Actress, self-help author, athleisure mogul, nepo baby, sibling podcaster, and now pop star. Kate Hudson’s debut single, “Talk About Love,” written with Linda Perry and Hudson’s fiancé, Danny Fujikawa, dropped today. (The Almost Famous star is “not sure what took her so long,” according to her Spotify artist page.) With a bouncy beat, lyrics like “I am thinking about this world / And why we always tear each other apart,” and cover art featuring Hudson pursing her lips and throwing up a peace sign while wearing a fuzzy fur coat, it’s giving mid-aughts Miley Cyrus. Vulture staffers are divided over whether the straightforward pop song is beautifully normal or passionless dreck, so naturally we convened to debate its merits.
Emily Palmer Heller: I was honestly surprised that this was a debut for Ms. Hudson! She just seems like the kind of celebrity kid who’d have already put out an album for funsies. Plus, she’s been in musicals and has that classic I-can-do-anything confidence that made her mom such a star. (See the 1972 folk-pop album Goldie.) So for that buildup to result in this just-kind-of-normal pop song that is destined to be a needle drop in a Netflix rom-com? That, to me, is beautiful. But Jason, I get the sense that you are not charmed by this Target-core aesthetic.
Jason P. Frank: Sorry, I want a little more from utter and complete vanity projects. There is no reason for this to exist, so it’s fair to ask for it to justify itself. And I don’t mean I want it to be better. “Good” is not the goal here. I want it to be weirder. The single greatest vanity project of all time is, of course, Farrah Abraham’s My Teenage Dream Ended, which predicted hyperpop in 2012. An utterly shocking record, it is exactly the kind of swing an artist who nobody expects to be taken seriously should take. Hudson, meanwhile, debuts with the kind of music that can’t be taken any way at all. The only reason we’re talking about it is the actress behind it. All I wanted from the music was a sense of passion that showed why she bothered to do this. But, Emily, it’s clear I’m grading on a curve brought on by the project’s lack of necessity. Just taking the song on its own merits, what do you find enjoyable about this?
EPH: It is precisely its complete lack of merit that makes me like this song. Between Fabletics and her family-based podcast, Hudson has established herself as a kind of exceptionally glamorous normie. If it was weirder, it wouldn’t feel authentic to her brand. I find the complete lack of edge or grit sort of fascinating. It’s what we love about nepo babies, right? Watching them navigate these largely frictionless lives is part of the fun.
Separating Hudson from the song — which I maintain I shouldn’t have to do! — it just sounds like something I’d hear in a Kroger. It leaves my brain the second it stops playing. But for those three minutes and 48 seconds I’m living, laughing, loving. The overly earnest lyrics also just tickle me. I love when something silly is played completely straight. There is no wink here, no hint of irony or even fun. That’s also what I loved about Nine, in which Hudson played an American fashionista. It’s a ridiculous film that took itself so seriously. I get those vibes from “Talk About Love.” But I fully admit that I have bad taste. As someone with famously good taste, please explain to me why this song is objectively bad.
JPF: Well, there are a lot of things to be vaguely annoyed by here — computerized guitar sounds, the hookless chorus, the chipmunked and unharmonized background vocals. But you’re right, Emily, none of that is the point.
I think it does come down to a matter of taste. In my mind, I compare Hudson to her sister in nepo-dom, Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s another woman with two famous parents who breezes through life without any apparent difficulty and who guest-starred on Glee. And yet, while she annoys vastly more people than Hudson, I’m regularly engrossed by Paltrow, because the way she has lived through life has made her much more interesting. Hudson, meanwhile, has an Everywoman persona that, yes, requires her music to be played in Target (and her leggings to be sold in Target) while never having to go into a Target herself. There’s something to the way she plays the role of “your sorority sister” while enjoying immense privilege that I find eye-roll-worthy in almost all contexts, including, it turns out, music. She’s playing life on easy mode, then not doing anything interesting with it. Can’t we ask for a little bit more from our nepo babies? Emily, what am I missing about the Kate Hudson persona? I’d love to love her, but this song just brought up all my residual anger.
EPH: Perhaps what’s missing is an early imprint from the film Raising Helen, which came out when I was 10 and became my whole personality for an I’m-sure-grating-to-my-family six months. For real, though, I think that rom-com persona — very safe, very likable, but with an extremely obvious layer of artifice — is part of the charm. You’re exactly right, it’s a sorority-sister vibe, and your mileage may vary on whether you find that to be a fun dynamic. (I’m in the middle of a Greek rewatch, so my answer is clear.) I’m just so delighted by her completely vanilla appeal. There’s a SoCal breeziness to her persona that seems so antithetical to suburban striving, and yet Fabletics is all over my Facebook. She’s an enigma precisely because there’s nothing to grab onto with her. It’s like the opposite of staring into the abyss. Staring into the sun, perhaps. But while wearing cheaply made but trendy sunglasses.
