What the hot diggity darn is going on with The Chainsmokers? As a long-time listener and fan of their music since my early days, their latest album left me disappointed and upset. Other fans have shared the same disappointment as I and we wondered: do The Chainsmokers have a future? Or is this the end?
The Chainsmokers have been a part of everyone’s lives, whether it be during childhood or adulthood. They’ve had a big influence on the music community during their career. Formed back in 2012 by Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, The Chainsmokers first worked on remixes of indie songs, without much success. But then, in 2014, they released their breakthrough song “#SELFIE,” which allowed them to join the world of mainstream music. After “#SELFIE,” the duo proceeded to make six other albums, each one being better than the previous.
The Chainsmokers most successful album was Memories…Do Not Open, which was released in 2017, and included their most popular song ever; “Something Just Like This” featuring Coldplay, garnered over 1 billion streams. The song skyrocketed in popularity, and reached above the Billboard Top 5 in multiple countries. Additionally, the album caused The Chainsmokers to be nominated for a Grammy Award for best pop duo/group performance. During this period the Chainsmokers were at their peak: everyone was listening to them and wondering what their next move would be.
Pall and Taggart proceeded to make two more albums. Sick Boy and World War Joy, released in 2018 and 2019 respectively, both did well in terms of streams and Billboard chart status, but when COVID hit the United States in early 2020, the duo went off the grid; nothing was heard from The Chainsmokers for two years until January of 2022, when they started to promote their new album So Far So Good. After receiving some hype and gaining traction, the release of the album in May of this year completely flopped. So Far So Good, the least successful The Chainsmokers’ album, was in a completely different style from any of their previous albums. Every song was filled with EDM music and high auto-tune. It was a completely different direction from their previous work. Not a single song from the album placed high on Billboard or gained much popularity. Fans including myself were left disappointed. We waited two years for an unsatisfactory album. The album received so much backlash that The Chainsmokers even released a statement saying that this album was the true music that they wanted to pursue and that they wished to continue producing songs like the ones in their album in the future.
But is this a good choice? Their most recent album, which included 15 songs, only got 161,400,000 million streams on Spotify. That is almost nothing compared to Memories…Do Not Open which had 3,632,100,000 streams on Spotify with only 12 songs: Memories…Do Not Open did 22.5 times better than So Far So Good. Yes, I understand that Memories…Do Not Open is old, but still even the more recent Sick Boy and World War Joy albums did much better than their newest album. If The Chainsmokers wish to continue their successful music career, then they clearly need to return to producing pop songs. Their most recent album shows that the current path they are on isn’t the right one. It hurts seeing this happen to them, especially as someone who has such a strong connection to each album they’ve made, but if they don’t get their act together, then this will be the end for them.