This is your Friday editor’s outlook on her job, as well.
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[5.50]
Tim de Reuse: The thumping, stark, tonally frozen backdrop: an entrancing, monolithic backdrop for Agnez’s sinister sing-song. The triply-chipmunked, robotic hook: a choice that makes some sense stylistically but pushes it a mile too far, completely wasting the sense of menace that the verses build so effectively. The inclusion of the line “finger-fucking diamonds, baby”: questionable.
[6]
Alfred Soto: There’s something going on besides the chipmunk vocal manipulations — ominious synth rumble helps — but “Long As I Get Paid” settles on its hook as if someone’s nerves gave out. There ain’t much else.
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: Fuzzy synths, distorted bass, Agnez on the auto-tuned vocals, baby repeated hook, weak drum programming again. Shrugs.
[4]
Ashley John: Agnez Mo is opulent with her voice, the production, the video. The switches between synths and the echoing distance of her voice make fill up the space while the lyrics hang limply throughout. “Long As I Get Paid” is a lot, but it isn’t much of anything good.
[3]
Iain Mew: Taking in the pop music of the world filtered only by playcount, I sometimes wonder if I’m overappreciating the extreme and novel. My thrill at “Long As I Get Paid” and its combination of ice cream van chorus, aggressive synths, and not-100%-sure-its-not-a-bad-upload production is one of those moments. It’s so unusual and exciting, though! And, in fact, not only novel, since there’s plenty in its sonic approach which I could trace my love of back to Lady Gaga and beyond (I can imagine the “sex and lace on my face” bit slotting right into “Judas” or similar) even before finding out it’s produced by Danja. The closest comparison for its twisted update is maybe FEMM if they’d dropped the concept baggage, upped the vocals and gone to source. Though even they wouldn’t have gone as simplistically appropriative as some of the lyrics here, the only part giving reservation as this loops round my head again and again.
[7]
Anthony Easton: Bleak, gorgeous, and amorally slick, an example of pop being as a malleable, post-national category of formal excess–just chuck everything together, every sound, every vocal effect, shove a hard third generation Timbaland drum into the mess, and hope everything is stable. I never quite know if it is a warning about ambition, or aspirational. The spiky, childish, modulated vocals add a Toxic (as in Brit Brit) sheen.
[8]