new porter robinson single is, unsurprisingly, fucking fantastic. i remember hearing porter talk in an interview with fantano about the rules he gave himself for his production on nurture, where he insisted on not using any drum machine samples and only having like ambiguous electro-acoustic sounds, no supersaws, no dance music cliches of any kind. and then the best song on the album, musician, came out of him just completely throwing those rules out and doing everything he said he wouldn't do on every other song. and he talked about how for his next album he wanted to follow that direction.
cheerleader sounds very much what i expected based on that interview, and i couldn't be happier. i love the production here, it's very hard to place genre-wise. lots of lovely little details too, i love the glitchy breakbeat turnarounds at the ends of verses. the synth lead on the hook is just phenomenal, incredibly addictive ear candy sound design.
the song is also pretty clearly porter's attempt at making his own "stan," and i think it's pretty good! songs about stalkers and obsessive fans are a pretty well trodden genre at this point and i like this approach a lot. eminem's approach was to crank up the shock value to the maximum, and paint a detailed picture of the worst possible thing that an obsessive fan could do to the people around him. porter's approach is appropriately much more grounded and sympathetic to its character, and it being mainly from porter's perspective instead of the fan's perspective lets him meditate more on what this person's obsession means to him.
also: the video is good and porter's makeup is really cute.
