'Kay, so, now that I've sat with the song for, what, 9, 10 days, these are my general thoughts:
I love it. I do. It's a great pop jam. I was a bit "eh" about the lyrics, but whatever, it's Avril, I don't expect her to dress us in epic poetry, so this is what it is. It is a bop though.
I did have 2 major problems with it.
1. It's Avril's signature sound, alright, but VERY (almost annoyingly so) watered down. This is a problem I've been having with Avril for a while now, since even GL era. First of all, I'm sick of her not using proper drums in her studio recordings. They would make the songs sound so much fuller, richer, rather than the airy, hollow feel they have to them now with these drum loop machines or w/e her producers are serving. Like, how difficult would it be to, I dunno, call Rodney up or something to track drums? It's not like he has a ton of other things to do. Even if he did, they can't hire a studio musician to play the drums? Even something about the guitars in this particular song doesn't feel right to me, but that's probably just me. They just don't seem particularly...err...strong? I mean, let's not get delusional, this jam will probs flop, I'd rather it flops sounding the best it possibly could than flop as just another pop rock song ("Smile" comes to mind. It's even got the exact same issues. Best single of the GL era though, won't lie.) I'm not even whining about her UMS (yawn), but, I mean, even the TBDT songs felt stronger in terms of sound than this last batch of singles she's been giving.
2. Like I said, I don't really mind the lyrics, except for one particular line: "let's get wasted!" I'm really tired of Avril and all her references to getting sloshed. It was cute in ICDB but that's it, now it's becoming as sort of a crutch for her, like she equates having a good time to having a drink or fifteen and being ****-faced. This also made me cringe during HTNGU ("I got a bottle of whatever..." no). This could've very easily been changed to "please don't waste it" or something (which works I think in the context of the song, like "this is your invitation, so please don't waste it" idk), but she insisted on a lazy lyric about boozing it up, like, Avril gurl, you need to stop trying to be about that life. I hope this is the last time on the album, but, it's Avril, you'll never know.
I do like the song. Please don't flame me, y'all. I just needed to get this off my chest. We're all cool now. Also, dat video... alright, this could be fun. And I also can't at all the stans now treating HTNGU up like bull!
I think I prefer it to this song. Whether or not it's objectively a better song, I don't know, but I personally prefer HTNGU, and even if I didn't, I wouldn't jump ship and trash it the way some of y'all have
