Everybody! Millennial Cheiron pop’s back, all right!
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Edward Okulicz: “What About Love” sounds like the sort of song that might be better used to showcase a dancer than a singer (and the video doesn’t hurt) but you arguably need no skill at all to navigate a pounding throwback of this quality. Bland emoting and rhetorical questions actually sound great when treated like pubescent Timberlake and punctuated with synth stabs.
[7]
Anthony Easton: How is this more than three minutes long? It’s no more than a tiny trifle with some effective squelching and a chorus that seems to call back to 90s boy bands.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: This song reminds me a bit of HDBOYZ, a “boy band” whose schtick was they sang about Internet/computer topics (song titles: “Photoshopped,” “Unzip”). That has nothing to do with “What About Love” — rather, Austin Mahone and HDBOYZ’ music both sound blown-up to ridiculous levels and latched to contemporary electronic trends that can sound downright grating. Also, both of them sound bad. At least HDBOYZ could be dismissed as an obnoxious college-level bit of performance art; “What About Love” seems sincerely pathetic.
[3]
Iain Mew: I can recognise the aspiration towards turn of the century US pop (most clearly in the reference to “Bye Bye Bye”) and for the most part I do not know that stuff inside out, so I get the benefit and not the downside. Another benefit: this being so superior to anything by post-Bieber peer Conor Maynard. The harmonised chorus and the spaceship proximity alarm blurts stand up as excellent in their own right, though.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Clearly taking cues from the Cheiron days, only even more overblown: these are the most important words ever sung, at least in Austin Mahone’s head, and that’s all that matters; that and RedOne bringing his best squelches and sirens and LOUD NOISES that Cheiron never did, not to this extent – it’s probably more abrasive than “Black Skinhead”. He’s not as in demand as he used to be, but remains one of the few big pop producers prepared to do something ridiculous and not necessarily repeat it into the ground either. It might be somewhat patronising to bring One Direction into this, but never mind – it’s the precise opposite of what they’re doing, and infinitely more exciting.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Remember when “sounds like Max Martin” meant “two synth stabs”? Austin Mahone’s producers do, and they’ve made a perfectly serviceable pastiche of “Bye Bye Bye” (which is quoted), “Oops! I Did It Again” (try not to sing “yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeah” over the intro), “Bye Bye Boyfriend,” “Living In Danger,” two stadiums full of aliens shouting “D-D-D-DEFENSE!,” and, uh, “The Boxer.” None of this reveals a single whit about Austin Mahone, but it’s at least as good as last cycle’s pastiches.
[6]
Will Adams: I appreciate the 90% ripoff of Max Martin c. 2000 pop (it’s missing the alternate chorus at the end, possibly a key change) as well as the “bye bye bye” that gets snuck in. I don’t appreciate so much the belching synths slapped on to make it modern, nor the personality void of the singer helming it all.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Seven writers and RedOne came up with this ephemerality, and all the AutoTune money can buy still leaves this young man sounding like a dude named Austin Mahone.
[2]
Brad Shoup: Eliminating the redundant Backstreet Boys is a decent cost-saving measure. It was just last week I was thinking about how good a song “Crash” is, but I guess that was before he became RedWub.
[3]