JJ's are-they-or-aren't-they relationship to club-music and R&B anthems —are they ironically appropriating the idiocy and excess of chart bling, or earnestly evoking the very same?— is unvoidable with "Beautiful Life." For all its balearic sway and beachy, breezy melodies, the new single from the once-mysterious duo still starts with Elin Kastlander breathily boasting of "doing blow in this bitch," the line sounding extra uncomfortable when delivered with the awkward hitch of her Swedish accent.If being fine with the joys of pop involves rationalizing away the shittiness of the lyrics, then let us not make to much of the endless, mindless, possibly-ironic "bitches" that kick "Beautiful Life" off. Nor of the fact that its conception of beauty seems to be building a shrine to "champagne and marijuana."
Whilst the lyrics —which are, in true JJ style, probably half-lifted from actual R&B radio jams— only manage to get as poetic as "I know we go where the sunshine hits our eyes," the musical evocations of the beauty of the beautiful life are glorious; the warmth of sun, the fizz of champagne, and the crash of the ocean captured in a sad, synthy song loaded with prettiness and melancholy in equal amounts. Bitch.
JJ, "Beautiful Life"
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