I think Gold is one of the most fascinating songs of all time. This is a The Hills, or a Sail, or a Royals. That being, a song that I feel like I could write entire books about. Songs I keep listening to, trying to understand it. How Gold became a hit at all is pretty much a mystery. Is it Spotify payola? Did people just really like it?

Who in the name of Go[l]d is Kiiara? Of course, you could just look her up and see that she is a singer, but I mean it more symbolically. We all know who Katy Perry, Lady Gaga or Twenty One Pilots are. They built an image we associate with them. But there is nothing to associate with Kiiara. She is not that good of a singer and the first impression I get from her, including her other songs, is that this person shouldn't be famous. She is not terrible per se, but she is extremely interchangeable. Anyone could sing instead of her and almost nothing would change.

She is just a pretty face and a high pitched voice. Almost like, dare I say it, PC music. Yes, she is completely personalityless. But so is, for example QT, from the song Hey QT. In both cases, the person, who is usually seen as the focus in music, gets demoted to instrument level. She is just there to be a pretty face and look good. And yes, while this does apply to the rest of pop music to some extent too, PC music took this concept and took it to its logical conclusion. I don't know if that was Kiiara's intention, but the result was the same.

In Gold, Kiiara effectively fights against the production over who has the control. And, as the chorus proves it, the production wins. And let's talk about the chorus for a second. Yes, that is indeed the part most people think about when they think about Gold. I think the reason why they are so weird isn't because they are chopped up vocals. You can find them in many EDM songs where people do not complain. It is the context. In a pop song, the chorus is meant to be the conclusion to the lyrics, like a form of tl; dr. But here, the chorus is literal nonsense. You can hear Kiiara's voice so it gives you an illusion of meaning, but she is not actually saying anything whatsoever. It's all style and no substance, taken to the extreme.

So you might think that the rest of the lyrics do a better job of explaining what this song is about. But really, they don't. Half of them are just one line, "Gold up in my teeth". It's like she is trying to say something else but she is programmed to only be able to sing that one line. Maybe MK ULTRA got a hold of her and Kiiara is the USA government's first attempt at mind control. If so, we all failed it since this song became a top 20 hit. The rest of the lyrics seems to be indecipherable. "I missed you in the basement"? "When the roof is on fire, you never let me know"? Do these mean anything? Apparently so, since in Feels she sings "Do you remember the first time I missed you in the basement?". That answers nothing.

The production, inspires by Royals, seems like it does the bare minimum to be considered a pop song by the radio. It feels less like a song and more like a skeleton, a possible foundation for a song. The emptiness is covered up by reverb, making the whole song feel empty and barely even alive.

I don't know if this song is technically good or not or neither. I just know what my gut tells me, and that is that is an easy 5/5, and probably better than Starboy. I can't really justify it beyond that it feels right there, in a way few songs ever do. My repeated listens to this song prove to me that some part of me craves this. Maybe the mind control worked. And, for the record, if I had to give this track any other rating than 10/10, the only other one that feels right is a 1/5. Nothing in between doesn't feel like it does it justice.