But will we?
[Video][Website]
[5.89]
Juana Giaimo: I’d even listen to IZA collaborating with Major Lazer before this empty track that sucks out and erases all of her charisma.
[4]
Alfred Soto: The Brazilian producer assembles a serviceable pop dance track for IZA’s vocals and Timbaland’s Auto-Tuned interjections. No one involved gets unduly bothered.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Never kicks out of medium gear, nor quite lives up to Iza’s branding as “the Brazilian Beyoncé,” but manages a solid medium-gear groove, or maybe a Brazilian Sasha Fierce album track.
[7]
Thomas Inskeep: Martini is apparently a Brazilian Mark Ronson (ca. 2009), who makes pop potluck records; this one features vocalist IZA belting out a quasi-disco banger, with Timbaland, inexplicably, tossing in interjections like an Auto-Tuned DJ Khaled. It all adds up to… not a lot. It doesn’t bang, but kinda grooves, stand-still, while IZA longs for a better song and Timbo cashes a check.
[5]
Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: A tight, spacious — and spacey — groove, taken to the next level by IZA’s uncanny sense of rhythm and sultry tone. It might have needed a little less Timbaland ad-libbing.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: Kept hearing the chorus as “better than the knee.” Kept correcting myself. Kept listening and enjoying it. Timbaland’s bits need to go, mind you, but otherwise this is standard VORP DJ pop-lite with a slightly-above-VORP performance from IZA.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: The beginning of the “Bend the Knee” video, with Timbaland smirkingly visualising his gibberish intro, is its clear highlight: a moment of surrealist fun unmatched by anything that follows. The verse lyrics are impressively pointed for a production that nevertheless seems to have had “fun” as its guiding principle, but the whimper of a chorus shows that up as amounting to no more than glitter glued to cardboard, leaving it all sounding like the theme to an awkwardly titled gameshow.
[5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Perfectly generic disco-revival-revival lifted by IZA’s soulful, evocative vocal performance and Timbaland’s welcome cameo and diminished by the fact that the hook can’t help but remind me of the weird parts of Game of Thrones.
[7]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Despite a lack of alignment on IZA and Timbaland’s vibes, a soft disco song with strong hooks never hurt anybody.
[6]