What's Wrong With New York?

His debut also conjures the rabble rousing of early Blur through a Peaches-meets-xcx lens. As a whole, ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ is a beaming and brilliant moment for both The Dare and its inspired take on historical noughties pop.

What’s Wrong With New York? is a gift horse I wouldn’t dare look in the mouth: it’s euphoric, it’s massive, it’s funny, it’s blissfully unironic, it’s finally fucking pop. I wouldn’t overthink it.

Tastefully rambunctious, ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’ is a sonic melting pot of millennial and Gen Z sounds. With retro drums and abrasive synth bases, it’s a performance-geared record filled with pulsating bass lines, perfect for making bad decisions in a sweaty basement.

The Dare brushed up his production and lyrical pageantry for What’s Wrong With New York?. The result is a mixed bag of bite-size party anthems and wearisome earworms that provoke even if you’re not looking for provocation.

What’s Wrong With New York? isn’t inventive or texturally weird enough to geek the analog synth heads, and its hooks aren’t massive or sticky enough to work as pure pop either. The embrace of pretentiousness and artifice comes at the expense of real emotional complexity and memorably witty writing.

Ultimately, the sense of pastiche, and the fact that it’s a bit one-note (even at just 31 minutes running time) counts against What’s Wrong With New York?

It’s tempting to tell Smith that Murphy wants his shtick back (along with his suit), but the pastiche is often effective, at least.

The Dare is trying to present the New York songbook to the Zoomer masses with such generality that he legally cannot be paternity-traced to any one act. Slap a bass on top of some rumbling rhythms and a synth so glitchy that every line feels like a mis-input that made it through post, and all that’s left to do is pull a line from your notebook of “TikTok virality potential.”