“Power Is Power”

“Power Is Power” sounds like someone trying to fake their way through a conversation about “Game of Thrones.” Crowns and queens. Fire and ice. Something something stabbed in the heart. “I was born of the ice and snow/With the winter wolves and the dark, alone,” the Weeknd sings, channeling Jon Snow, or maybe Robert Plant. As a work of vapid and self-serious fantasy pop that carries only trace amounts of what’s special about fantasy or pop, this For the Throne alliance with SZA and Travis Scott is unadventurous to the point of passivity—everything the show, at its best, isn’t.

The song takes its title from one of the most enduring, delicious moments from the show’s second season. As the drab synth tones drip into glitchy drum programming, each member of the trio takes a turn on the Iron Throne, grasping at this elusive flex. They want to be Queen Cersei Lannister, witty and in control, but really they’re the bumbling footsoldiers of the Queen’s Guard: beholden to the authority of their overlord. Their lazy and ultimately empty allusions to the show and its plotting are bogged down by performances as unfeeling and mindless as a wight plowed through with a burning sword.

The Weeknd and SZA are no strangers to switching on autopilot for “music inspired by” Hollywood behemoths. Both had turns producing generic, lifeless singles for the Marvel Studios juggernaut Black Panther. Both are better than this. There are but a few landmark events left in our shrinking monoculture, and operating on behalf of huge brands can cause some artists to lose sight of themselves in the face of so much IP. Here, the music is swallowed by the advertising. In their desperate attempts to speak for the show’s massive audience, the trio of “Power Is Power” yield nearly all of theirs.