thesinglesjukebox

[thesinglesjukebox]

GRUPO FRONTERA X CHRISTIAN NODAL - "YA PEDO QUIÉN SABE"

There's little more nontroversial than drinking and being sad...

[7.00]

Nortey Dowuona: Christian Nodal and my little brother are the same age. Nodal released his first album in 2017, when my little brother was still in high school. And in 2021, when my brother graduated, Nodal introduced the United States at large to norteño/mariachi with "Botella Tras Botella." Edgar Barrera, who produced it, finally gets to work with both Grupo and Nodal. He blends Nodal’s low, thin tenor, which bellows so brightly it begins to grate, with the low, thin tenor of lead singer Payo Solis, who instead sparkles, gently riding the cresting wave of Alberto Acosta's bajo quinto, Carlos Zamora's loping bass and Carlos Guerro's gentle, nimble drums. When they blend together for the chorus, they're unstoppable, but Nodal's abortive first verse displays little of the jawdropping talent that brought him to the fore. Solis gets more time to shine, but then ably surrenders the mic to Nodal, who finally seizes his opportunity, his voice sparking to life at last, the song soaring for a brief split second, before Julian Peña Jr. ambles out from behind the congas to remind them  there are other collaborations to be done. My brother is now working in a restaurant, hopefully making better choices than Nodal is. [7]

Mark Sinker: Checking up on young Christian since we last wrote about him I see he has somewhat dedicated his life to the topic here (and indeed the topic of the previous release we discussed) = the dumb shit you do when you’re drunk. Like dialing that former someone or getting a tattoo. Christian has many tattoos, some adorable (the moon) and some inadvisable, such as his ex’s eyes indelibly depicted on his chest: ? ? ? Meanwhile the gently undulating, pulsating, staggering beat is a testament to how good stewed-you can feel as you commit further very bad choices, in that friendly bar-room space where everything seems so very delible.  [7]

Ian Mathers: Having looked up the English translation of the lyrics, I'm just going to pretend this is an extremely scathing, cross-genre, long after the fact response song to the Pet Shop Boys' "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk." [6]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: It can be difficult to hit the tone of crying in your beer just perfectly, almost too easy to drift into irony. But it's that combination of pedal steel, note-perfect accordion, and the end-of-chorus resolving couplet that truly elevate this for me. I could see myself singing along late into the night, if there was enough Don Julio to accompany me. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Morose, lovesick men have always sung songs like this (references to Don Julio and liking old Instagram photos aside) and I suppose they always will. At least this one has some really good accordion!  [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The intermittent accordion is perfect, just the right amount of sweet fluttering to provide temporary solace. Drinking your sorrows away is fine and good, but it requires a chorus like this: easy to sing along to, swinging back and forth as you get the right amount of tipsy. It captures an oscillating desire: bursting into tears and staying composed. When men are sad like this, it's often about that balance. [7]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

ARIANA GRANDE - "WE CAN'T BE FRIENDS (WAIT FOR YOUR LOVE)

Not a Robyn cover?...

[6.47]

Hannah Jocelyn: This is “Dancing On My Own (Ariana’s Version)," so the floor is pretty high. It’s honestly so close to being a masterpiece on the level of “Into You” but it's undone by the Robyn-shaped elephant in the room and some truly bizarre chorus phrasing. "Pre-e-e-tend" is not that many syllables! The original isn’t perfect; the chorus has little to no impact because it’s nearly the same arrangement as the verse. And yet, this remake has its own issues: the backing vocals are so absurdly loud they overwhelm the synths and the actual lead (maybe an attempt at Dolby Atmos-style depth), and when the Aris disappear we’re just left with empty space — not negative space, empty space. You have a whole orchestra at the end, use it! The lyrics are definitely not as memorable as “DOMO”, either; that song endures for its universal sentiment as much as its melody, and this is most interesting if you’re invested in Ariana Grande's life. She is giving it her all, particularly with a soaring bridge straight out of Ellie Goulding's Halcyon, but between this track and its inspiration, I’m not sure this is the song I’m taking home. [6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I abjured this sort of thing when Georgia brought it to me; I cannot quite resist Ari's own offering to the same extent (it has an actual hook, at least), but it still feels slightly hackish to make this sort of song in 2024. We simply must have some better way to convey the complex cocktail of melancholy and defeated joy that accompanies remembrances of loves just slightly out of reach than doing Body Talk cosplay, right? It's been more than a decade! There are kids starting high school this fall who were born after "Dancing on My Own" came out! Let the past die; abandon the sophistipop trappings of this stagnant cultural moment; keep the bit where you say "silence" and then the beat stops, it's cute! [5]

Tim de Reuse: A catchy, flattened synthpop preset that never reaches for greatness or shows any restraint trudges along with all the emotion of an industrial process. For every moment of insight there is an Ariana-ism ("At least I look this good?" Come on, how is that relevant?) that flicks us away again. Paint-by-numbers unremarkable — and yet, somewhere in the glossy chorus there is the imprint of something truly pathetic; nothing in her delivery of "wait until you like me again" implies that things are ever going to get better, and for a moment the dullness congeals into something. We get a true, insistent flash of the horror of anhedonia, the dead-behind-the-eyes dread of a lonely weekend, the sisyphean task of rewiring yourself to no longer want. I don't know if it's deliberate. But it's compelling, strange, sad. [7]

Mark Sinker: Ariana has a kind of implacable wax-figure dizziness which is probably what I do think makes for good music, even when it distresses me a bit in people.  [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A Robyn track with none of the pathos, "we can't be friends (wait for your love)" is all shallow signification. Grande's voice is too airy to be emotive, and she delivers every line with too much consideration for phrasing. Strangely, it doesn't seem like she even cares what she's saying, though though. And even the beat seems vacant. [4]

Alfred Soto: In another demonstration of her newfound fealty to mild sentiments set to milder beats, Ariana Grande scratch-coos through a closing door that she leaves open at the last second. "You cling to your paper and pens" still stands out on the twentieth play — is it this kind of weirdness that redeems her boy? [6]

Michael Hong: The line about papers and pens is funny — strange enough to make you believe it's specific without actually being much of anything. Not contracts and whatever the hell a real estate agent does because maybe Grande couldn't figure out how to fit that into song or maybe, like me, she just doesn't know. All throughout "we can't be friends," she hangs on this idea of herself being misunderstood: "I didn't think you'd understand me" or "you got me misunderstood." She craves the feeling of being understood, liked, and loved, without reciprocity in her mind. Perhaps that's why sitting in her car right outside the club doesn't feel like a revelation but a reminder of the vacancy that needs to be filled in. To that end, the strobe synth is a comfort, a sharp first breath away from the noise, a couple minutes of pleasure before the loneliness settles in. [7]

Anna Suiter: Even if I had a huge crush on Elijah Wood as a teenager, I never actually watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Now I think I don't have to. [7]

Jackie Powell: When assessing the chart performance for both of Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine singles, Chris Molanphy astutely compared the general public’s response to Grande’s "Yes, And?" to Taylor Swift’s "Look What You Made Me Do." He explained that both singles didn’t last on the charts or in the cultural zeitgeist because they weren’t relatable to listeners. To complete the comparison, “we can't be friends (wait for your love)” has the potential of Swift’s “Delicate,” which was also produced by Max Martin and achieved incremental "narrative changing" success. The recipe is there: "we can't be friends" is more introspective, vulnerable and polysemous than its predecessor. The track, heavily influenced by Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” is less catty than Grande's last single; it reveals that she has the capacity to express and perform complex emotions. An issue I take with Grande as an artist is her struggle to lean into her performance, connect with her audience, and emote; she’s often just focused on how she sounds technically. (This is yet another reason why I believe she was miscast in Wicked.) She often struggles telling her story compellingly when she performs live. On “we can't be friends,” however, there’s more of an effort to make the listener internalize the sadness and the longing. Her enunciation helps. When Grande performed “we can't be friends” live for the first time on SNL, she was stiff and awkward and refused to look at the camera with open eyes — a trend during most of her live performances — until the final chorus, which seemed like a turning point for the track as SNL seemed like one for her career. Is this a preview of what’s to come this November in Oz? We’ll have to wait and see.  [8]

Leah Isobel: Yes, Ariana, I also think "Dancing On My Own" is a great song! [7]

Nortey Dowuona: I hope Davide Rossi has made back his money, because if I get credit for playing the violin, viola, and cello and have most of my work drowned out by Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh’s limp, ED drums and only get 26 seconds of my hard arrangement to play, I’m going to be pissed. Oh, and if I hear it and it’s bad, I'm disavowing it completely. [3]

Katherine St. Asaph: Everyone thinks this sounds like "Dancing on My Own." They are wrong. What this sounds like is a "Hang With Me" chimera: the synths of Robyn's track with the uncathartic energy of Paola Bruna's original. For this reason, and others that don't need elaborating here, I can't remember the last time I was so disappointed by a song. [5]

Ian Mathers: I mean, genuine kudos to Grande for making a kind of passive aggressive breakup song with the press (and/or stans?) so genuinely affecting. I hope those crazy kids can make it work. [7]

Taylor Alatorre: On paper, an anthem about a "break-up with the media" seems too-cute-by-half, a way of trying to hijack our neural pathways in order to smuggle in sympathy for one of the most inherently unapproachable pop star problems. But if "we can't be friends" is nothing other than an attempt at manipulation, of getting the listener on Ariana's side, it isn't any more underhanded than all the little manipulations we use on each other on a daily basis. In fact, it's surprisingly candid. There's some diagetic honesty in her trying to critic-proof her message by attaching it to a more blatantly Robyn-derived template than anything Carly Rae's ever put out, a move that expresses deference more than defiance. And the telegraphed moment of silence, though I laughed the first time I heard it, is a nice way of actualizing the meditative, acceptance-focused vibe while also, through the piped-in urban ambience, hinting at the unsettled feelings that still lie beneath. The grandiose strings of the finale, which in other contexts might ring false, are here used to show just how seriously Ariana takes all of this -- a head-held-high defense of her own confessions of dependence and neediness. There will always be room for songs that admit we actually do care what the haters think of us. [8]

Isabel Cole: Ariana at her most ethereal and Max at his most shimmering and sparkly make this aggressively me-bait, and that’s before the Robyn-reminiscent closer in which the synths fade to let the strings swell send us out. The track is just stupidly gorgeous, a lush soundscape made up of parts meticulously arranged exactly as they should be, each piece necessary, none of it overplayed. Ariana delivers her lines with almost no affect at all, steadfastly refusing to differentiate the lines in tone or intensity, which would normally be a deficit but in this case allows her voice to simply take its rightful place as one of many lovely noises making something wonderful; I like that her high note in the bridge is a little weak, a pleasant jolt of humanness in the midst of this impeccable construction. The lyrics are irrelevant, both because she could not sound less invested in them (compliment) and because every time that warm bass kicks in the language centers of my brain shut down to better appreciate details like that first descending synth line that kicks in partway through the first verse or the twinkling effect in the bridge; having looked them up, I have to say there are worse strategies for dealing with the haters than offering them the aural equivalent of a warm bath dotted with rose petals. [9]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

TYLA - "ART"

We'll need to frame this one...

[7.44]

Alfred Soto: Ari Lennox and Victoria Monét have recorded similarly tasteful conceits in recent months, and if "ART" sounds as if Tyla hasn't thought out her conceit — she's a work of art painted by her lover, or is she painted on by a lover, and either way, is that cool? — she sounds as convincing. The rattling percussion creates a mild erotic simmer that warms up come-ons like "fresh out the gallery/can you handle me?" [8]

Kat Stevens: Is Tyla exploring art as an emotional outlet, a conduit for shared meaning in our humanity? The evidence for that is lacking here, while the clinical, understated tones of the Cassie-does-amapiano backing point towards formalism and modernism over expressionism or romanticism. Yet Tyla does not push the boundaries of a constrained medium, nor does she delve deep into the layers of societal collapse that surrounds us. Instead, the lyrics lean into audience-focused consumption: Tyla is merely art to be displayed, a pretty Rococo portrait to impress the neighbours. Reclaiming capitalist objectification might be the ultimate goal of 21st century art but it leaves an unsatsifying aftertaste to this feminist. Luckily for Tyla, Aristotolian mimetics tells us that true art is about making populist bangers, and "ART" does indeed bang. [6]

Mark Sinker: A joke I like from old TV sketches is when the gorgeous model eagerly skips across the room to look at the canvas and discovers the painter is some rigorous modernist and it’s all yellow and black zigzags or whatever. De Stijl me like one of your Dutch girls. Tyla is very caught up in her notion here, and this song does not skip across the room. It sounds beguiling enough, but it discovers nothing. [6]

Katherine St. Asaph: One Cool Trick to Troll the Artists in Your Life! [6]

Nortey Dowuona: Tyla has such an arresting soprano that whatever kind of loose, wispy chords and heavy bass log drums you place before her, she can ride them, gently sculpting them to her use. Sammy SoSo, architect of "Water" (and "Me Pongo Loca" by Kali Uchis, "See Me Now" by Nasty C, "Playing Chess" by J Hus, and "Bare With Me" by Ms Banks — maybe a remix with her of this pls) leads the background vocals over light, airy synths but leaves them in the distance. Tyla leans on them for support, making her a stronger presence. Tyla you will always be loved but not famous cuz that is dangerousss. [10]

Ian Mathers: In retrospect I gave "Water" something I'll call "the gentleman's [8]," here meaning "if I'd first heard the song maybe a week earlier it would have been a [10], easy." "ART" only confirms that hindsight, because this is a very solid [8] and I feel a bit silly giving both songs the same score. Such is the agony and the ecstasy of the Singles Jukebox. [8]

TA Inskeep: A fresh-sounding blend of amapiano and smooth R&B that's subtly hip-shaking but also pretty damned sexy (though not as much so as "Water," which I wish I'd blurbed, an easy [9] for me). Pray that Tyla sticks with this groove and doesn't get sucked into the UK dance music machine, because this is where she belongs. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Doesn't go down as easy as "Water," largely because the lyrics and delivery are clunky. But there's an appeal to that, how in Tyla's desire to entice, she sounds most at ease when going back to basics: "I'll be your A-R-T" is, yes, an evocative message as simple as A-B-C. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: An interesting exercise in expectations: if I encountered this in the wider world, shorn from the context of being a single off of an immensely hyped-up album from an artist who made one of this site's favorite songs of last year, would I still love it? Part of me wants to say no – the things that truly endear "ART" to me, like the way Tyla's voice intersects with the backing vocals or the soothing hum of the organ as it mixes in with the kick drum, are features that only reveal themselves with slightly closer inspection. But "ART" has enough in the way of immediate appeal to draw you in even if you've never heard "Water," the depth of Tyla's hooks pulling at me from even a moment's listen. [8]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

$OHO BANI & HERBERT GROENEMEYER - "ZEIT, DASS SICH WAS DREHT"

There is not actually a World Cup this year, but why let that interfere with putting out World Cup songs?

[6.00]

TA Inskeep: A big-ass 2006 German World Cup anthem featuring Amadou & Mariam gets spun on its head to create a big-ass 2024 stadium hip-hop record, equally suitable for football matches. The key here is that producer Ericson keeps the drama in, with that giant chanted chorus, and pumps up the drums; I can't imagine this won't be playing across Europe all year. Works much better than it should. [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: An interstitial-ready composition of crowd chants, synth daggers, sampled football lore, and DRAMATIC TENSION STRINGS that is ruthlessly manipulative yet not nearly huge enough to actually manipulate. Listening to an arena jock jam in isolation will obviously never feel as exciting as being at the arena, but it should at least feel as exciting as watching a pirated stream. (NOTE TO COPS: I have no idea what that feels like.) [5]

Taylor Alatorre: Ill-fitting mash-ups of disparate dance genres, mindless rehashes of former World Cup glories, routinized rebel yells set to a faux-apocalyptic sound font, Americentric trend-hopping that resembles nothing that would ever come out of America: this is what the makers of "Planet of the Bass" should have taken aim at. Fun fact: though it's hard to find confirmation of this in English, according to the German-language Wikipedia, RedOne (remember RedOne?) had a part in both writing and producing the original song being tormented here. Not that I'm a believer in inherited guilt or anything. [2]

Isabel Cole: My first thought, once the beat kicked in, was, "haha what the fuck this rules," and you know what? I stand by it. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: (Jason Bateman voice) I don’t know what I expected. [6]

Alfred Soto: Rather too brief to impress itself, "Zeit, Dass Sich Was Dreht" uses the staccato strings of late '90s Dre and the tics of Travis Scott to -- what exactly? Often when I don't speak the language I let the track explain itself rather than consult translations. [6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Look I'm sure this is causing all sorts of discourse on German music Twitter or wherever they do inter-generational internet fights, but shorn of context, this just sounds sick as hell, like a Travis Scott song without the burden of context and ego. What's left behind are a gargantuan hook that leaves me feeling like I could avenge 7-1, and raps from $OHO BANI that are just competent enough that they don't distract from the upswell of energy powering this track. [7]

Ian Mathers: One of the quintessential TSJ experiences for me is not knowing what the heck is going on in a delightful way. Often, I then try to figure out what the heck is going on in order to write the blurb. But sometimes you just enjoy the chanting Germans. [7]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

ST. VINCENT - "BROKEN MAN"

We like this era a bit better...

[6.00]

Harlan Talib Ockey: In 2014, St. Vincent released a self-titled album, saying “the hardest thing for a musician to do is sound like yourself.” In 2017, she decided that was too hard and pivoted to glossy, scripted “pop-level intention.” (For the record, I still liked it.) In 2021, another pivot to ‘70s cosplay. (Not a fan.) Now, after ten years, she finally returns to something that sounds like an evolution of the St. Vincent concept. “Broken Man” is the primal, slow-burning, ‘90s-industrial brother of “Bring Me Your Loves” and “Birth in Reverse”. The bass is a half-dead cement mixer. The guitars are a cannon blast. The drums are pedestrian enough to have not required a celebrity guest, honestly. With “Broken Man” posing like St. Vincent’s last two albums never happened, you could argue that this is a strange and disappointing step back. And in some ways, it is; the idea that an artist might be disowning their own progress is upsetting, and I would feel a little better knowing there were signs of Masseduction elsewhere on the album. For now, however, I’m choosing to say “neat, I loved St. Vincent (2014), this seems pretty cool.”  [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: An exhibition of sudden swerves: the thrilling swerve when the guitars come in to shatter the skeletal restraint, something you knew was coming but not that sudden or that big; and the slight letdown of a swerve when the song turns out to not be Annie Clark indulging her inner Trent Reznor, but Annie Clark indulging her inner Mac Aladdin. [8]

Alfred Soto: Annie's Clark restlessness is a strength regardless of the consequences. "Who do you think I am?" she asks wearily over skronked-up guitars, as if tired of reminding us. The rest of "Broken Man" uses Clark's impatient jabbing warble as a series of provocations. It could move faster. [7]

Leah Isobel: I don't get it. [5]

Hannah Jocelyn: For the last decade, if I’ve wanted to listen to St. Vincent, I’ve just listened to Torres imbuing Annie Clark’s fuzziness with extravagant theater kid energy (the highest compliment I can give). But Torres’ album this year was a surprising disappointment, so St. Vincent wins this round with a “Dance Yrself Clean”-sized volume jump and a crunchy, restless arrangement. Not to put two genderless guitar gods against each other, of course!   [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: At this point I'm getting nostalgic for St. Vincent albums I didn't even like – the Goats Head Soup worship of the last record did not inspire joy in me but at least it was an ethos of some kind (and I'll stand by "Down" as some of the finest electric sitar playing by a white person in the 21st century.) This is just rote alt rock fodder, a vague sketch of industrial textures without any hook or distinguishing characteristic other than the loudness of Dave Grohl's fills.   [3]

Nortey Dowuona: The drum breaks from Dave Grohl, Cian Riordan and Mark Gulliana take place in three places; the first drum fill, the second bridge programming, the outro groove. The final one swallows the first threadbare drum programming, largely unable to hold the weight of St. Vincent's thin topline, bulky guitar and thinned-out synthesizers. The melody is novel, floating atop the simple synth riff and becoming foggy and weepy at the bridge. Then the sudden avalanche of sound in the outro groove kicks the song into gear, enlivening a tense arrangement and adding muscle to the thin synth riff that remains looping at the center. The sudden ending leaves you broken in half, staring at the concrete and not knowing whether to crawl or crumple. [5]

Taylor Alatorre: The abrupt transition from abattoir atmospherics to an unchained "Get the Led Out" session brings to mind, of all things, the famously ambiguous ending of Taxi Driver. Did Travis Bickle really achieve a heroic redemption through the full flowering of his violent masculine instincts, or was it all a dying dream; and what lessons is the viewer meant to draw from either one? Whether Clark intended it this way, the heavy-blues riffage is bound to come off as triumphal after so much austere bleakness, and unfortunately it’s a bland sort of triumph that doesn’t feel fully earned, narratively or musically. It might have been a better illustration of the song‘s themes to reverse the sequence of the two main sections, so that the brokenness became more instead of less apparent over time. Would make for less of a concert crowd-pleaser, though. [5]

Isabel Cole: St. Vincent channels both Karen O’s snarling, twisting yowl and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ glitter-grime ambience to craft something tight and tense, fun with an edge of darkness that keeps building as if the song is straining against itself until it explodes. Listening to this feels like watching someone strut down a runway built in a junkyard, rhinestones glinting off her dirty fingernails until she lights a match and sets fire to the stage. [8]

Ian Mathers: I truly don't know whether it's her or me, but I used to hear a new St. Vincent single or album and feel the shock of the new, or at least of a distinctive voice. This is fine, and the guitar playing is certainly still bracing, but it just feels so much less... distinct. I don't want something that sounds like "Cruel" or "Digital Witness" or "Actor Out of Work," but I do want something that makes me feel the way all of those did. [5]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

KANE BROWN - "I CAN FEEL IT"

A sample that’s no stranger to you and me…

[5.18]

Taylor Alatorre: "Even though the song does draw a fair bit from Phil Collins's 1981 song, the tempo is much faster."[1] [1]

Ian Mathers: As is often the case with modern pop country, "I Can Feel It" evokes a rural area; here, it's the Uncanny Valley. [2]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: So dumb! I respect it more for not being coy about using its big sample – Kane Brown and Dann Huff (who actually played on hits from Phil Collins' contemporaries, wtf) hit that big drum fill button over and over again, especially during the second half of "I Can Feel It." Worst part is that it works every time – this is a meta-level arena jam, a crass play that goes beyond the normal nostalgia-worship of so much of the contemporary pop landscape (secularly, across nearly all subgenres in 2024) by virtue of sheer shamelessness. [6]

Isabel Cole: Nothing we haven't heard before, more literally than usual, and obviously it's dumb, but sometimes you don't want smart, you know? It hits all its marks cleanly, and I like the weirdly roiling, tempestuous drama the track brings to a lightweight song about a drunken hookup (possibly why the hilariously incongruous video contains neither whiskey nor dancing — just a mechanic with a past and a dream). [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: The annoying hackwork here isn't the Phil Collins sample. It's that songwriting affectation, rampant in modern country, of awkwardly wording things that are phrases -- in this case "this is turning into a we-should-probably-get-up-out-of-here." (Why does this exist? Is there a thinkpiece?) The Phil Collins sample is, in fact, what makes this not suck. [7]

Mark Sinker: Time for every single song ever released to get its talking-point kinda-cover version. Time for “Weird” Al to become a worm-man god-emperor and rule over the charts for 3,500 years. A Million Golden Hits on the Golden Path.  [5]

Alfred Soto: Kane Brown shows the apparently infinite ways in which "In the Air Tonight" adapts itself to whatever sized foot you stick into it: instead of a cheatin' anthem, "I Can Feel It" focuses on the nervousness of would-be lovers courtin' on the dance floor. Almost everything works except for the guitar solo, an example of premature ejaculation. [7]

TA Inskeep: Theoretically this fusion of banjo, big-ass drums, and an interpolation of Phil Collins' most iconic song should be a lot of fun -- and Brown's winking voice would seem to be the right fit for it. But it all feels awfully forced, especially when Brown actually sings that he "can feel it coming in the air tonight" in the bridge. It's too obvious by half, not remotely country save for that banjo (which would be fine except that it's being billed as, y'know, country), and even though it's a clever idea, never fully gels.  [4]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: I'm tired of interpolations that aren't interested in engaging with their source. It's just so blandly tactical to put on the trappings of a hit to ensure the boring ditty that you've done ten ways to Sunday gets airplay.  [3]

Hannah Jocelyn: Everyone misses the kicks between the toms when they do “In the Air Tonight”! That's what makes it distinctive! "One Mississippi" was legitimately incredible (would have been a [10] from me) and a massive step up, this is trying to be some kind of epic tough country song but that clashes with the uninspired, lovelorn lyrics. By the way, Kane, you’re no mister Kingston. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: Gabe Foust, songwriter/producer for "Trailer Park Barbie" and "Bake It," lets Aaron Sterling handle the drums, and man, does he handle them. His take on Phil Collins's iconic fill kicks the song in the ass and brings it swimming up to Kane's deep baritone, buoying it as the second verse begins, keeping the song steady as Rob McNelley's seething solo dives below the chorus and surfaces on the bridge. The song relies less on the kick of "here's the Phil Collins drum fill, please clap" and more on "here's Kane Brown using one of the best baritones in popular music; leave with him and go steal that money." And Brown is in fine form; his quick trot then strolling delivery of the first verse snatches you up and leads so smoothly into the chorus that you are swept away, your hair flying in the wind, your eyes full of the moon before you can blink. The bass, played by Mark Hill (yes, that Mark Hill !!!?) comfortably purrs below, interlocking with the kick. It pushes Brown into picking up the pace at first, then smoothing out and sliding during the chorus. He delivers spurts of melisma briefly but remains in control of his voice despite the rising waves of the mix. It drifts away into the sky, but you're on a string, lazily drifting behind it. [10]

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#kane brown #phil collins #in the air tonight #music #country #country music #music writing #music reviews #music criticism #the singles jukebox #Youtube

[thesinglesjukebox]

MUNI LONG - "MADE FOR ME"

JUKEBOX TRIVIA TIME: Despite her decades of songwriting, prior to today Priscilla Renea's only mentions on the Jukebox were in reviews for Sabrina Carpenter, Shontelle, and Akon...

[6.55]

Nortey Dowuona: Priscilla Renea had two solo records in 2009 and 2018, both good, but they sank into the ocean. In between, she wrote "California King Bed," "Who Says," "I'm a Diamond," "Worth It," "Bottom of the Bottle," and "Love So Soft." Then out of nowhere, a simple little ditty called "Hrs and Hrs" turned Priscilla Renea into Muni Long, 2000s R&B lifer. Priscilla seized her chance, dropping an EP and album both called Public Displays of Affection -- neither of which you have heard or have heard described to you until now. "Made for Me" is a neat, well-made version of what Renea was writing for Tamar Braxton, Monica, Mary J. Blige, K Michelle, Fantasia and Ariana Grande, and it wouldn't have been as good if they sang it. Her voice, wispy and light yet sharp and tight, navigates smooth little runs that allow her to slip out little phrases and simple words and imbue them with weight, where someone like Grande or Michelle would oversell or crumble. "Twin...where have you been" is such a potent, aching plea in her voice that it started another massive trend, led by this absolute icon and culminating in this little gem and this excellent performance. Muni Long is made for this moment. I hope her next album is made to be remembered. [10]

TA Inskeep: An elegant, piano-led R&B ballad reminiscent of Toni Braxton's Imperial Phase work with Babyface, this is incredibly lovely. [8]

Alfred Soto: I can hear Keyshia Cole singing this sturdy ballad about a dozen years ago.  [6]

Jeffrey Brister: I have no idea how long it’s been since I’ve heard this kind of soft-lit, radio-ready-for-2000 R&B. It’s a really nice replica of a form I don’t really hear much anymore, but nothing about it is particularly distinctive, no twists or winks or nods to modern production beyond a rolling kick in the chorus. There’s a bit more polish on the metal, but it’s the same shape as always. [5]

Katherine St. Asaph: Priscilla Renea's breakthrough arrives, by... changing her name and making a Babyface homage with few concessions to modern R&B? Given the industry's bifurcation of years-past debut artists into either successful or failed-to-launch brands, creating a new identity makes unfortunate mercenary sense. (The "Muni Long" moniker is, according to Renea, the "protector of Priscilla." My grand theory on this -- which, to be clear, is 100% absolutely not true -- is that the quote isn't in fact Vogue-feature woo, and instead she's just a Dark Souls stan.) As for the latter: Like Jack Antonoff (and unlike, say, Bonnie McKee or Ester Dean), Renea was chameleonic as a songwriter -- compare any given three tracks, say Train's "Drink Up," Selena Gomez's "Who Says," and Fifth Harmony's "Worth It" -- and comfortable adapting to any genre that solicited pop songs. (And she knows it.) That's perhaps why she can merge so well into this vintage-Monica guise. Just, uh, assume that when she says "twin" she means "twin flame." [7]

Ian Mathers: That piano sound is Adult Contemporary enough it sounds like it drives a sensible sedan, and I mean that as a compliment. As a twin myself, I continue to be quietly freaked out whenever the word is evoked in a romantic context, but other than that this is nice, especially when she gets impassioned on the chorus. [6]

Taylor Alatorre: There’s a lot of work that goes into constructing a memorable hook consisting of a single word, and unlike Muni Long I’m not a songwriter by trade so I can’t tell you exactly how it’s done. But in architectural terms, it seems to be comparable to the laying of a cornerstone, in the modern ceremonial sense rather than in the older, Biblical one. The rest of the building has to come first, and only then can the stone be slotted into its designated place of prominence. Muni enunciates the word “twin” like a child pointing at an object that she’s just learned a new word for, and the quiet simplicity of this moment, brimming with a well-earned sense of sureness, seems to embody all of the song’s desires and inspirations within itself.  [8]

Isabel Cole: A competently executed heartbreak jam about being unable to let go, maybe the first Big On TikTok song I’ve encountered where I get the appeal. “Body to body / skin to skin” is a nice interjection of remembered intimacy in the plaintive wail of the chorus. [6]

Oliver Maier: Sweet but not remotely moving. Nothing here sounds bad, but it's painfully anonymous. [3]

Dave Moore: I keep forgetting that Muni Long was once Priscilla Renea, one of my favorite under-the-radar singer-songwriters from the late '00s (Jukebox is a stone cold classic), in part because I don't usually hear her ear for a killer hook in her more recent R&B material. But this song, which sounded unremarkable when I heard it in its original flavor, turns out to be fantastic remixed into amapiano and Atlanta bass, so clearly it has good bones. [6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: By the time we get to the final chorus, "Made for Me" crosses over from dutiful but indistinct Babyface-core to something greater – an act of pastiche so complete and artfully struck that it acquires a majesty of its own in the act of copying a lost golden age.  [7]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

CHUNG HA FT. HONGJOONG OF ATEEZ - "EENIE MEENIE"

Catch an idol by the toe...

[6.56]

Kayla Beardslee: Chung Ha knows how to sell glitzy seriousness, but a goofy hook that unironically uses the phrase "eenie meenie" isn’t really her forte, and the YG party chorus at the end doesn’t do anything to redeem it. The pre-chorus is the best part because it briefly allows her voice to soar instead of holding back. If only there was another more show-stopping, dynamic track that could have taken "Eenie Meenie"'s place... imagine an explosive dance-pop number with a blistering vocal performance and voguing and waacking galore... if only such a thing exis-why was "I’m Ready" not the single??? [4]

Isabel Cole: As a concept, “sexie eenie meenie miney moe,” played absolutely straight, sounds like a chapter from Jenna Maroney’s music career on 30 Rock (perhaps a Woggles collab?), but somehow I actually kind of love this? That bass line hooks me at the start, and every time I start to worry the song’s not going to live up to it something different starts happening. Despite taking the silly hook dead seriously, to my mostly monolingual ears, Chung Ha sounds like she’s having so much fun it’s infectious, spreading to both the featured rap and to me; when I put it on while washing dishes last night, I found myself dancing along unconsciously, hands covered in suds. [8]

Ian Mathers: Yes, pop music has a rich history of repurposing nursery rhymes and the like but I have a rich personal history of not living it when it happens. I do like that bass sound though — sumptuous! [6]

Taylor Alatorre: I enjoy the way that this starts off sounding like a mid-2000s Pharrell beat given an exfoliating spa treatment, and ends up sounding like a mid-2000s Pharrell beat that someone pushed down the Odessa Steps. [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: Bratz: Genie Magic type beat. [6]

Danilo Bortoli: It's 2024, and the horrors of the world have almost obliterated my ability to grasp pop and my sensitivity to it. Maybe it's for the best. Which brings me to say that I see "Eenie Meenie" as an act of extreme competence. A neatly packaged deal made from the finest sound engineering - the best and most obvious picks at hand combined and arranged to form a pretty pricey toy. I'm not complaining. Quite the opposite: I'm just a happy cynic. [7]

Nortey Dowuona: you can rap that fast wtf is this man a sorcerer or a missing member of freestyle fellowship wtf wtf wtf also how are people calling themselves billen ted involved in this and why is this so good [10]

Mark Sinker: The burden of the lyric is so much about not caring to connect -- you the audience and you the love interest just so many randoms to her -- and the chorus is so divinely glidingly self-involved and then all the mounting quirks and squirks to the building weave of the backing, and the build too of the voices behind her many voices, likely a perfectly blank porcelain-eggshell-candy palace of serene diffidence, all so much that I can’t even locate what comes after the modal verb, because look, she’s just looking the other way anyway… [7]

Will Adams: Fourteen years later is enough time for the following theory to be confirmed: you cannot base a pop song on the nursery rhyme "eenie meenie miney moe" that isn't laughably silly. [4]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

BEN PLATT - "ANDREW"

"Andrew! Andrew! Andrew! You're gonna love meeeeeeeeee..."

[6.36]

Jeffrey Brister: Platt’s an incredibly talented vocalist, there’s no doubt there, and a good performance can do a lot to elevate average material -- like, say, a pleasant but unremarkable folky song about being sad and gay. His delicate falsetto dancing over top of the guitar, how the chorus blooms with yearning in a name, staying away from theatre kid pyrotechnics -- it’s a laundry list of good choices, and I’m just bowled over by its simple and straightforward beauty and earnestness. [8]

Alfred Soto: Depending on my diet that day I can embrace this unmitigated schmaltz or vomit at the sight of it. Neither the falsetto nor the lyrics have heard of subtlety. I am past the age when unrequited lust wears the drag of lachrymosity, but I hope I'm not callous enough to understand when young adults need it. [6]

Hannah Jocelyn: A friend and I made a list of songs about unrequited queer love, specifically when it comes to incompatible orientations. This is Ben Platt’s entry in the canon, and it’s the best song I’ve heard from him, the first that doesn't sound like rejected tracks from either Dear Evan Hansen or Blue Neighborhood -- it starts off very Simon & Garfunkel, but the more ambient Sufjan Stevens territory on the chorus fits him shockingly well. One problem: the Melodyne detracts from how sincere and pure the writing is (isn't Dave Cobb known for his authenticity?), to the point where Platt sings "if I can't get closer then I am destroyed" and sounds like a Dalek. Normally that would be a dealbreaker, and maybe I would dismiss this if I hadn't, in fact, had an Andrew or five. Cobb's production is gentle and tender enough that I can just lie back and think of all the pretty girls. [7]

Isabel Cole: I do appreciate the concept of this aching little ditty about the specific wrenching futility of crushing on a straight guy, and the idea of “wasting heartbreak” on someone who would never even be able to grant you the dignity of being rejected for your actual self is poignant. I can imagine the teen for whom this hits at exactly the right time, and that’s not nothing. But the first-love adolescent yearning of the lyrics fits oddly with the meandering melody and the folky arrangement (it’s giving Harry Styles Presents VH1’s I Love The 60s), and Platt… listen, whatever you think of  Dear Evan Hansen, no one’s ever denied that the guy can sing. Here, it’s hard to shake the sense that he’s deliberately trying to differentiate his solo work from his Broadway past by avoiding sounding too musical theater, choosing instead to flatten his clear, resonant tone into a dull, nasal drone that feels like he’s playing Barefoot Guy With Guitar in a mockumentary about hippies. It doesn’t really work -- his falsetto sounds grating, and like a lot of stage singers trying to branch out, there’s a certain mannered quality he can’t quite shake -- and the few more vibrant lines towards the end make me wish I could hear a version of this aiming for the cheap seats. [4]

Ian Mathers: As someone who has disliked Ben Platt in everything I've seen or heard him in, I was absolutely prepared to reject this song from its Cat Stevens-ass opening, but then I kept listening and... I don't know, I keep thinking about that classic tumblr post that ends with "I am cringe, but I am free." I listened a few more times and... it's kind of lovely? Something about it reminds me of Gordon Lightfoot? I remember how much songs that seemed to speak to my particular romantic torments meant to me as a teen and I can absolutely imagine the kid who is going to play this on a loop like I did Sloan's "Deeper Than Beauty" or whatever? Don't make me regret this, Platt. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: The frustrating parts of this song have nothing to do with Ben Platt's voice. Whatever his faults in Dear Evan Hansen, Ben has a mellifluous tenor that comfortably floats in the higher parts of his range, allowing certain lines that feel clunky ("what a time-wastin', sweet happiness-takin', self-esteem, mess-making, heart-breakin' shame") to float past so pleasantly that when your own voice begins to sing them, they jumble together in your throat until they all flow out with the delivery of "Andrew." Producer Dave Cobb's helium guitar chords are also not the problem -- they lift Platt's voice and remain so close to it that when they lean back and let him take center stage, they allow Platt to send his melody up and catch it comfortably. The frustrating thing is the drums; they are so thin and yet so rigid that when they enter, the song loses the butterfly subtlety it needed to soar. Derrek Phillips, who has played with Vanessa Williams and Rahsaan Barber, somehow had to anchor the song in a way that would give it heft and keep its light, breezy charm, but instead he reinforces the dull structure of a second-verse drum groove, and all the hard work done by Platt and Alex Hope is squandered. A bolder choice by Platt or Cobb would've been to lean into the acoustic guitar arrangement by adding the bass and keyboards, and maybe the percussion (also done by Phillips) would act as the anchoring factor. Instead, the rigid structure kills probably the second-best thing Ben Platt has done. [7]

Jackie Powell: Ben Platt has had difficulty translating his vocal talents from film soundtrack music (the Pitch Perfect trilogy) and show tunes (The Book of Mormon and Dear Evan Hansen) into pop music. On songs like “Grow as We Go” and “Rain,” he sounded like slightly more adult versions of the characters he played. He’s leaned into motivational songs without any sort of foundation. “Andrew” works better than his previous pop offerings because of the story he paints of falling for a straight (or maybe not) friend who has led him on. A lot of these stories are coming out of the woodwork as of late with tracks such as Reneé Rapp’s “Pretty Girls” and Fletcher’s “Two Things Can Be True."  These stories need to be told and provide a certain type of respite for queer people who too have felt a similar level of pain. Platt calls the situation a “cruel joke” and self-deprecates in a witty but incredibly depressing bridge. He’s not questioning whether falling for “Andrew” wastes his time but rather declares the infatuation as a time vampire that robs more than it gives. What’s less than desired, however, is the Simon & Garfunkel cosplay he attempts in the verses. The Auto-Tune that helps layer his vocals isn’t needed. The folksiness in “Andrew” is a step in the right direction for Platt in his journey to translating better into pop. I just wish he could have paid homage to Simon & Garfunkel in a way that didn’t come across as just another Broadway character he’s playing.  [7]

Taylor Alatorre: I feel the exact same way listening to this as I do when reading the Urban Dictionary definition of any relatively common male first name. [3]

Katherine St. Asaph: What is it about guys named Andrew that inspires plaintive folk songs? Having no longings for any Andrews, I can only connect to these songs through my nostalgia, and thus Platt's is my favorite because it navigates those channels best -- which is to say it sounds exactly like Simon & Garfunkel. [6]

Mark Sinker: Not sure I remember a song where the jump from chest voice to head voice for the high notes feels so extremely foregrounded as a DECISION NOW BEING TAKEN. AND IT'S DONE! I can imagine arrangement where this works with the content: except here’s it’s like literally everything else about the song is funneling your attention to this choice instead, and I don’t think it’s what I’m meant to be thinking about? You have a nice voice mate, sorry your crush didn’t work out, that sucks.  [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Every time I've tried to write this blurb it's come out too ironic -- couching my appreciation for it in my disbelief that Dear himself could make such a perfect rendering of the version of Sufjan Stevens' music that exists only in the minds of 2014 Tumblr users, things of that nature. But let me meet sincerity with sincerity and say that "Andrew" wrecks my shit completely every time I listen to it, every achingly beautiful guitar arpeggio and breathy note from Platt activating all of my sentimental impulses. Most of all I admire the commitment here -- there's never a moment of performance from Platt or his producers that shies away from the full teenage gay melodrama of the lyrics. Weaker souls would have tried to subvert the maudlin stuff here. I'm glad they didn't. [9]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

SHAKIRA AND CARDI B - PUNTERÍA

Shakira makes comments about Barbie, we make comments about Shakira... Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie you have 24 hours to release a statement about us to complete the circle...

[5.62]

Harlan Talib Ockey: “Puntería” is a no-thoughts-head-empty ode to sex. Without context, it’s fun, but it’s hard to forget that it just doesn’t have anything like the righteous fury of “Bzrp Music Sessions” or the caustic groove of “Te Felicito.” Cardi puts in an MVP performance, breezily singing a third of the song herself, and it’s ultimately their chemistry that makes this worth it. [5]

Claire Biddles: This only really livens up when Shakira and Cardi sound like they're in the same room -- I'd love to hear a song where they're riffing off each other the whole way through. [5]

Leah Isobel: Something about this brings out my cynicism. None of it is bad, and some of it is quite good -- Shakira singing about her G-spot, for instance. I like the trancey "Realiti" synth in the chorus, too. But mostly when I hear this I hear an attempt to recreate "Kiss Me More," and I'm a little Kiss Me Bored. [5]

Dave Moore: It didn't seem like rocket science to just give Shakira more of the sound she perfected on her Bzrp Music Session (check), then make a mini-album out of it (check) and tack on all the great stuff she put out in the last year or so to fill out the runtime (check). But I would not have guessed the secret weapon on this particular song would be Cardi B taking to the proceedings so naturally that you start to lose track of who's singing when they start passing melody lines back and forth in the second half. So now I also want Cardi B to make a Shakira album. [8]

Will Adams: Neither disappointing nor surprising that Shaki would follow up an international smash with a redux that sands off its predecessor's edges for the palatable lite-disco of "Say So" or "Lottery" or "Kiss Me More" or (or or or or). The real crime is for a duo of performers as vibrant and charismatic as Shakira and Cardi to sound this boring. [4]

Isabel Cole: Two stars known for more dramatic modes turn up the sweetness for a frothy little bauble, like the aural equivalent of girls' night. No one sounds like they're working very hard, in a good way; they're having fun, and so am I! [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: "Say So"ification comes for even our most charismatic pop stars -- lite retro production, indistinctly horny sentiments, a vague malaise creeping up even as the beat loops jauntily. It's not bad per se -- I will hear this at parties for the next six months and bop my head along without a second of regret tied directly to the song -- but I can't help but feel like there ought to be something more; I'd rather have an ambitious failure of a crossover track (remember the Shakira-Rihanna Ska Explosion?) than a distinctly unmemorable set of pleasantries. [6]

TA Inskeep: A mildly sexy empty-calories jam that I can't remember I heard five minutes later. [6]

Nortey Dowuona: David Stewart, who is possibly a millionaire from producing a BTS song you don't know (unless you are hardcore ARMY or a person who listens to a radio station) has now created another song for Shakira you won't remember after this year (unless you are a hardcore Cardi B fan or a person who listens to a radio station). Will this one make him a billionaire? Find out on: BIG, MEGA, FORGETTABLE, RADIO SMASHER. Hosted by Cardi B. [4]

Ian Mathers: Cardi B singing in Spanish is surprisingly close to Shakira here, when she just takes a chorus near the end if I hadn't been watching the video I might not have noticed the switch until she mentions her own name. Which is not a criticism! I wish I could fit in on a Shakira song, especially a decent one like this, so neatly.  [7]

Alfred Soto: I hear voices like theirs at checkout lines and on FaceTime chats: two distinctly Hispanic lilts crashing against each other like sea spray against rock. Listening to each other is besides the point. "Puntería" reminds me of those exchanges. Pure idiomatic expression for expression's sake, it puts an arm around the listener then ignores her. [6]

Kayla Beardslee: Apparently scientists still have not found a cure to the "Say So" substitutes epidemic since I last did this bit two months ago. Everyone, our time on this planet as a species is finite: it's up to us to band together and figure out how to de-chintz the pop girl singles before it's too late. “Puntería” is an extremely average addition to the "Say So" imitators’ shelf, but having Shakira on a track will always be worth an extra point. At least I learned a new Spanish word! [6]

Katherine St. Asaph: EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to an oversight in the selection process, we have covered "Not My Fault" twice. We regret the error. [4]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

CARDI B - "ENOUGH (MIAMI)"

We can't get enough of Cardi, which is why you'll be seeing her again later today...

[6.23]

Alfred Soto: A flex that tries to cow the feeble backing track, "Enough" is a demonstration of Cardi B's talent for a contempt that makes exceptions for consonants. No one human enough to mind sits on the receiving end of "Enough" -- this is pure brand extension and proud of it. [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: I think I just took physical damage. [7]

Leah Isobel: Cardi is truly Azealia's daughter. Just like her mother, she can do some truly phenomenal things with a consonant sound; the way she launches the word "sluts" off her tongue or pushes the plosives into her nose on "got 'em thick like peanut butter/bitches is jelly about it" is pure ear candy. The glee in her voice elevates "Enough" past its vaguely tacky brand management, but not past its slightness.  [6]

Oliver Maier: Cardi virtually feels like an elder statesman at this point, and her aggressive, carpet-bomb style of rapping would feel quaint and outdated if it wasn't still so fun to hear her do it. There's a real tactility to her flow that it took me a while to appreciate, but the way that she doubles down on certain plosives and syllables while snubbing others entirely is so clearly a strength rather than a weakness. She regularly pronounces about half of the letters of the word "fuck" and it still feels ballistic. Comfortably her best song since "Up" with bonus points for the "How Many Licks?" reference. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Less a Cardi B song than the outline of a Cardi B song – if I turn "Enough" around in my mind I can imagine where a more engaged Cardi could fill in more compelling material, lines that would hit harder if they had a more specific image or funnier joke. Instead, we've got this, which is not quite there in so many ways that the whole thing capsizes. Dayenu? Not this time.  [4]

Jeffrey Brister: I’ve always enjoyed Cardi B a lot more in this stripped-down, straight-ahead context. It gives the spotlight to her technical skill and hilarious writing, laden with punchlines and laugh out loud moments (three shots an’ I’m ready to FUCK -- girl, same). This is the most satisfying kind of meat-and-potatoes rap. [9]

TA Inskeep: I want and expect more from Cardi at this point than just endless boasting. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: "Her" has four producers. "Enough" has three. Maybe it should've had a 4th to fix the chorus. Or the drums. Then again, "Sweetest Pie" had five producers, OG Parker and Romano amongst them, so maybe it's not just the number. Maybe it's OG Parker's fault... wait, he made "Thot Shit"? "Slippery"? "On It"? "Ur Best Friend"? "LIGER"? Was this youngblood Parker on the boards today? [0]

Dave Moore: Cardi B's charm is effortless, so even a track that seems like it was assembled on autopilot has something to recommend it, grimly "hard-edged" (read: dull) though it may sound. She sounds fantastic on the Shakira single; maybe she should make a harder artistic pivot. Pick any direction you like... how about Cowboy Cardi?     [6]

Ian Mathers: Whereas some of Cardi's more notable rivals have, err, notably dropped off over time, this is her firmly succeeding in "Bodak Yellow" mode except... I think I like it a little better? The delivery and wordplay are even more confident (points for referencing "Just Say That" and "Knuck If You Buck" without just copying them), it's got a better chorus, and the production is simple but effective. You can get away with a lot when your core is this strong. [8]

Taylor Alatorre: Atlanta's cultural hegemony over 21st century hip-hop is such that a back-to-basics NYC drill track can use "Knuck if You Buck" as its central signifier for choosing violence, and no one bats an eyelash. Not that I'm the first person to observe this, of course, but Cardi isn't exactly giving me much to work with here. The beat is clean, suggesting danger without creating it; the flow is lean, snapping at haters without devouring them. One gets the sense that this was written as a comeback single, but for better or worse it doesn't take the kinds of risks that are traditionally associated with such mass-marketed stabs in the dark. It is the first-ever notable release in the history of popular music to use the term "regular-degular," though, and one figures that has to be worth something.  [6]

Isabel Cole: Cardi always marries boastful menace with silliness so well. I hope this song kicks off a trend of don't-fuck-with-me rap songs expressing badassery through fun animal facts and Dr. Seuss homages. [7]

Mark Sinker: So this one has a little star,  and this one has a little car  Say!  What a lot of bitch there are [9]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

PORTER ROBINSON - "CHEERLEADER"

April Fool's Day is over, now time for some SINCERITY...

[5.92]

Taylor Alatorre: This song sounds embarrassing. It sounds excessive. It sounds like something you might regret putting into the world five seconds after hitting "publish." It sounds, in other words, like high school. Porter Robinson's post-brostep career has been an extended treatise on escapism -- from the appealingly plaintive paracosms of 2014's Worlds to the soothing self-inventory of 2021's Nurture, with his Virtual Self side project managing to be both esoteric and stupidly self-explanatory. He's crafted a series of immersive alternatives to analog messiness, allowing the listener to check out of the everyday and place themselves for a moment in a softer-edged realm, with more explicable rules and a more poetic set of problems. "Cheerleader," though, offers the listener no assistance in either sidestepping or reconfiguring the uncomfortable reality into which they were born; music video aside, it's not really a song about fanbases gone wild either. Instead it's about the girl in your school's Anime Club who gave out her deviantART username before her phone number and taught you against your will what the word yaoi meant. The fujoshi representation, besides filling a glaring gap in the TSJ search index, makes it clear that this is about a real person and not an avatar, and it's that awkward flesh-and-blood realness which is precisely at issue here. Maybe she's as real as him, and maybe he couldn't live with that. The perspective of a boy who is unused to being the object of obsession is an under-explored one in music, probably because it's very hard to land it within the narrow range of acceptable loserdom. But Porter sticks the landing by enveloping us fully within the loser's headspace, where both his emo-inflected chagrin and his fragmented memories of the girl's "cheering" are enshrouded by a waterfall of blown-out Obama-era detritus. If you ever wondered what a big room house remix of Two Door Cinema Club might've sounded like, or Oracular Spectacular if it had debuted on Beatport, here's your answer. Other seemingly out-of-place additions -- the bitpop cowbell, the Punk Goes Acoustic bridge, the hilariously overwrought drumroll that becomes less so the second time around -- fit right into this 1080p capture of late adolescent bag-fumbling. Taken together, they convey a mismatch in interests and hobbies that may have seemed like a deal breaker at the time, but in hindsight was just another excuse to avoid vulnerability. Perhaps I only arrived at this gonzo interpretation because the 4chan-core single artwork serves as a kind of shibboleth for these things. If that's the case, then I plead guilty: I ate the apple. [10]

Oliver Maier: "We have Anamanaguchi at home." [6]

Hannah Jocelyn: I loved Porter Robinson's Nurture for its unapologetic sincerity, a balm when emerging back into the world post-lockdown. I miss that early hopefulness as the years have gone on; even now, it's hard for me to hear "Unfold" without being close to tears. "Cheerleader" is a frustrating detour, with inane lyrics about yandere fujoshis fetishizing Robinson -- you know you're doing nothing new when the Nostalgia Critic beat you to it, and Robinson hardly sells the can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em message better. Nurture, for better or worse, incorporated the pitch-shifting vocals of hyperpop into EDM (to the point where a trans woman musician I know grew frustrated with Nurture's acclaim for doing what acts like Katie Dey had done for years, regardless of how Robinson himself identifies.) That's worth acknowledging, especially as this attempts to go right to the source: 3OH!3 and Metro Station come to mind. Except there’s none of the polish that makes those songs work despite themselves -- What's with that tinny hi-hat? Where's the low end on the guitar? Listen to "Shake It"; that song from 2007 sounds better than this one from 2024. It's not enough to replicate the aesthetics; for some ungodly reason, Robinson decided it must sound like it's coming from a Hot Topic speaker too. [4]

Claire Biddles: We have "Shake It" by Metro Station at home. [4]

Tim de Reuse: I admire the chutzpah to take a stylistic hairpin turn like this. And I appreciate the ability to do that while retaining the crystal-clear boom-bap production chops that made you a breakout sensation in the first place. And I appreciate how it makes its power-pop references clear without sticking to them too desperately. And I appreciate the sheer craft; birds fly, rocks sink, Porter Robinson writes synth hooks that wrap around your mind and squeeze tight. And I appreciate the line about getting drawn kissing other guys. But there's a clean and edgeless quality here, a sterile expression of his EDM roots, that directly contradicts his attempts at a heartbreaking singalong. Nowhere does his voice crack with raw emotion; nowhere does it seem even possible that his voice might crack with raw emotion. [5]

Kayla Beardslee: Porter Robinson’s doing anime OSTs now? Good for him. [7]

Leah Isobel: I see this fitting into a whole universe of PS1/Nintendo DS aesthetic indie games, YouTube video essays about old anime, trans girls with Neocities websites, indie pop sung by vocaloids. I could call it hyperpop -- not in the sense of overdriven chaos, but in the sense of the hyperlink. (HTML revival would be more accurate.) As such, it feels a little too precise, its scruffiness deployed too purposefully; I feel like this stuff works best when the self is obscured, and Porter is too big of a star to let that happen. But that also means the chorus is fucking massive, so I can't complain too much. [7]

Nortey Dowuona: The soft, limply placed drums in the song for once are not the sabotaging element in this song. The lithe, acoustic guitar bridge is even nicely played. The guitar riff, doubled by the synth, is the true arrow to the heart of this song. Porter is processed to hell and back, refusing to give over his composition to a more present, entertaining vocalist, but that riff is so grating and stiff that when it first arrives, sliding up as the culmination of the slowly hopping pre-chorus, it stops the song from progressing any further, simply pushing Porter into the background and leaving his Melodyned voice slack below it, struggling to be heard. Now, does this stop me from screaming that chorus in my head? Of course not. It's not fair I have to keep hearing this grating riff every time, though. [6]

Ian Mathers: God, I love that recurring, overdriven synth sound that kicks in on the chorus. If anything I wish it was more all-enveloping when it hits (yes, like shoegaze, yes, I'm predicable). There's lots of other interesting things going on here, but I can't quite get over that visceral rush enough to figure out my response to it all. Hit the whoosh button again, Porter! [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Not nearly dumb enough for me to enjoy its shtick. [3]

Isabel Cole: This sounds like a One Direction album track in a universe where after they got kicked off The X Factor, Simon Cowell realized he could save so much money by replacing everyone but Liam with robots, only when they got into the studio there was some kind of malfunction and Zayn-bot started screeching uncontrollably and Niall-bot fell on his side crackling horribly with static while Harry-bot and Louis-bot took turns punching each other until they were dented beyond recognition, and that's why it sounds like how it sounds. (Liam didn't notice anything amiss, obviously; have you met him?) [4]

Will Adams: At the heart of Nurture was its... well, heart. On that record, Porter Robinson wore his on his sleeve, crooning lines like "I'll be alive next year / I can make something good" without a hint of irony. On "Cheerleader," he surprisingly lets a bit of cynicism slip in. It's not a leap to see how producing such earnest, sincere art would naturally invite fans to form parasocial relationships, to draw fan art but not know where to "draw the line," to develop a near-fatalistic expectation of commitment. But between each of those details is a generous counterpoint, where Porter wonders if he benefits just as much from these feelings. It creates a fascinating tension, expressed best by the chorus: "IT'S NOT FAAAAIIIRRRRRR!", stretched over a fizzy, tightly-wound power-pop arrangement complete with a skyscraping synth line. Porter just can't help himself. We've all got feelings; why not scream them to the rafters? [8]

Katherine St. Asaph: Porter Robinson's brand of earnestness makes my heart feel burnt or dead. [5]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

FUTURE & METRO BOOMIN FT. KENDRICK LAMAR - "LIKE THAT"

A Drake diss track provides our highest controversy of the day; it truly is April 1...

[5.40]

Andrew Karpan: “Like That” is probably the best of the varied anti-Drizzy discography that I’ve encountered so far; the flipped, forgotten Rodney-O record emerging out of the dust of a minor E-40 posse cut into a throbbing, pulsing menace that owns its own side of the street, untouched. Kendrick, like Pusha-T and then Meek Mill before him, finds inside Drake’s bloated success and notorious mediocrity a melancholy yearning to belong, which frankly confuses him. But this is, of course, why the devout listen to Drake in the first place.   [6]

Taylor Alatorre: Not the second coming of Big Sean's "Control" that I thought it was upon first listen; the Michael Jackson line is doing most of the heavy lifting as far as pure shock and awe goes. The Verse is more of an announcement of hostilities than a full engagement on the battlefield, sounding like an intended sneak diss that turned less sneaky after a few hard drinks. The time and place of its delivery matter almost as much as the content: "Wait, Kendrick's on this thing? Can he say that about Drake on a Future album? How did Melle Mel get dragged into this?!" By design, it'll never again hit as hard as it did the first time, but the jolt of that initial impact stays imprinted in your brain like memory foam. Credit to Future for humbly recognizing his limited role on this stage (despite being as influential as any rapper mentioned here) and to Metro for being good at sample clearance, both much unlike Big Sean on “Control.” [8]

Alfred Soto: "I still got PTSD," Kendrick rasps. Could've fooled me. He responds to the competition with zeal -- from Future to Eazy-E. The first half sticks to Future's tried-and-true.  [7]

TA Inskeep: I can't, and won't, with Future's gun-glorifying, misogynist lyrics. And Metro's Barry White-sampling track is just lazy. [0]

Isabel Cole: Shrooms are really having their moment in the zeitgeist, huh? I kind of like the inclusion of a whistle done by someone who can only whistle poorly, if only because you don't hear that every day. The dull, droning rest of it, though, feels like something I've heard before, and I didn't care for it the first several times, either. [2]

Katherine St. Asaph: Doomy, like background music for surveying the world from a high perch. Kendrick just overkills Drake and everything else. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The thrills of the Kendrick verse dimish with every listen – perhaps I've grown cynical (or just counterintuitive), but his performance last year on “The Hillbillies” (loose, fun, hanging out with his cousin) was a better demonstration of the appeal of latter-day Kendrick than this ceremonial airing of grievances, at once impressive and a little tedious the same way watching someone solve a cryptic crossword is. Future and Metro are exquisite hosts, though. The lifted synths and chants from the class of '87-'88 lend the whole affair a charming old revivalist sensibility, while Future, a man of infinite regress into his own worst impulses, sounds gleeful. He whistles! Why isn’t that the story rather than warmed-over beef? [7]

Ian Mathers: Imagine if the fierceness of the Kendrick verse (the only reason we're here, right?) had inspired Future to match it even remotely. I don't mind his sleepy affect most of the time, but it doesn't really match here; the bit at the fade where he perks up is actually promising in comparison. Good production (so much so it basically gets a verse!), good ft., but Future drags it down. [6]

Oliver Maier: A heap of irritating choices, bafflingly put together even before you get to the part where it fades out as Future is still rapping. [3]

Nortey Dowuona: The discovery of Kendrick Lamar’s incredible ability is as unsurprising as it is predictable -- there hasn’t been another figure blessed with either the talent or critical armor to take his place in the eyes of the larger public who don’t read good music writing and let YouTubers tell them what music to like -- but the verse is at least good. It picks up the jengabuilt flows of Detroit/Bay Area rap and his long time record of disrespecting his peers for kicks and clout and actually has the bar “my temperament bipolar, I choose violence” comfortably lodged somewhere towards the beginning. It’s telling that Future has another verse on the song yet chooses to let Metro place it after a shrieking riff under some heavy kicks, then fade it out, almost as if the point had been made. [8]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

DJO - END OF BEGINNING

Keeping up with TikTok pop while we still can...

[3.75]

Leah Isobel: I kind of want to be a hater about this. "Stranger Things star makes budget Ariel Pink pop about growing up, goes viral on TikTok" is an insufferable Mad Libs narrative pitch. The lyrics feel cryptic in a bad way, like Djo is aware that he's traveling well-trodden ground and straining to justify himself. And yet, his acting background comes through: his hammy Boris Pickett affectations lock him to the beat, keeping the song from feeling overly self-indulgent. It's still a little mushy, but that's not a crime. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: Djo has rightly seized on his captive audience in order to launch his pop rock career, but it thankfully hasn’t spiraled the way the Childish Gambino project did to the point where there are insufferable fans and detractors duking it out over its merits -- mainly because it’s too good to be dinged, but not good enough to be more than a popular actor’s passion project. Adam Thein’s limp drums, which have aged badly since 2022, can’t keep the overwhelming pace of the synth riffs or the lumpy bass left in the background of the mix. They support the toplines rather than drive the song, as many a baseline has done, but that then leaves the topline to hold everything up, which it constantly refuses to do. As for Joe Keery, he is no Childish Gambino before 2012. At least it’s short. [4]

Alfred Soto: The Stranger Things actor is too old by at least five years to have taken Twenty One Pilots seriously. [0]

TA Inskeep: Owl City 2024. [2]

Dave Moore: The verses are synth fetishism worthy of an awkward Stranger Things teen romance subplot (derogatory), followed by a pale imitation of a Sufjan Stevens chorus (complimentary). The ingredients sort of work on paper -- I am only human, which is to say a dork who was born in the '80s. But the song just sort of sits there, like it was designed to be vaguely apprehended floating through a pop-up beer garden. [5]

Taylor Alatorre: Are we just supposed to take these younger artists' word that their work is primarily inspired by genuine Nineteen-Eighties music, and not the phantasmal refractions of it that were being created between 2008 and 2015 (and beyond)? Because whatever points I take away for roteness and facelessness, I may give back for honesty. Anyway, check out Twin Shadow's new single "To the Top" if you get the chance. Sound of the summer. [4]

Katherine St. Asaph: This is by a Stranger Things actor and supposedly sounds like the '80s. What it actually sounds like is the driftier, understated parts of '90s alternative radio playlists. And as someone who owns the Carice van Houten album, I fully support TV folks making vanity albums that don't sound like what you'd think. [6]

Mark Sinker: He’s singing “tear to cry,” but I first heard it as “diddikai”, the Romani term for a traveler not fully Romani. Maybe you can make something of this – musician who fashions his artistic persona round not being the character he plays in a multi-season Netflix series! – but I’m not sure I sensibly can. The song is pretty and mannered and flimsy; he’s way not old enough to have the wisdom he thinks he has.  [5]

Isabel Cole: "I wave goodbye to the end of beginning" is a great line, capturing the moment when you might not feel particularly like an adult but understand, suddenly, that until recently you were very young, and now you are something else. I do remember twenty-four! Unfortunately the actual song is a plodding, soupy nothing. [0]

Will Adams: When you've got an admittedly gorgeous arrangement of languid, synth-smeared indie-rock, the last thing you want to do is sound like a try-hard; and yet, Joe Keery's delivery of clipping every syllable makes "End of Beginning" almost embarrassing to listen to. [5]

Ian Mathers: There are some choices here I kind of like (mostly around the lyrics and vocals), but the guitar tone, the chiming synth sound, and something about the production overall feels instantly dated, like I'm already looking forward to me five years from now hearing this and going "yeah, a lot of shit sounded like that in 2024." [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: An absolute nothing of a song – but I know, deep in my heart, that if I had encountered this as a college freshman it would have absolutely rocked my shit. Keery is seven years too late for me, but I'm glad this exists for those who need it. Will I still feel this warmly towards this mediocrity if I have to hear it out in the world for the next year or so? Well, that's not my problem right now. [4]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

CHARLI XCX - VON DUTCH

“If Von Dutch were alive,” said Burns, who runs a website about his friend at www.vondutch.freeservers.com, “he would hate all this.”

[5.81]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: On February 12 of this year I predicted that "we can safely give the Charli lead single an automatic high controversy [5.00] and be done with it." History will vindicate me. [5]

Jackie Powell: A common Charli XCX motif is her admiration and sampling of 1990s and Y2K culture, which has allowed her to write songs that are cheeky with a dash of British wit. She does this on “Von Dutch” by comparing her reputation in pop to that of a cult classic, but struggles with the extended metaphor of how she’s what Von Dutch, the LA clothing brand that has had a recent resurgence, sounds like. The concept feels incomplete. I actually prefer the song’s remix with Addison Rae and A.G. Cook. The ad-libbed scream from Rae, the added verse, and the dropping of “I’m your number one” over and over again make the remix much more compelling and zany. The original will only really bang in drag bars—a fine place for something to hit, of course, but at this point I expect Charli to be pushing her own boundaries. [5]

Alfred Soto: Like much of her output, "Von Dutch" represents Charli XCX's fair to middling ambition to become a global pop star. Like much of that output "Von Dutch" strikes confused poses over shrieking electronics. [3]

Hannah Jocelyn: Charli XCX said she wants to go back to 1999, but with songs like these she clearly wishes it was 2018: all the callbacks and bombast referring to when she was “the future of music” and not halfway to the headliner of an inevitable "hyperpop" nostalgia festival. I like the gloriously tinny snare, but in 2024 the bratty chant vocals sound dated (as does the album title that's just brat in lowercase). The most exciting songs on CRASH to me were “Constant Repeat” and “Move Me,” which proved she could bring her "kinda rare attitude" to heartfelt ballads. "Von Dutch" is just mindless comfort food for aging cis male gays, which is fine — I’m the lone First Two Pages of Frankenstein defender, I get it — but she can’t say she’s my Number One when on this song, she's my Number [5]

Mark Sinker: I enjoy that Charli XCX lives in a room-sized selection-box of all of the rest of girlpop, everything constantly arriving with its conscious little tweaky echo of this or that prior item. They’re nice items, and we both like them, so why not? Maybe this feels a bit more hemmed in than is comfy, though: it has big Britney-feel, which is to say echoes of an aural highpoint that actually expressed a grim life lowpoint for Brit. As for Von Dutch, they currently have the one and only Wikipedia page with "Behind-the scenes tumult" as a cross-hed, which pleases me but also makes me anxious.  [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: Once again, the nostalgia is miscalibrated: Von Dutch was trendy in the mid-2000s, while this sounds like the late 2000s. Specifically, it sounds like every song from the late 2000s I would have given a [7] or higher. [7]

Will Adams: I whole-heartedly support pop stars honoring the advancements made by the likes of Luciana in support of the essential micro-genre of Obnoxious Banger. [7]

Kat Stevens: I'm down for the Bodyrox ft Luciana revival! Is there a Fedde Le Grand remix? [6]

Andrew Karpan: Pop music tells us to want to have it all, a maximalist vision that typically gets bigger as it goes on. Counterintuitively, part of the mesmerizing appeal of Charli’s records is the fact that there is no distance left for her to run and that her sound has become the sound of pop going nowhere but the present, busily manufacturing its cult appeal now for future observers to wax nostalgic about. “Von Dutch” is the most literalized version of that idea from her yet: a squeaky saran-wrapped PC Music-affiliated beat with a middle-aged pulse that never drops but simply hangs, like a foggily-heard echo of itself, like the memory of a club night experienced from the outside while nervously waiting in line in the cold.  [7]

Jeffrey Brister: It’s perhaps a bit unfair to compare everything Charli has made recently to the transcendent Pop 2 ("Backseat" 4evr), but when I hear something as dull as this, I can’t help but pine for its melodramatic maximalism. The sounds are just so monochromatic, pulling from a desaturated set of Charli tics like grinding revving synths and choppy autotuned vocal snippets, all snapping together like a “build your own Charli song” kit in nothing but gray tones. [4]

Kayla Beardslee: Why does this sound so bad? [2]

Nortey Dowuona: That last Earl album was good. This Charli single is good. Some people just never live up to your expectations because they are not you. Unlike Charli, I don't think it's because of jealousy, just curiosity and frustration. Charli and Earl were never meant to be Method Man or Robyn -- they had different tastes and trajectories, and slumming it as a major-label balance name isn’t the worst fate. You could be Tyga. Or Rita Ora. [9]

Taylor Alatorre: It's caked in an air of sweaty desperation dressed up as devil-may-care hedonism, which helps rather than hurts because of how unflinchingly skeletal the beat is, showing off its shotgun scaffolding to all who will see. She's not trying to hide anything about how she's trying to hide something. Never mind that the phrase "cult classic but I still pop" could be used to describe everything from the MC5 to DMB -- it wouldn't have suited their milieux, but it's quintessentially XCX. It may be the line Charli was put on this earth to sing, even if through half-gritted teeth.  [7]

Leah Isobel: The curse of being Charli XCX is that she is an asymptote: she can approach pop stardom, but she's far too self-conscious to allow herself to actually embrace it. As a result, the curse of being a Charli XCX fan is that she becomes more obnoxious and exhausting every time she reaches a new career milestone. After scoring her first big worldwide hit, she spent her social capital yelling at Germans and collaborating with Iggy Azalea. Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 cemented her as a serious artist with conceptual depth and longevity while simultaneously sending her spiraling into stan Twitter hell, from whence she shall never return. She wears a T-shirt denouncing critics -- which I am not mad at, please drag me mom yas! -- and then logs on with hot takes about Pop Music And Stardom, as a critic does. She sees herself as above mass-market pandering and yet also below it, both superior to the culture and bitter at her inability to assimilate into it. (Gay people love her because she's relatable.) Hence, "Von Dutch." Its corkscrewing mania has the serrated simplicity that characterizes her riffs on punk music; it feels like a cousin to the unfairly maligned Sucker. But where Sucker balanced its brattier impulses with good-natured melodicism and emotional directness, "Von Dutch" is all needling cynicism and overdriven id. The song has a nominal verse/chorus structure but no big dynamic or melodic changes, no particular idea beyond "I'm lovable and awesome; look at my chart placements." The need to serve as a pop single also keeps "Von Dutch" from entering the realm of the dumb-brilliant dance music that so clearly inspired it; it's too much of a branding exercise, too interested in flattering its audience for getting it. And yet in its grating repetition, I still hear her insecurity beneath the synth buzzsaws. No one who's convinced that they're actually Living That Life would say it so directly, with such barely concealed desperation. The curse of being Charli XCX is that, deep down, she is still convinced that she is unlovable. The curse of being a Charli XCX fan is that I love her because she's relatable. [5]

Isabel Cole: I don't know that I'll ever stop feeling about Charli XCX like she's my brilliant daughter who dropped out of med school to pursue a career as a wedding DJ: of course, honey, I just want you to be happy, but are you sure this is what you want? You don't want to, like, try? At all? This is the kind of gleefully, knowingly brainless fun Charli can do in her sleep, propulsive without ever really going anywhere because the point is just to drive. She's not living up to her potential, but much like a boring mom who doesn't "get" her daughter's life of Top 40 hits in mid-budget venues and weeknights spent doing ketamine with her friends, I am unsophisticated enough to enjoy it when she does songs that are songs, and this one does make me feel like I'm walking through the opening credits of my life when it plays. [7]

Ian Mathers: I like it when the synths go THWOOM and/or VOORP. [7]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

FEIN & ATL JACOB - "LUNA"

And with this, our second month being BACK!BACK!BACK!! concludes. See you in April, and let us know in the comments if there's a song you'd like us to cover!

[5.75]

Julian Axelrod: There comes a time in every young producer's career where they attempt to become A Name: not a Jack Antonoff-style brand, but a more achievable lifestyle of equal billing on collabs, feature-filled solo albums, and festival slots that feel like DJ sets that feel like mid-career retrospectives. ATL Jacob sounds like a name you'd save in your phone after a one-night stand, but he's attempting to become a household name. And like Metro Boomin before him, he's diversifying his portfolio by expanding into international waters. Feid has been attempting a similar breakthrough for nearly a decade, so you'd think this shared hunger would translate into an electric collaboration. Instead, it feels more like a competent brand expansion. Jacob's busy drums and flickering synths split the difference between Tainy and Owl City, while Feid's lovelorn croon seeps into the empty space of the beat like Justin Bieber in his Jack Ü/Major Lazer era. It's not terribly exciting, but maybe it's working: four hours before I wrote this, Spotify published a "This Is ATL Jacob" playlist. That's called name recognition, baby. [6]

Nortey Dowuona: ATL JAKE ATL JAKE TURN INTO A TIGER STOP MAKING FOOD UNIVERSE TOTE BAG REGGAETON PLS [3]

TA Inskeep: Not sure what makes this autotuned reggaeton single so different, why this has become the global smash that others haven't. It's perfectly serviceable and perfectly average. ATL Jacob's beat sounds like a preset, while Feid comes across as a baby Bunny, perhaps without the personality. Maybe that's the answer? [5]

Ian Mathers: "Luna" does what feels like just one thing the whole time but manages to make it a virtue. It helps that the singer sells the performance like a steady undertow of yearning. [7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Sad sexy, as in looking hot while being sad? Or sexy sad, as in performing heartbreak so tenderly it’s attractive?  [7]

Katherine St. Asaph: A pleasant bit of droning sweetness, the kind of thing that Drake has attempted dozens of times but that his inherent Drakeness prevents him from pulling off. [5]

Leah Isobel: Feid's sad-robot-boy vibrato gives this open desert of a reggaeton track a pleasantly mournful, posthuman sheen; it's a mode that always works for me. There should really be another minute or so of [wordless outro vocalizing] to drive home the indulgent drama. [7]

Taylor Alatorre: The extravagant presence of ATL Jacob makes this seem even more like the product of someone who wants to feel sad, who wants to luxuriate in the recollection of a recent breakup because of the sense of profundity it brings, or because mucking around in our lucid memories is more fun and safe than stumbling through the unstructured present. That’s pretty relatable, even if most of us aren’t able to call up the “WAIT FOR U” producer to help make those feelings manifest. [6]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

YG MARLEY - "PRAISE JAH IN THE MOONLIGHT"

The closest to covering Bob Marley we'll probably get...

[5.00]

Andrew Karpan: A remarkably inoffensive excavation of nostalgia processed through smoov, professionally-made R&B, the debut hit from Bob Marley's literal grandson made me think of that time Doja Cat flipped a Big Mama Thornton record to express some ambivalence regarding a larger conceptual project designed around improving the fortunes of the Elvis brand. The Marley version of this story is less convoluted and gifts us the historically notable presence of Lauryn Hill's voice on the charts. Surely that's more than, say, Pablo Dylan has ever done for us.  [7]

Jackie Powell: At first I was shocked to see that “Praise Jah in the Moonlight” had no direct association with the film Bob Marley: One Love besides the obvious fact that YG Marley is Bob’s grandson, but maybe that’s intentional. While “Praise Jah In the Moonlight” samples from Bob Marley’s “Crisis,” it lacks direction and energy. What makes Bob Marley great is his pacing, simple but poignant songwriting, and singular voice. His grandson YG has close to none of that, and he uses a heavy layer of autotune to “enhance” his vocals. He copies and pastes two lines from his grandfather at the beginning that comment on happiness being a choice, but what follows is something completely irrelevant to that. Is this a love song? Is this about loneliness? The only redeeming part is when YG’s mother Ms. Lauryn Hill joins her son on the bridge and then takes the song out by herself in the outro with a vocal performance that's much more melodic and catchy than the rest of the track. [5]

TA Inskeep: A mid trad reggae record is still a mid trad reggae record, no matter a) the artist's lineage and b) whether it blows up on social media.  [3]

Joshua Lu: It's nice to see a reggae song gain so much steam on the charts, even if it's nepo baby reggae. "Praise Jah in the Moonlight" is notable for its singer's lineage (and its sample of said singer's lineage), but its easygoing vibe and inoffensive nature are likely the main reasons behind its global success. [5]

Ian Mathers: This seems to be at least evoking a genre where the simplicity and repetitiveness of the production isn't a demerit... but that's usually partly because the vocals are compelling. Here, they aren't, and they sound oddly washed-out and blurry too -- which sounds like something I'd enjoy, but here just comes across as aggressively meh. [4]

Leah Isobel: "Praise Jah in the Moonlight" has a slippery quality. Its production blends signifiers from reggae, neo-soul, and hip-hop, while its structure is relatively aimless. YG's voice is processed in such a way that it slides off basically every line and pitch, so the lyrics' nods at social criticism don't quite cohere, either. The only line that punches through is more quotidian: "I'm just hoping that you'll sing my songs." There's something so vulnerable and earnest about that, and something heartbreaking about the way that it's nearly buried underneath Bob Marley and Lauryn Hill's combined presence. It's as if the weight of past generations presses out nearly all attempts to create something original or push culture forward, so all that's left is plainspoken, inadequate confession. Get PinkPantheress on a remix, stat. [6]

Katherine St. Asaph: Suffused with the subtext of everything it's an inferior version of. [4]

Scott Mildenhall: He'll try and light a fire, this scion, but that joke is out of gas. Still, amazing to listen and picture the future of iterative I and I. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: Unremarkable pablum. But the drums do knock. [6]

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#yg marley #music #reggae #music writing #music reviews #music criticism #the singles jukebox #bob marley #lauryn hill #Youtube