No blueberry thrill…
[Video]
[4.43]
Jeffrey Brister: “Your body’s a neighborhood” is the most repellent innuendo I’ve heard in a very long while, and I hear weird sex talk a lot. My mind fixated on it the entire time, distracting me for the duration, but when I managed to get past that, it’s a pleasantly jazzy, ooey-gooey love song with awkward metaphors. I’ll never truly get over “your body’s a neighborhood” though, the most unspecific and deeply unsexy way to describe someone.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Jazzy and creepy, which is… an acquired taste. As are those fruits used as descriptors — going for that “Watermelon Sugar” money? At least blueberries actually taste of something, even if this song tastes of kissing someone who hasn’t brushed their teeth after a smoothie. Sure is catchy though.
[6]
Oliver Maier: I hate this kind of mawkish, jazz-hands twee pop with my life. “Blueberry Eyes” sounds so vacuum-packed and squeaky-clean that you could listen to any given Maroon 5 track afterwards and it would sound like a bootleg from a basement punk show. Max’s lyrics, delivery and gormless self-supplied backing vocals make me want to vomit, while Suga’s contribution just leaves me cold.
[1]
Thomas Inskeep: Max pulls off a great Robin Thicke-in-pop-mode on “Blueberry Eyes.” His sweet falsetto in particular pairs effectively with the bossa nova groove of the song, while BTS’s Suga supplies a rapped bridge which offers another tasty flavor. And then, the song’s smartest move: it ends with Max singing completely unadorned, just a piano backing him. This is one very clever pop record.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: You really don’t want to know the amount of double-takes I did at the lyric that is not, in fact, “laying there wearing nothing but Nazi shit.” Unfortunately, the next line was not a mondegreen and was, indeed, “your body’s a neighborhood.” (The low-expectations counterpart to the one John Mayer sang about? Quickly gentrifying? People complain about it on Nextdoor? Mister Rogers is in it?) Even more unfortunately, this faux-bossa nova, faux-suave budget 20/20 Experience cut is far more charming than it should be. Suga in particular channels some of the old pop-rap glee of B.o.B without… uh, anything that happened in the last couple years with B.o.B.
[6]
Austin Nguyen: The batter of K-indie R&B balladry and falsettos goldened to fruit-filled fluff that can’t decide whether it wants to be Bruno Mars horny (“day-umn”? “bawww-dy”?) or baby-marry-me happy-go-lucky — all served, of course, with a side of stan-tooth-satisfying powdered Suga. Suddenly grateful I skip breakfast every morning <3
[3]
Alfred Soto: Alternate title: “Damp Sock.”
[3]