The Daily Spin II

The Chainsmokers | Bouquet

Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.

As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.

Album: Bouquet (2015)

Artist: The Chainsmokers

Link:

It’s really fun to come back to an album that was everything ten years ago with an older, slightly more critical eye. I hesitate to say I’m more refined, as that would most definitely be a lie, but I think it’s always kind of fun to look back and think about what I used to love to try and parse what exactly drove me to enjoy it so thoroughly.

With Bouquet, it’s not too hard to see. Though it’s since been gradually more and more panned, I’ve always thought this EP was a little over-hated. ‘Roses’ is a pristine example of mid-teens future bass, while ‘New York City’ was the duo’s first real venture into making emotionally charged electronica. Tritonal and Emily Warren both shine in their own right on ‘Until You Were Gone’, and ‘Good Intentions’ is decent if unspectacular. Even ‘Waterbed’, definitely kind of a sore spot years down the line, has its high points - and was a favorite of mine back in the day.

I can’t lie and pretend this is amazing - but I think the conflation of “everything wrong with music” and “The Chainsmokers” is somewhat inflamed and not quite an accurate representation of everything going on. It’s a lot of the glitz and glam of falsified life, the sort of sound that’s so sugary it’ll make your jaw hurt, but the glimpses of earnestness underneath all the shine are enough to tempt me into coming back.

Rating: 7/10

Best Tracks: New York City

Worst Tracks: Waterbed