Ugly always.
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[2.70]
Katherine St Asaph: “I see what you’re wearing, there’s nothing beneath it / forgive me for staring, forgive me for breathing” — oh, fuck off a cliff.
[1]
Cédric Le Merrer: We get it EDM kids, you’re all beautiful champion heroes. You don’t sound very convincing to me but Coué’s trick might still do it for you. To my ears, Zedd is a hack who doesn’t even dare to go full bosh when building his beat on a drunk football supporter worthy chorus of papapas. How many energy drinks does ot take for this to sound any good?
[2]
Will Adams: The egregiousness of Zedd re-using his stock template is usually in inverse proportion to how good the song is. (I say “usually” because some of the best moments on True Colors are when he tries something new for once). For every “I Want You to Know” — formulaic, sure, but still punchy — there is something like this. The combination of the drunk sports-chant hook with an ugly rendering of the popular “do me now” conceit make “Beautiful Now” rather unappetizing. The rest is what you’d expect.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: Zedd is kind of fucked in a sense. His gold mine of emotional swell on “Clarity” worked because it sounded so obvious and familiar despite containing elements that weren’t too conspicuous. Those giddy misfiring late 90s video-game synths, marred to an almost 80s power-ballad level of yearning from Foxes that didn’t overtly try to be an 80s power ballad before the “HERE COMES THE DROP” section came in and helped the record achieve some lazy ‘cool’. He’s not going to get that same success from enlisting a Rolodex of celebrities who put out singles or people who specialize in performing the banal basic requirements of pop. So until he gets that in his head, Zedd’s chances for returning to his former heights are next to nil.
[2]
Anthony Easton: How he whispers at the beginning of this and how excessive he becomes near the end, with a needling production, and an EDM inspired vamping up, reads less an invite to sexy seduction and more of a creepy come-on, especially when he sings being stranded.
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: Another EDM song, another opportunity to acknowledge this is probably a [10] in a giant stadium surrounded by all your friends, another chance to be reminded I’m sitting in my living room drinking coffee instead. That said, the ba-bas in the chorus sure remind me of the “Numa Numa” song.
[4]
Thomas Inskeep: Song-based EDM designed for maximum festival singalong impact.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Dig, if you will, a picture of “Hey Jude” electronified into a celebration of narcissism.
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: It’s what everyone was thinking: the voiced bilabial stop is a sound that has been long neglected in English-language pop’s attempts to make a chorus out of every part of the IPA. Inaccurate, perhaps, but it does seem that going “ba ba ba baba ba ba ba” is harder to prevent from sounding silly than its rhymes. Yes, the Beach Boys used it to great effect, but Gaga swerved it for “Bad Romance,” and that is surely no coincidence. This would have been better if Bellion was going “da.”
[5]
Ramzi Awn: Just what the world needed: another song about how we’re beautiful now. Tonight’s the night. Luckily, I have other plans.
[1]