This is how Kanye is sad in Europe…
[Video][Website]
[5.62]
Alex Macpherson: “Welcome To Heartbreak” encapsulates everything that shouldn’t work about 808s & Heartbreak. On it, Kanye West gazes deep into his navel, and finds only a sequence of solipsistic, laboriously executed clichés. But somehow, he sells it. The song’s power is in its melody and arrangement, primarily that gorgeous cello line, bleak and imperious; together with the stately piano line and booming drums, it draws the listener in and lends Kanye’s torment a dignity that it doesn’t quite deserve – but nonetheless gets.
[9]
Renato Pagnani: I don’t know who (finally) taught Kanye how to ensure his drums slap you across the face, but 808s & Heartbreak is the kind of album that producers are going to be sampling from well into the next decade for their breaks. Here the low-end is storm-like, brewing and sinister, the drums spongy but still devastating. The lyrics are kind of ham-fisted, but crucially, Kanye absolutely nails their delivery; there are few other figures in hip-hop that could make the lines “My friend showed me pictures of his kids/ And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs” sound like the saddest thing ever. Kid Cudi’s vocals float around in the background, sounding like they’re caught in a vortex, flitting in an out of this dimension, displaying his excellent ear for melody. The bottom line: the melodies on 808s are so affecting, so viscerally primal, that “Welcome to Heartbreak” only scores a 7 because the rest of the album is that good.
[7]
Al Shipley: For all his talk of packing hooks galore into the songs on 808s, this is pretty much the only track that actually pulls together different vocal melodies for verses, chorus and bridge. And the extra effort to actually approach the level of craft of the R&B Kanye is so poorly emulating is appreciated, especially on those catchy little falsetto hoots, but it’s still got the stench of its surrounding album all over it.
[5]
Chuck Eddy: Depressed hollow emo-rap sound — just like every other single Kanye has released lately. None of which is news, obviously. And none of which I enjoy nearly as much as “Day ‘N Night,” for whatever that’s worth. But was the kid’s report card good, or not? (Fairly certain I’d like that verse more if David Lee Roth suddenly piped in: “HAVE YOU SEEN JUNIOR’S GRADES??”)
[5]
Edward Okulicz: If Kanye is trying to say that despite his materialist trappings he longs for the simple pleasures of low-key family life, it’s a pity he so thoroughly fails to convince us of his first-class disillusionment with such third-rate rhymes. He casts himself a completely unsympathetic figure here, even putting some unpleasant and unnecessary autotuned wailing over his own tasteful musical set pieces. Make no mistake, there’s some great work in this song – it’s just forced to take a back seat to trite nonsense.
[2]
Anthony Easton: I continue to be fascinated in how Kanye treats the studio as a way to manipulate organic forms; the Sergio Leone introduction leads into one of the more self-reflexive moments that he has ever had. The autotune reflects the social isolation that he feels, and it becomes a corrective to the bitches and bling, or would be, if I did not think it was another cynical ploy from a genius who knows what his audience desires.
[7]
Rodney J. Greene: Kanye sings from somewhere in the first-class section of an autotuned wind-tunnel because he stumbled in there after misplacing his pathos.
[6]
Ian Mathers: You know, maybe if we could get Kanye’s obsession with himself and his autotune out of the way, this wouldn’t be half bad. It’s certainly well constructed, but he doesn’t sing about his neuroses with enough force or detail to make me care.
[4]
Jordan Sargent: Here Kanye outlines what should be a core tenet of pop music: How do you offset clunky lyrics? With a massive synth riff. The one snaking through “Welcome to Heartbreak” is maybe the best pure musical moment on 808s & Heartbreak and it leads to a final ninety seconds that are times overwhelming, with the synth riff pummeling away and Kanye harmonizing over it in his wounded robot voice.
[9]
Hillary Brown: I know, I know. He’s a whiny bastard and he could have avoided everything he’s complaining about by being less materialistic in the first place. But I think this is a fairly strong intro to the record, which doesn’t really make excuses so much as just lay out issues. That said, it doesn’t stand super-well as a single, although it does have plenty of the dark, layered production that runs through the rest of the album.
[6]
Additional Scores
Colin Cooper: [4]
Tal Rosenberg: [3]
Martin Skidmore: [6]