Jae Stephens – Afterbody

We’ve all picked 2025 songs, but Iris is feeling particularly 2025…

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[7.50]Anjy Ou: If Britney wanted to put out a song to signal a return to the peaks of her career, she would fight Jae Stephens so she could release “Afterbody” first. A crazy bassline, fun little quips like “If I’m water, he Sahara, I’m essential, nécessaire,” and synths from every decade between the 80s and now – if MTV still existed, this would be on every hour. Most importantly though, it’s catchy and makes me want to shake ass, so it’s a hit in my book. The only thing missing is an extra chorus.
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Al Varela: Oh, this rules! Production is a bit messy but it’s easy to forgive with Jae Stephens’ incredible charisma and those accentuated hits in the production that give the song a literal punch that shoots out colorful stars on impact. Expect this to be a “TikTok picks it up several years late and shoots it into the Top 40” hit.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Wants it both ways — the lurid intensity of bodies moving in claustrophobic space inherent to the club jam and the sweetly singleminded love song of the lyric. The synths gleam bright enough that I’ll allow the avarice.
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Ian Mathers: A song about the fidelity of a partner that seems to mostly be directed at potential (or imagined) competition with more than a tinge of hostility. It’s effective in a body-moving sense, but leaves a faintly acrid taste.
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Claire Davidson: If nothing else, “Afterbody” makes an inarguable case for Jae Stephens as a performer, as she supplies rapped lines about the sheer force of her sexual magnetism with perfectly placed nonchalance, her delivery all the more commanding for how easily she elongates just the right syllables to make her lyrics pop. It’s odd, then, that the track seems determined to minimize her presence at every opportunity, either slathering her in autotune or shifting her voice further back in the mix when she opens up to belt. That strategy is especially misplaced in a song clearly intended to get the audience moving, judging by its frenetically thumping bass knocks and jewel-toned synth flourishes. Instead of energizing a crowd, “Afterbody” inadvertently ends up anesthetizing its lead singer, only salvaging some verve thanks to Stephens’s refusal to be overshadowed.
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William John: Years of stanning the likes of Tinashe, Normani, Victoria Monét (even with that Grammy haul). Bree Runway et al has taught me that – much to my chagrin and no matter how huge the songs might sound to me – there’s rarely room for this kind of pop/R&B/dance hybrid, made by Black women and blurring the lines between coolness and showiness, on Western music charts. Jae Stephens’ “Afterbody” is certainly large enough to command a room, a stadium even – kinetic, sharp, and barely keeping up with itself, to the extent that the chorus is almost forced into ending with a series of repeated synth stabs, acting as a catch-one’s-breath loop before the next assault arrives. It’s clear evidence that all ingredients are present for Stephens’ superstardom; whether the general public will wake from its cultural slumber and turn on the metaphorical stove remains to be seen.
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Nortey Dowuona: This is on this playlist of the best songs music of 2025. Take a gander also at this. Dallas, let it be known I was on your train early. Yes, even earlier than this.
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Iris Xie: I’m not sure if I’ve found an aerobics-adjacent song that better represents how 2025 feels like treading water and finding bursts of human excitement amongst sheer exhaustion. So many times this year, I feel I’ve just been flinging myself to try to start one thing or another, sort of forgetting what I was doing, and then suddenly having a moment here and there where I finally find the purpose and attitude of what I am looking for, and then I just try to fill the rest in and to find a connection between some of the ideas. The arrangement of “Afterbody” is similar — bombastic intro that bypasses the “I need to be entertained in 5 seconds” skip test, a bit of a muffled “Afterbody” hook that seems to have lost its topic, and then it goes into a vaguely 2000s reminiscent dance break that combines both impressions of Britney and Kelis briefly, before re-sharing the clarity in a breakdown that does floor me with its conviction and wordplay. That’s the most promising direction in terms of where she does shine — her relentlessness. Still though, I wish more of the song was like those two parts, because for the rest, I feel exhausted, and I find it hard to figure out how to get into a real dancing groove with it, because Jae Stephens sounds like she’s pulling us along in a thorough rallying cry to wake the fuck up and stop being so sleepy in the crowd. I’m so sorry I’m tired Jae Stephens!! It’s really not my fucking fault!! I am not responsible for this political climate!! So yeah, I am part of that target audience, but it painfully reminds me of how tired I am, and therefore I consider this the opposite of escapist pop music. Still though, that breakdown did levitate me for a bit, so what next?
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