That’s not our filter, FYI…
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[4.80]
Katie Gill: Michaelson’s entry into the “well I’m not gonna miss you” canon of songs. It’s not as fun and thankfully not as needlessly petty as other songs (looking at you, All American Rejects). Unfortunately, it’s not as exciting. Still, that transition from the first quiet verse to that EXPLOSION of a chorus is pretty darn cathartic — only for that catharsis to be squashed as she goes back into the minimalist verse.
[6]
Hannah Jocelyn: Ingrid’s first since her divorce from Greg Laswell. While Laswell’s ensuing breakup album was melodramatic and whiny, Ingrid’s single is a full-on kiss-off, written with two Shane McAnally cohorts. But regardless, “Hell No” is still enjoyable — while the production can come across as chintzy at times, I’m also all for “Gives You Hell” meets “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” This pulls off the cheeky psych-out bridge better than the former does, even if the song as a whole is not as memorable as the latter. It’s not even as catchy as “Girls Chase Boys,” honestly. But the part of me that eats up semi-celebrity gossip finds it fantastic.
[8]
Anthony Easton: It could be very close to a great new country ballad, and in another direction, the lost T-Swift single. I love how she speaks instead of sings, and the chorus has pep. The production has made bad choices: a little too unresolved, and a little too chaotic. I am in favour of genre-fuckery, but it has to be more deliberate.
[6]
Cassy Gress: The song does explode on the words “hell no,” which I was really hoping for, but immediately she returns back to her hushed murmur. Growing up where I did, “hell no” was very, very seldom accompanied by murmurs, particularly in the context of “hell no, I’m not dating your sorry ass again,” and it feels like it’s muzzling the song.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Such zealotry — psychological and musical — bespeaks reluctance and insecurity, not confidence. I understand the intention: a walloping chorus inspired by Carly Rae Jepsen and Taylor Swift. But it’s a diaphanous structure on which to hang a piece of music this cumbersome.
[4]
Taylor Alatorre: I’m not afraid of powerful women; just overpowering choruses.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: I will probably feel much more kindly toward songs like this in twenty years when the production will be charmingly redolent of the mid-2010s, but for now it’s both too shouty to be as twee as it is and not strident enough to be a proper breakup anthem.
[4]
Will Adams: The children’s chorus HEYs and WOAHs were perhaps my least favorite motif on 1989; for those keeping score, they are not improved by a chorus that backs away from its strong, titular outcry as suddenly as it made it.
[4]
Brad Shoup: I wonder if anyone’s actually tried to draw the line between good empowerment and bad, or easy answers vs. hard-won ones. I wonder because the bridge sounds like a feint toward doubt, just like the questions these girlfriends ask (“Are you gonna take him back?” Am I?). And then they’re detonated by the Swiftish holler of the title. Or, perhaps, everything but the bridge is just the expected pose, with the expectation being hers, maybe, or her friends’. I can’t really decide, and I don’t think I’m supposed to.
[7]
Thomas Inskeep: I mean, sometimes the reviews do write themselves, don’t they? “Grey’s Anatomy pop” is definitely a thing, a kind of lowest common denominator faux-empowerment bullshit, and this is its epitome.
[1]