Assholes Have Feelings Too: The Redemption of the Chainsmokers

But by November last year, after twelve weeks atop the Billboard singles chart, it felt like everything. "Closer" is the ultimate "assholes have feelings too" song – the latest in a rich American artistic tradition from The Great Gatsby to Gossip Girl, Rebel Without a Cause to Lana Del Rey. Picture middle-class kids dressing up, and trust-fund brats dressing down, playing at hipsterdom. Their ennui is eternal.

On "Closer", Halsey and Drew Taggart, the Chainsmokers' 26-year-old producer-cum-vocalist, aren't looking for sympathy. They don't know what they hate more: themselves or each other, their past hookups or their present loneliness… or is it the entire concept of romantic love? Unlike other digital breakup songs – "Hotline Bling", "On Hold" – "Closer" has no illusions that any of us are good people.

The 2010s have been defined by moral relativism, the idea that nothing holds true for everyone. In uncertain times, we turn to nostalgia, the ultimate guilty pleasure. Old flames, old music, three chords on loop forever: "we ain't ever getting older".

At the same time, the streaming-industrial complex demands a constant flow of content. "We decided to deliver a song every four weeks to our core fan base", says the duo's manager, as if he's running a tech startup – so why change things? Who asked for a Chainsmokers album?

In the five months between their Collage EP and Memories… Do Not Open, the Chainsmokers have quietly retooled their sound, embracing the emo-pop of their adolescence. "The One" opens the album with an apology: "I'm sorry / I won't make it to your party / Got caught up in my own selfishness". On "Bloodstream", they own up to their sins, public and private: "Those things that I said / They were so overrated… / Oh yeah, I really fucking meant it". Every song functions as a confession first, a pop hit second, and a dance track third. It'd be cynical, if it didn't feel so natural.

But "Something Just Like This", a Coldplay collaboration, clones "Closer"'s song structure with far sappier results. It doesn't work because Chris Martin, 40-year-old multimillionaire rockstar, is already a complete person. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. The song's Peter Pan soundscapes demand a younger, hungrier singer, someone who's dreading all the heartbreak they've yet to go through.

The Chainsmokers' best songs are made for the bedroom. No, not for seduction – for the mixed feelings of regret after an awkward hookup. For the depression that follows, when you write about it in your diary and resolve to do better. And finally, for the feeling of wonder, of a college kid learning to make beats in his dorm.

Or it's the joy of finding your voice. The Chainsmokers' Drew Taggart had no plans to sing on record until "Closer"; their much-derided VMAs performance was his first time ever singing live. Seven months later, he's fronting "Break Up Every Night" – the best fake Killers song since 2005. He has just a fraction of Brandon Flowers' swagger, but it's enough.

Memories cedes six tracks to guest singers, four of them women, but Taggart's easily the most compelling narrator on his own album. Without his voice – disarming, honest bordering on awkward – Memories might have been any other anonymous EDM producer album. Sure, there are more distinctive craftsmen – Flume, Disclosure, Calvin Harris – but their music is about sound, not confession. While their songs stay impersonal, Drew Taggart's slowly becoming a three-dimensional figure. He's found his way to the emotional center of the Chainsmokers' music – something no one could've imagined in 2014.

Without any grand pretensions, the Chainsmokers have captured the biggest musical shift of the last decade, and the story of Skrillex's career: the tastes of millennials who graduated from Myspace scene-punk to EDM. The Chainsmokers' genius is in reconciling the two in a way that feels instantly familiar. It's only surprising because they're the first to do it.

But only in pop music can you go from trashy to transcendent overnight. It's not how you become famous, but what you do with it. The Chainsmokers understand that an Instagram, SoundCloud or Spotify profile isn't just a brand – it's a diary. While most genre producers will happily release interchangeable tracks ad infinitum, we've heard the Chainsmokers' songcraft improve in real time, over two years' worth of singles. They can talk shit about "#SELFIE", or confess their personal failures in song, because they know how far they've come – and how far they still have to go. The Chainsmokers are the party, the hangover and the morning epiphany. You can't love "Closer" until you've hate it first. There's no "Paris" – "let's show them we are better" – without "#SELFIE". The millennial dream is simple: to be judged not by your trashy Facebook photos or your culturally insensitive 2010 tweets, but by how far you've come. We've all made mistakes in public. If the frat-bros behind the worst debut single of the decade can grow up, can't we all?

Or, as Drew Taggart puts it on "Young", "it's hard when you're young". It's laughably obvious – but does that make it any less true? Can a cliché feel profound? Can a selfie be art? It's easy to call the Chainsmokers vapid. It's harder to do what they do – find meaning in the obvious. Like it or not, it's better than never trying at all. Richard S. He is a pop producer and award-winning critic. You can tweet your grievances to @Richaod.

Image: Columbia Records