We can’t believe it, she’s never scored this high — way to go!
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[6.58]
Tobi Tella: Compared to the Max Martin fare on 25, this is even clearer pandering to radio and Spotify playlists, something that weirdly makes me like it more. While “Send My Love” was essentially a normal Adele song gift-wrapped in an upbeat package, this is a complete left turn on an album that is up to this point, extremely depressing. “I know that it’s wrong, but I want to have fun” would be an absolute cliche in anyone else’s hands, but it feels scandalous coming from everyone’s favorite Wine Mom. Let Adele Fuck!
[6]
Alex Clifton: I always love hearing Adele in “fun mode” — the woman’s great with ballads, but also when she steps outside of that comfort zone. It’s a good time, although I wish the production didn’t eat her voice into the mix.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Adele, by all accounts, is a pretty fun person. Adele, on this record, sounds like she’s reading “fun” off sheet music. The production might be to blame; Greg Kurstin does Max Martin doing a Maroon 5 track, and any fun that may be found in that sequence is of the enforced variety.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Anecdata tells me that Adele is more popular with The Kids than many critics suspect. As ubiquitous as bottled water and just as irresistible, she forms part of the unexamined background. They belt “Hello” like a previous generation did Mariah Carey’s “Hero.” When she consciously strives to court this group, though, the result is tuneless strenuosities like “Oh My God.” Who told Greg Kurstin this production deserved distorted chipmunk voices? Or clap-alongs? The more comfortable she feels as the star of the buy-the-CD-at-Target demographic, the surer her touch.
[5]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The more I’ve listened to 30, the more it’s clear to me that I underrated “Easy on Me” and that it should have been at least a [7] or [8]. While I initially dwelled on the fact that most of the album doesn’t feel sonically adventurous, lately I’ve realized that Adele’s staying power rests in her songwriting. “Oh My God” is another unpretentious track with songwriting gems hidden in plain sight, from declarations of pleasure (“I know that it’s wrong/But I want to have fun”) to confrontations that would ordinarily stay locked in your fantasy (“I don’t have to explain myself to you/I am a grown woman and I do what I want to do”). Less of a track that’d make you say “Oh My God” or “Wow”, and more of a track that’d make you say “Damn.”
[7]
Ian Mathers: Can someone who’s been paying more attention than I have confirm or deny my suspicion that if you threw all of Adele’s songs to date in a bag, shuffled them, and then pulled them out randomly and arranged them into new albums, you wouldn’t be able to tell much of a difference?
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: This kind of stomping gospel number is not strange with Adele singing — it’s the way the bass lurches below her pealing voice during the chorus, then dribbles around during the pre-chorus. It’s that the claps are clearly programmed but move at each part of the song in a way you would if you were clapping alongside her. It’s that the chanting echoes of her bridge blend together brightly. It’s that this is the first time we’ve seen Adele move away from rigid, starchy and fussy arrangements, and she sounds alive; a fantastic, earthy voice now free to spread its wings.
[10]
Scott Mildenhall: And lo, did Adele benevolently offer a radio-ready second single. The truth that even she feels beholden to the commercial concerns of mere mortals shouldn’t distract from the fact that “Oh My God” is an off-kilter thing, unassumingly distinct from her prior singles and those around it in the charts. The individual elements aren’t all new — strong vocal front and centre, stomping rhythm, haunting additional voices — but their combination is that bit weirder and warmer. It’s an aqueous ballet of a song; a synchronised swim that engages through its careful construction.
[7]
Andrew Karpan: Greg Kurstin cosplaying Danger Mouse behind the decks on a Black Keys record isn’t very interesting or original, admittedly, but Adele plays her part so straight and with such intention that it practically becomes a trip-hop song by sheer force of will.
[7]
Samson Savill de Jong: One of those songs that gets better with every listen, which I tend to think is the case with most Adele songs. I still reckon this is solid rather than spectacular, and that the “mm yeah”s in the bridge should either be cut or made more interesting, but solid Adele is still a cut above.
[7]
Rodrigo Pasta: Not the first indicator on 30 — not even the first produced by Greg Kurstin — that this wasn’t gonna be simply another Adele album. After re-establishing her presence in the industry, her stunning voice, and her newfound dilemma of being a mother and a divorcée on the first three or four tracks, Adele suddenly decides to get goofy! She tells Kurstin to treat the track like a leftover from Sia’s unhinged Christmas album, and go even deeper with it! Get some vocal samples to serve as bass, audibly synthetic handclaps, plus some #random chipmunk samples for color, throw it all into a blues rhythm, and bury the organs and synths in order to gate Adele’s vocals like crazy, because they’re bound to be in front of everything! Even the composition is off for her: the pre-chorus is stunningly lazy, and the chorus is mainly two long, strung-out lyrical and melodic sentences looking for a dot or comma. It’s weird hearing Adele like this, trying to be so loose. At one point, during the needlessly tense bridge, she tries to echo her climactic vocal from “Chasing Pavements”, then proceeds to abort when the chorus rolls in, as if telling herself, “No! That’s not who I want to be anymore”. The song sounds just as conflicted as she is, as she seeks some new relationship, wanting not to be let down; after all, she only wants to have fun… right? She’s not too sure of that, and the music displays it with stunning accuracy. Those of us who normally behave in an uptight way, forcedly trying to let loose in a strange, new environment may find some comfort in knowing an untouchable Goddess is right there with us.
[8]
Will Adams: Am I overrating this out of relief that it was the follow-up single and not “Can I Get It”? Possibly. But as far as Adele’s now-staple radio-ready pop trinkets go, “Oh My God” feels more natural. It operates on the familiar — vocal-as-flute squiggles, amiable clap-stomp beat, ersatz gospel — which gives Adele’s proclaiming “I want to have fun” a shade of melancholy. It’s almost as if the song serves as a stepping stone to something more loose, more chaotic, m- oh my God “Can I Get It” is the next track on the album. It’s gonna be the next single isn’t it.
[6]