Porter Robinson – SMILE! 😀
SMILE! 😀 marks the end of Porter Robinson’s 10-year transition into a full-blown popstar, and the start of an exciting next phase for his career.
There’s a strong argument to be made that Porter Robinson’s artistic makeover has been one of the most impressive in recent memory. The North Carolina producer was met with huge expectations in the world of EDM from a young age. He signed to Skrillex’s OWSLA record label at just 18, where his debut EP Spitfire was their first ever release, then achieved a UK Top 10 single with ‘Language’ less than a year later. As much success as his huge dance hits were bringing him, Robinson quickly began to feel disillusioned with the state of the genre, and felt his potential as an artist was being squandered at the time. In a genius act of foresight and self-reinvention, he shed his EDM producer skin just as its time in the mainstream was coming to a close, and released his debut electropop album, Worlds, in 2014 to much fanfare.
For a certain generation of young internet-dwelling electronic music enthusiasts, Worlds was a formative album, and widened the scope of many listeners to genres beyond the bass music bubble. It took an audience who had become acclimatised to huge drops and thumping kick drums, and introduced them to high-concept storytelling through smart sound design and indie-pop sensibility. There were more than enough hallmarks of Porter’s usual sound on the album to satisfy long-term fans, but it burst the EDM sphere wide open to countless new possibilities through admittedly simple influences and techniques.
From there, the pressure was on for the notorious “difficult second album”. After Worlds set unreachable expectations by shaking the very groundwork of the scene that gave rise to his career, it seemed almost unthinkable to match its influence. While Robinson occupied this empty space between major works with the occasional collaboration or side project, it took seven years for his sophomore studio album, Nurture, to release in 2021 to critical acclaim. Where Worlds spun a vague and other-worldly narrative for its characters on tracks like ‘Sad Machine’ and ‘Goodbye To A World’, the protagonist of Nurture was Porter Robinson himself, and his hero’s journey was conquering the writer’s block, self-doubt, and impostor syndrome he faced during his hiatus period. The album deals frankly with these struggles in a way that feels vulnerable, self-affirming, and set on the future rather than the past. Despite providing a melting pot of genres – electronic, ambient, glitch, indie, and more – it became clear that Porter wanted more and more to make pop music, and he proved to have a distinct songwriting capability, as well as a knack for earworm refrains.
SMILE! 😀 is where every aspect of Porter Robinson’s artistic growth comes full circle, and it sees him emerge from the cocoon as a full-fledged popstar. Many themes from Nurture resurface here, but where that record’s lyrics sounded delicate and highly considered, they’re now delivered with bombast, attitude, and a self-parodical level of exaggeration without straying too far from their roots to sound insincere. This is captured perfectly on the opener ‘Knock Yourself Out XD’, whose own title manages to balance a clever double entendre with a classic sarcastically placed emoticon. Kicking the album off with a lone, cutesy chiptune synth lead, before cutting in with soaring synths and vocal chops, feels like the Porter Robinson of old being pushed to the side by one with a new-found conviction and swagger. The verses are cut with both sneering self-deprecation and physically impossible braggadocio – “Don’t know my schedule on the fifth // Bitch, I’m Taylor Swift // Got a hundred million on my wrist” – giving a harsh commentary on both Porter’s own self-criticisms and his perception of pop stardom.
“For a certain generation of young internet-dwelling electronic music enthusiasts, Worlds was a formative album…”
Throughout SMILE! 😀, it’s abundantly clear that Robinson is much more comfortable as a singer than on previous projects. Whereas Nurture often masked his vocals under effects or ambience, they now take centre-stage over the electronics that previously dominated his compositions. Some tracks still feature stadium-sized synth leads, such as the lead single ‘Cheerleader’, but even these are often covered over with rapturous, sing-along hooks: “It’s not fair // ‘Cause I knew you like the back of my hands // Don’t you care? // I gave you everything, now I feel you even when you’re not there”
Other highlights include ‘Perfect Pinterest Garden’, which seems to investigate social media relationships and parasocial connections over one of the record’s most memorable guitar lines, and ‘Kitsune Maison Freestyle’, twisting the materialistic formula of popular hip hop into a satirical cut oozing with Porter’s personality. He also demonstrates an admirable taste for when to slow things down and explore darker themes, such as ‘Year Of The Cup’, with its allusions to alcoholism through spoken-word passages on a ¾ guitar ballad, or the struggles to get a partner to love themselves on ‘Easier To Love You’. The broad range of attitudes taken on SMILE! 😀, and the tact shown when balancing them, is one of its strongest attributes.
Unfortunately, not every effort matches up to the high watermarks set by the record’s standout tracks. While ‘Russian Roulette’ has the best sense of humour of any Porter song – referencing the infamous Pitchfork monkey piss article on a serious song about suicide and internet trolls, before ending with the immortal line “Don’t kill yourself, you idiot” – it settles into a metre that scans awkwardly, leaving some lyrics to sound forced into place over an unflattering melody. It being the longest song here by a considerable margin certainly doesn’t help either.
Elsewhere, the album’s pacing starts to show its pitfalls in its closing moments. By starting proceedings with a trilogy of the rollout’s biggest singles, SMILE! 😀 feels relatively frontloaded for a record that’s noticeably shorter than previous Porter Robinson albums, giving the whole project a strangely slanted progression. The final leg still has its strengths, and ties up many themes of the tracklist nicely, but it’s clear that Porter still feels more comfortable on electronic-influenced backing tracks than the stripped-back and vulnerable moments that round things out. As much as it makes sense structurally for the album, a finale that plays more to his strengths as an artist would have been preferable.
“…Robinson is much more comfortable as a singer than on previous projects.”
Regardless, SMILE! 😀 offers a refreshing glimpse into the future of what Porter Robinson’s music has to offer. It may appear less ambitious than the high bar set for himself by the impact of Worlds or Nurture, but it makes up for it with vibrant production, moreish melodies, and depth that continues to reveal itself with each new listen. There’s enough tongue-in-cheek personality all over this record to make it infectiously fun in spite of its often harrowing subject matter, and as Porter starts to come out of his shell and demonstrate his popstar persona more, it’ll only shine through more and more in his work. It’s unlikely that this will be the project to catapult him back to world domination, but SMILE! 😀 still proves that Robinson is one of the most multifaceted talents in his lane.
GRADE: B+
Review by Max B
Record Scratch 