We await the extended remix, “Stay (Justin Bieber Bit Longer)”…

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[5.22]

Thomas Inskeep: More along the lines of what I expected from “Motley Crew,” this is propulsive, has a key lyric in “I’ll be fucked up if you’re not around me,” and in the most remarkable feat, Kid Laroi and the Biebs actually harmonize quite well. I like “Stay”‘s frenetic quality — these guys are in a hurry, to save themselves perhaps?
[6]

Ian Mathers: You may need them to stay, but you both forgot to provide literally even one compelling reason for them to — hell, most of the song is just spent admitting to knowingly lying to this person. The generically singsongy track with two essentially interchangeable vocalists isn’t helping much.
[3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Charlie Puth, you rascal, stop using your powers for evil!
[3]

Oliver Maier: Whining lights.
[4]

Al Varela: I can’t tell if The Kid Laroi is growing on me or if he just found his niche in pop music. Guess he’s more like Post Malone than I thought, working best in angsty pop over the attempts at trap-influenced pop which expose him at his ugliest and least likable. At least the desperation in “Stay” works well in tandem with the waves of synth and crashing percussion. It allows both Laroi and Bieber to put their all into it enough to show the cracks in their voices, but not to a point of annoyance. It feels less like they’re forcing their vocals and more like in their hyperactive rush of emotion, they’re desperately reaching out for that last chance that they likely don’t deserve, but still want more than anything. It’d be easy to dismiss the song’s sentiments as childish guilt-tripping, but their agency is what makes the song so special alongside the brilliant production from Blake Slatkin, Charlie Puth, Omar Fedi, and Cashmere Cat. The latter I’m positive contributed to the best part of the song, the final chorus where every blast of synth feels like a firework exploding in the distance. That last push you need to seal the deal or die trying. And that explosion of angst-tinged euphoria is what keeps me coming back and second-guessing my feelings on The Kid Laroi as an artist. Well played.
[9]

Alfred Soto: “Blinding Lights” drum program, decently deployed obscenity, annoying as hell octave leap. Had we reviewed “Stay” in Miami, I’d have worried about Song of Summer vibes.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Justin Bieber does not sound like he’s 10 years older than The Kid Laroi. How can this even be possible? I wonder if I’m the only person who hears the intro this and thinks it’s perilously close to “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” and, additionally, that both actually do well with it. The climax at the second chorus where the beats are like little tremors is really cool, and I’d have appreciated if there was another escalation, another repetition, a bigger climax. But if the lyrics to this are ick, everything else is slick, so they probably knew what they were doing.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Bieber should have been saved for the afterburner remix. It’s not that his presence degrades the song — it’s easy enough to imagine him at the helm instead — but more a case of the imperceptible difference he makes to it weighing it down with the reality of commercial imperatives. The hectic roboscape they find themselves in is more distinctive though, and the pace makes their dramatics more ingratiating.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: One of the craziest things is that The Mid Kid Laroi has largely been happily accepted by the rap community despite not being a rapper or even white. One of the less crazy things is that Justin Bieber is apparently honorarily black despite consistently persistently, forever and ever showing he doesn’t deserve it. And we definitely don’t deserve these guys doing bad Usher and Juice WRLD ripoffs while being awful to their partners. But we did, so I’ll just listen to the plinking synths and flat-footed drums and tune out the emotional abuse going on… cuz that’s what everyone would not do if this had been Usher and Juice WRLD.
[4]