Music Review: 5 Seconds Of Summer "She Looks So Perfect"

5 Seconds of Summer

She Looks So Perfect

Album: 5 Seconds of Summer EP

Year: 2014

                After getting laid, Luke Hemmings starts planning his wedding to his girlfriend in the well-intentioned “She Looks So Perfect.”

              The band “hey’s” seven times over a moony guitar, setting an infatuated tone.

             While she walks around his room naked, she says she doesn’t understand why adults are so judgmental. She slams his sock drawer, exclaiming they don’t know anything. He puts both his arms out, moving them up and down, telling her to be quiet. Adding that his mother might just storm in to find out what’s going on. He says they both good grades in school. They have after school jobs that help pay for their bills. They are responsible. They have to at least try. She wiggles into his a pair of his underwear and he pauses. He tells her to he has to admire her beauty for a moment. (“Simmer down, simmer down/They say we're too young now to amount to anything else/But look around/We worked too damn hard for this just to give it up now/If you don't swim, you'll drown/But don't move, honey.”)

             In the chorus, he says right now, she is the most beautiful girl. He tells her loves her so much. He looks to a cup she placed on his dresser. On it, her lips left a ruby red imprint that only an director could create for a music video or movie. He is absolutely hers. (“You look so perfect standing there/In my American Apparel underwear/And I know now, that I'm so down/Your lipstick stain is a work of art/I got your name tattooed in an arrow heart/And I know now, that I'm so down/Hey, hey!/Hey, hey, hey, hey/Hey, hey, hey, hey.”)

          He closes the screen door and walks back inside to his girlfriend. He says they are going to get stuck in their town. For lease signs are up everywhere. Once safe neighborhoods are experiencing burglaries. The schools are becoming rundown. There’s an entire world out there to discover. As he smoked his cigarette, he thought that he could move anywhere, he would want her to come along with him. They could get married before they leave. He asks her if that’s something she would like to do, too? He can picture leaving town without her. (“ Let's get out, let's get out/Cause this deadbeat town's only here just to keep us down/While I was out, I found myself alone just thinking/If I showed up with a plane ticket/And a shiny diamond ring with your name on it/Would you wanna run away too?/Cause all I really want is you.”)

           In the second chorus, he says he ripped her a CD which had 90s R&B ballads and the song that always makes him think of her: Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.” He likes that she likes to wear jeans that already torn and have holes. (“You look so perfect standing there/In my American Apparel underwear/And I know now, that I'm so down/I made a mixtape straight out of '94/I've got your ripped skinny jeans lying on the floor/And I know now, that I'm so down/Hey, hey!/Hey, hey, hey, hey/Hey, hey, hey, hey.”)

             The first chorus is sung twice to end the single.

          Hemmings’ starry-eyed vocals live in a fantasy, envisioning living together with her in a tiny apartment that just theirs. Although they are only eighteen, they are bucking the odds and making it work. However, Hemmings insists on maintaining his manhood, raising the volume up as not to be sentimental. But it’s a little too late.

           The clanging “She Looks So Perfect” is hard to hear over its rackety production.