Late to the party but we’ve brought feels…
[Video]
[6.56]
Stephen Eisermann: Quick PSA: SZA’s album is terrific, so if you haven’t heard it yet then buy/stream it. “Love Galore,” a song about a woman yearning for an ex-lover, is a highlight that finds SZA trying to convince herself that she doesn’t need her ex, all while convincing us that she knows how to breathe life and passion into even the most minimalist and down-trodden beats. I read that SZA said she took Rick Rubin’s advice about not letting production get too loud, as it forces writers to come up with a meaningful/compelling lyric if the production is left more in the background. I’m so glad she opted to take that advice. Here, the bass and drum loop serve as the canvas, and SZA takes the rest into her own hands and shares the thoughts of a woman fighting within herself. “Promise I won’t cry over spilled milk… Give me another valium,” she sings with enough stank in her voice you know she means it, but the choice she makes in starting those lines with layered vocals and then pulling them away is a great indicator of the hesitation she feels saying that. One caveat: Travis Scott wasn’t necessary on the track and I think the vulgarity in his verse only does a disservice to the song. Still, it’s so hard to not be whisked away by the beauty of SZA’s voice and the rhythm.
[8]
Austin Brown: I hate the numbness that ambiguity breeds. Breakdowns in communication are the most potent manifestations of that fear of vulnerability which unexpected intimacy can so swiftly curdle into; once that fear calcifies, it’s the death knell for a fling’s honeymoon period. With that in mind, I didn’t like this song the first few times I heard it, mostly because I foolishly thought it worked in denial of that pain. The verses and the loping circularity of the production sounded like an implicit endorsement of “chill” and braggadocious dismissal of a former lover. But every listen to “Love Galore” reveals more doubt and emotional reflexivity and betrays that both SZA and Travis Scott aren’t nearly as confident in their sexual independence as they might let on. “I don’t love these n*ggas,” she says at the beginning of the first verse, but the chorus exposes that as oh so relatable bullshit.
[8]
Ashley John: “Love Galore” repeats itself often, but each time we hear something familiar it is uniquely framed. The melodic repetition through the chorus might sound trite from someone else, but SZA begs, demands, and questions all with the same word. Her sweet and snappy voice is absolutely perfect dancing over the clever wordplay. Travis’s monotone offers a contrast that’s not really needed but does well enough if only to provide a believable dialogue.
[7]
Julian Axelrod: I didn’t realize this wasn’t a love song until the 30th or 40th listen. I mean, it is a love song, but not a song about falling in or out of love. It’s a distinctly modern ballad about the trivial bullshit we go through in search of companionship, and the empty ache we spend decades trying to quell. SZA sells the lyrics with the passion of an old torch song, but imbues them with the same complexity that makes her debut Ctrl so indelible. She can sound flippant and tender and lonely and self-assured in a single line, with equal scorn for the fuckboys who lied to her and the woman who believed them. (SZA gives Travis Scott a chance to defend said fuckboys. He does not help their case.) It’s a song full of questions and contradictions and short on answers. But SZA keeps searching. What else is she supposed to do?
[9]
Nortey Dowuona: SZA makes feels audible, physical and impossible and hard enough to crush your heart and flatten your soul. (Travis doesn’t ruin it, at least.)
[10]
Will Rivitz: SZA’s Ctrl is one of my favorite albums of the year so far, a wistful and snarling beast of a release. I’d recommend all but three or four of its tracks to someone looking to get into SZA’s discography as a good starting point; “Love Galore” is one of those few. The musician’s magic stems in large part from the tenacity girding her understated songwriting. Her songs tend to be slow and careful, but their thick shells cover a neutron star’s worth of emotional energy, a rush of joy and despondency and anger yearning to break free. This one is, indeed, slow and careful, but it’s tepidly so. None of the subtle stabs of vibrancy present all over the rest of Ctrl come out of hiding here, and the song plods with all the urgency and fire of a dose of Nyquil. Travis Scott, whose best work succeeds for many of the same reasons as SZA’s best, fails here for many of the same reasons SZA does as well.
[4]
Ramzi Awn: SZA is who people will be telling you to like for a hot minute. Will it be more than just a summer fling? It depends on the singer’s savvy rather than her vocal chops, which are as borrowed as they are blue.
[5]
Alfred Soto: The melancholy of the synthesizer complements SZA’s determination to make the relationship work; the last third, in which she forces herself to walk the city, is classic urban heartbreak. Then we meet the lover and his name is Travis Scott.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: Imagine making a record so dreary and thinking a good way to break up the moldy skim of SZA’s attempt at a “I suck/You suck/And that’s why we’re stuck” song of unsatisfying romance would be to bring on Travis Scott. It feels like the anemic, affected revamp of Tinashe’s “Pretend” (appropriate because Travis sounds the most A$AP Rocky-like he’s ever been) and it’s cheap and dissatisfying to process. I can’t find anything in this bleak song that could be quantified in ‘galore.’ Maybe that’s the joke.
[3]