“World Class Sinner/I’m a Freak,” the fictional would-be comeback single for The Idol’s grieving mononymous pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), performs dozens of instances within the HBO present’s first two episodes. The track loops whereas Joss and her dancers rehearse the track’s choreography (which was impressed by the panting routine from Britney Spears’s 2001 hit “I’m a Slave for U”) within the yard of her Bel-Air mansion. It will get previewed for record-label execs and different hangers-on, who nod their heads alongside in strained approval. It restarts—again and again, from the highest—as Jocelyn struggles via a number of takes of choreo whereas filming the music video.
The monitor opens on an alluring observe, an organ swell constructing to Jocelyn’s breathy vocals: “Perhaps it’s arduous to see / Whenever you’re lookin’ at me / However I do what I need / Don’t give a fuck in any respect.” There’s a coquettish beat drop, an overt refrain (“I’m only a freak, yeah / You already know I need it dangerous”), and line after line of crass chestnuts equivalent to “Each weekend I’m tryna discover somebody to bang” and “Get down in your knees and prepare to change into my bitch.” The bridge, as is true of many mainstream pop songs, is comically dangerous: a pitched-up supply of “I’m a motherfucking world-class sinner” accompanied by a dizzying backing chorus of “Contact me, contact me, contact me, contact me.”
Lily-Rose Depp as Jocelyn in The Idol.Courtesy of HBO
“World Class Sinner” was written for the present by The Idol co-creator Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and Asa Taccone, who’s a musician, producer, and frequent collaborator along with his brother Jorma’s comedy-rap group The Lonely Island. It’s a schlocky send-up of the kind of freaky single a former teen pop star would possibly launch to grease up her previous picture. It’s additionally a bop that has racked up over 6 million performs on Spotify within the final couple of weeks. On TikTok, creators are confessing they’re listening to it unironically and/or naming it the track of the summer season. On Twitter, New Yorker author Naomi Fry got existential: “I ponder how issues would appear to be if I didn’t have ‘I’m only a freak yeah’ caught in my head.” Emblematic of its Lonely Island inventory, its line “’Trigger you’re dumb, however you’re cute, that’s a ok ratio” is likely one of the funniest lyrics of the yr to this point. If “World Class Sinner” is supposed to indict a music business that cranks out pop hits like a manufacturing facility meeting line, the issue is that we’re all already programmed to like these rattling hits.
We’ve got, in some sense, heard this track earlier than. Every time we get a brand new present or film set within the music biz, there’s usually an accompanying unique track that we are supposed to suppose is dangerous—shallow lyrics, unoriginal melodies, flaccid hooks, A&R’d to hell. In 2018, there was the post-folk oeuvre of Girl Gaga’s Ally Maine in A Star is Born, with ditzy tracks like “Hair Physique Face” (which has 45.9 million performs on Spotify) and “Why Did You Do That?” (62 million performs). Miley Cyrus delivered a ridiculous earworm in a 2019 episode of Black Mirror known as “On A Roll,” as carried out by her A.I. kiddie-pop cyborg Ashley O, which has garnered a whopping 112.5 million Spotify performs.
