The question posed by the album title is rhetorical, obviously. Harrison Patrick Smith — The Dare to you and everyone who saw him shirtless at a festival this summer — already knows what is wrong with New York. Nothing. Everything. It does not matter. What matters is that the bass is loud enough to feel in your sternum and the lights are doing that thing where they strobe just slowly enough that everyone looks beautiful. What's Wrong With New York? is the sound of a city that refuses to stop dancing even when it probably should.
The Charli XCX comparisons are inevitable and not entirely unfair. This album emerged from the same cultural moment as Brat — that 2024 reclamation of unapologetic club music, of hedonism as philosophical position rather than guilty pleasure. "Open Up" hammers a four-on-the-floor kick beneath synths so aggressively bright they could strip paint, while Smith delivers lyrics that are less poetry and more incantation — repetitive, rhythmic, designed to be shouted back by a crowd that has had precisely the right number of drinks.
"Good Time" is the album's centrepiece and its mission statement. The production is deliberately retro — pounding synths that recall early DFA Records, a bassline that could have fallen off a James Murphy hard drive — but the energy is completely present-tense. Smith sings about pleasure with the earnestness of someone who genuinely believes that a good night out is a form of salvation, and whether you find that charming or exhausting probably says more about you than about the music.
There is a question that hangs over the entire record: is this substance or style? "Perfume" suggests the former, its lyrics containing flashes of genuine vulnerability beneath the bravado — moments where the party boy mask slips and something more complicated peers through. "Girls" argues for the latter, a track so gleefully superficial that it circles back around to a kind of purity. "I Destroyed Disco" splits the difference, a self-mythologising anthem that acknowledges its own ridiculousness while committing to it fully.
The production throughout is sharp and purposeful. Every synth tone is chosen for maximum physical impact, every beat calibrated for dance-floor response. The mixing favours bass and vocals, pushing everything else to the periphery where it creates texture without demanding attention. It is a smart approach for an album that lives and dies on momentum — there are no moments where the energy dips, no ballads, no acoustic interludes, just relentless forward motion.
What's Wrong With New York? will not change your life. It has no interest in changing your life. It wants to soundtrack the best night of your week, and on those terms it delivers with an efficiency that borders on ruthless. Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes that is exactly what music is for.
