Did We Need A Gen Z Rivers Cuomo?

"Respectfully, you’ve been quite naked this era." So begins a recent Interview feature on LA singer-songwriter Malcolm Todd. Ironically, he is not naked in that interview, but he is on the cover of Do That Again, a shirtless bathtub-and-beer shot that's lit like the Backrooms. Over the runtime of his album, multiple outfits' worth of clothing is shed — a tank top, a jean skirt, an unspecified shirt, some unspecified pants. ("I’ve been shirtless my whole life," he replied to the interviewer.) But it'd be wrong to call Todd's music or image "sleazy," no matter how much the album cover resembles a 2000s American Apparel ad. His merch features teddy bears and rubber duckies; his single "Breathe" is set amid a fake slumber party that's... I mean, it's less porny than it could have been. His tour and album names speak the brand outright: "Sweet Boy," "Wholesome Rockstar."

Whether Malcolm Todd is wholesome or rock is up for debate, but he is undeniably becoming a star. Todd has company in that: his sister, Audrey Hobert, is a songwriter for Gracie Abrams who's been in this column before. As you may predict, Todd's parents are also entertainment industry lifers; they're Tim Hobert, producer of the sitcom The Middle — seems Todd got his sense of humor from his dad — and TV actress Jill Tracy. (If you too are wondering, this doesn't seem to be the same Jill Tracy who made a bunch of noir-pop albums over the past few decades, though it's amusing to imagine Todd hearing them.) Any discourse about this would be pointless; let's move on.

The music Todd makes is hard to describe without qualifiers: sort of R&B, sort of pop-rock, sort of '80s. Others have been a little more specific, dubbing Todd the "white Steve Lacy." That's certainly valid; Todd has worked with Lacy before (including on Do That Again), and he often sounds like he's internalized Gemini Rights so thoroughly that traces of the album leak into every song he writes and syllable he sings. If we're doing comparisons, Todd is also doing similar things to sombr's self-aware womanizing, Jack Harlow's lackadaisical rap, and Sabrina Carpenter's jokey-horny schtick. But an even better reference point is this: Malcolm Todd is the Gen Z Rivers Cuomo. There's obviously a physical resemblance, but the even stronger resemblance is how they present themselves: equally agog at and worn out by the sexual playground of fame. If the song "Tired Of Sex" did not exist, it would be necessary for Malcolm Todd to invent it.

There's a key difference, though. Weezer, despite the myriad faults you might find in them, are undeniably good at big power-pop hooks; they're real lovers of the game. Meanwhile, Todd sometimes seems to view music as a delivery mechanism for quips. He's a singer-songwriter in name only: as Todd admitted in the interview, "I probably only figured out how to sing in the last year." Unsurprisingly, his voice is currently most comfortable in a quiet, breathy register, and that's all the more evident when Todd tries to sing above its weight. "I Saw Your Face," like several other tracks on the record, desperately wants to be a pop-punk song, but Todd's voice just doesn't have the energy to make it one. (Despite this, people have somehow managed to start a mosh pit at his shows.) Todd's played Odd Future's Camp Flog Gnaw, and much of the album sounds like Frank Ocean songs sketched from fading memory. The memories might go back further; "Free.99" is like a timeworn photocopy of "Unchained Melody."

What's left, then, are lyrics, and on Do That Again they fall into two categories: earnest but mostly unremarkable heartbreak plaints, and a parade of jestermaxxing. It is sometimes hard to tell when Todd is joking and when he is not; "I'm getting old, I'm 22" from "Lonely Song" is obviously self-aware, but "I think you're hot, you think I'm funny, let's make love" is just the whole album, unironically writ small. (While we're on the subject of "Lonely Song," interpolating Akon and dropping an "FML" as a 22-year-old probably counts as stealing millennial valor.)

Sometimes the jokes are funny; more often, I grit my teeth. And sometimes, you just wonder what the fuck he was thinking: If I were compiling a long list of my lady-obsessions, as Todd does on "Obsessica," I would simply not include the name of my mom! Immediately after mentioning another mom!

All of this, it should be said, is extremely popular, to the point that fans are complaining that they can't get Malcolm Todd tickets for less than umpteen hundred dollars because the venues he's touring are way too small for his fanbase. Perhaps Todd is an ideal idol for them; perhaps a self-aware player reads as an unthreatening sex symbol. It does leave me a little ambivalent, though. 

A decade or so ago, there was a lot of critical fretting about musicians writing songs for Twitter, and then for TikTok: songs designed for 15-second soundbite consumption. But Todd, and a lot of his peers (Audrey Hobert included), often seem like they're writing songs as Tweets: amorphous content creation that, at their core, don't seem all that different from a shortform reel or a video script or, yes, a post. On "Harry Styles," from Todd's self-titled album, he already sounded jaded by the industry's insatiable appetite for content: "You're our favorite fool / You'll never make a profit if you're just trying to be cool." 

Given that it's entirely possible these days to be jaded by the music industry before you're allowed a real debut album — maybe even the norm — there's no reason to think he wasn't sincere. But by Do It Again, he's hidden that behind the joke. The central line of "Breathe" is a one-liner before an ill-advised hookup: "I probably shouldn't do it, but I'll do it for the song." And, well, fine: Todd wouldn't be the first twentysomething to justify his soon-to-be-regrettable decisions in this way. I just wish he'd do it with a song.

POP TEN

Ariana Grande - "Hate That I Made You Love Me"

Steve Lacy - "The Feeling"

Khalid - "Something Special" (Feat. Ahn Hyo-seop)

F3miii - "Noble"

Becky G - "EPA"

Rose Gray - "Club To Your Arms"

Giveon - "Jezebel"

Aloïse Sauvage - "Antidote"

Natanya - "CANDYLAND!"

MNEK - "REVERSE!!"

CLOSING TIME