Since rising on TikTok in 2020, Ariel Allen-Lubman — better known as the musician Boy Jr. — has reached millions. Their own songs, melodic electro-pop creations, mingle on their feed with inventive covers of “Dirty Little Secret” by The All-American Rejects and Charli XCX’s “Sympathy is a Knife.”
The latest Boy Jr. album, titled “I Love Getting Dumped!,” contains all originals — and it’s a tour de force of heartbreak explored from several angles and musical styles. The polished, self-explanatory release seethes with song titles like “I Hope You Feel Terrible” and “I’m Not Pretty.”
But anger is just one of several emotions here. “Legolas” finds Boy Jr. escaping into fantasy, while another track begins with a bit of dark comedy: Throw me out a window / I think I overestimated the / Size of my place in your heart.
Boy Jr.’s time as a mash-up expert has made them a great student. Indie-style guitar à la The Strokes colors “The Yellows”; an earthy, funky bass line propels “Bullying Myself”; and glitch-pop winds up the excellently named “Top 5 Most Emotional People in Western NY.”
Allen-Lubman tends to promote these originals with quippy copy. Album closer “I’m Breaking Up with You” was pitched as “Taylor Swift if she was Nine Inch Nails.” This is correct, though the influence of guiding light St. Vincent looms large as well.
After a while, playing “spot the sound” gets boring. But Boy Jr. never does. The 20th spin of “Legolas” still reveals it as a pop masterstroke, and the darkwave synthesizers of “Lost And” make it as colossally affecting as a Robert Smith composition.
Boy Jr. boasts 46,000 monthly Spotify listeners, 347,000 TikTok followers and another 100,000 on Instagram. Almost all of them have probably been dumped. That’s why Boy Jr. stays on the FYP. The musician simply makes it sound real.
Patrick Hosken is an arts reporter at CITY. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Nov 1-30, 2024.
