Too much Carly Rae Jepsen coverage? No such thing!
[Video]
[6.50]
Katherine St Asaph: A Carly Rae Jepsen song called “Too Much” about operatically enormous emotions, about living for fire and drama, should be the reason music was invented. But too much about “Too Much,” from vocals to production to structure (starts mid-range, doesn’t build), is so damn low-key. It basically sounds like Tove Styrke’s “Say My Name,” which basically sounds like Adele’s “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)”, and if a song sounds like the most chill Adele song, it is by definition not too much. If I can’t imagine it in a Vine, it is not too much.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Despite the title, “Too Much” is incredibly bland. The verses are forgettable and the chorus, while somewhat catchy, is a colourless wash of cliched words delivered with little of the zip that spurred so much de-vo-tion from her fans. Honestly, she sounds bored and out of inspiration.
[4]
Will Adams: More like not enough am I right The Dedicated rollout has been head-scratching enough; the cherry on top is a song called “Too Much” that is, by CRJ standards, subdued to the point of being numb serving as the big, coinciding-with-release single. Again, confusion is not the feeling I want when listening to Carly Rae Jepsen.
[5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: In theory and in lyrics, an optimal Carly Rae Jepsen song. In practice, it’s more muddled — the neutral tones of the synths, which sounded so stylish on “Julien” here sap her energy. It’s still sung well, and the core of the song is there, but “Too Much” ultimately ends up feeling like ersatz Emotion.
[6]
Stephen Eisermann: I’ve always been hard on Carly Rae Jepsen because I’ve always believed her work was occasionally too juvenile, but my god, this is the perfect pop song. The percussion, her vocal delivery, and the all-too-familiar feeling she sings of work in perfect harmony. There’s a melancholy that lives between the percussion and the seemingly upbeat production and the juxtaposition is equally devastating and catchy.
[10]
Alfred Soto: The chorus works, no question, but why is the tempo uncertain? Why so damn slow?
[6]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: The relatively slow tempo clues us in that these lyrics aren’t sung to someone else — they’re words safeguarded in one’s mind, on the precipice of being blurted out after a drink or three. This is a song that revels in the excitement of possibility, how the romanticization of forthright confessions and unhinged expressions of lust can keep one chasing its particular high instead of acting on it. While Carly’s known for channeling emotions through clear and resounding choruses, she looks inward here and stays there, knowing that this is a song she can keep to herself. “Is this too much?” ends up being a sly wink of a line: a rhetorical question that shows she’s in control of a relationship’s undetermined future.
[6]
Isabel Cole: I texted like six different people about “when I’m thinking then I’m thinking too much / when I’m drinking then I’m drinking too much”: she Knows!!!! It’s an easy rhyme, sure, but also a juxtaposition which lands somewhere startlingly visceral: all the stupid shit your brain does and the stupid shit you do to shut it up, the spiraling fractals of anxious and doubt and useless fragmented sentences empty of meaning and dense with foreboding which push you into the arms of your unwise instincts. Falling in love can be like drinking yourself stupid: a welcome escape hatch from the ongoing nightmare of your personality. It’s taken on that cast in Carly songs since Kiss, love as an answering force to some deeper roiling hunger; when she says I’d do anything to get to the rush, it feels like the most naked explication yet of her artistic project. So it’s interesting that the song avoids both aching hunger and giddy ecstasy, settling somewhere softer: quietly lush, gently buoyant (those ah-ahs!), nervous and reverent and wistful but always lightly so. Listen to how the melody shifts: the jittery upward sweep of the verses asking too many questions of someone else, the steady anchoring descent of the chorus when she speaks of her own inner storm. The slowed down stillness with which she declares, like a prayer: I’m not afraid to know my heart’s desire. The winds still howl but there’s a grace in making peace with your own excess, in the hard-won self-knowledge which lets you be, to borrow one of her favorite metaphors, both lighthouse and storm.
[10]