard to believe that he’d put in such little effort into the lyrical content of his album.
Even tracks that get into the details don’t feel worth it. Die For You seems to be about how people change after the end of a relationship, whether that be for better or worse. Despite this, I’m just not convinced.
Maybe it’s not the lyrics’ fault for this entirely. After all, maybe someone who put in a semi-decent vocal performance could convince me of the words Joji put to paper. On this album, Joji sounds like he’s half asleep.
It sounds too obvious to call out Joji’s emotional investment in a track when reviewing his album. It’s like complaining that Metallica are “too loud” or that Freddie Mercury was “too flamboyant”.
I will die on the hill that this album is a noticeable drop in quality from his last projects when it comes to vocal delivery. Joji very rarely goes all out and belts on a project but when he does (Slow Dancing in the Dark), I can get behind it though.
On a lot of his other tracks though, he at least brings something. The track Yeah Right from his first full length album with 88rising had at least some swagger and confidence to its vocal delivery. Songs from his last album like Tick Tock and Nitrous were fun and delivered with conviction.
No moment on this album was as fun as the vocalized percussion on Nitrous.
Even the instrumentals aren’t up to snuff here. I think he realized when making this project that not every track could be just him and a piano like the lead single. So, he adds annoying noise to the back of Die for You. He adds drums to Yukon (interlude) which make a crap song crappier. He adds a four-chord strumming guitar to Dissolve which turns a cliché bedroom ambient song into every open mic you’ve ever been to.
Seriously, I’m sure every critic who listened to this album started humming some random acoustic guitar song five seconds into this track because of how generic this sound is (for me, the song was Pieces by Sum 41).
Joji’s hook game has seriously suffered on this project as well. Joji’s flow on the hook for Feeling Like the End feels like the most generic ripped off flow that you could hear on a random SoundCloud upload. His repeated affirmations that he’s “too precious” on NIGHT RIDER make me wanna throw up.
How did this happen? I don’t think anyone was expecting a masterpiece, but this is a total waste of time. Well, a quick google search of his record label might illuminate a smidgen.
You see, there was a ton of speculation earlier this year that Joji was leaving his record label 88rising. However, talks about this seem to have cooled in the end of spring (around the time the first single from the record came out). I wouldn’t be surprised if the label rushed the album out before it was ready to meet a deadline for the beginning of a tour. If that’s the case, I suppose I can’t blame Joji for that.
This isn’t unlistenable. I suppose a Joji superfan might be able to enjoy this. After all, a lot of the hallmarks of a Joji project are still present. It isn’t a radical departure from Joji’s sound, but rather a poorly done version of his sound.
Do yourself a favor: Do not listen to this album. The short run-time might convince you that it will be an easy listen but there isn’t much on this record to grab onto.