Controversy as heavy as his eye makeup…

[Video]
[4.20]

Austin Nguyen: Leave it to Ed Sheeran to drain any glimmer of danger, compulsion, abandon, tension, thrill inherent to one-night stands and replace it with the snarl and lust of, uh, fake fangs. Which, to be fair, is a better (or at least more well-fitting) brand of horniness than whatever John Grady shit he was on before, but the problem remains one of commitment, in more ways than one: If Ed Sheeran is losing control, his world imploding of all words to use, I sincerely hope it takes more than a single thumping bass and brooding Post Malone/The Kid LAROI guitar riff to cause ruin.
[3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A feckless, Kidz-Bop-ified, white-washed Weeknd knockoff. You’d think they would have at least had the decency to change the jacket color in the music video.
[1]

Thomas Inskeep: I thought there was no possible way the Red Menace could make his music more bland, more generic, more utterly nothing. But I was wrong, of course.
[0]

Alfred Soto: If you prick a white guy, does he not bleed? Maybe. Or so I’m told. Anyway, the keyboards nod toward “Smalltown Boy,” the attitude to The Weeknd, and the vocal approach to a former college pal who complained about the chicks who wouldn’t fuck him despite his skepticism about dental hygiene. 
[5]

Will Adams: About four years ago I planted a seed of Ed Sheeran pivoting to a career as a trance vocalist, and wouldn’t know you it: his new single sounds like Armin Van Buuren doing pop crossover. Stretching into his upper register, Sheeran manages a decent take on the late night brood set against a shimmery pulse. The bland lyrics keep him from reaching evocative heights quite like Daya or Becky Jean Williams, but as far as genre change-ups, there were worse directions for him to go, and I’m perfectly fine with this choice.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: If only trying to give a fuck again was fully in swing. I mean, it’s less embarrassing than the entirety of the last 2 albums but at least they prompted so great writing about how much of a conniving, cynical shill Ed Sheeran is. This song just makes me feel bored and annoyed I even liked “Bloodstream.” 
[3]

Al Varela: As a longtime Ed Sheeran apologist, I find very little to complain about with this song. I guess you can call it “generic,” but that’s really dismissive of the infectious melody and groove of the hook that sells the inner darkness of the song while still giving the facade of “fun” on the dance floor. Ed is no stranger to these kinds of dark impulses and bad decisions, and while I prefer past instances of this kind of material (“Bloodstream” and “Dark Times” with The Weeknd come to mind, maybe even “Antisocial” with Travis Scott), I still find this song getting stuck in my head all the time. As a retail employee who is starting to loathe the cheery, faux-inspirational canyon pop that my job plays all the time, I will gladly welcome this depressing but catchy song with open arms.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: What does it mean to be a Normal Guy in Abnormal Times? Wearing an England shirt beside Beckham in the Royal Box should do it, but if not, run-of-the-mill regret to recognisable rhythms retains a resemblance to a standard smalltown boy’s weekend. Generic it may be, but it’s a step away from bland, and to be enjoyed while it lasts — precedent hints that the dirges await.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Invoking (or even repurposing) that “Small Town Boy” cum “Wicked Game” riff is a great trick. This doesn’t pound as hard as September, wring as much pathos as Linda Sundblad, or rise to the exquisitely camp heights of Brandon Flowers, but it’s still a great trick. The song is only okay to reasonably good, but it’s probably already Number One where you are, so the best way to deal with it is to recognise what it does well — the chorus of two halves is another great trick. Maybe this entire song called “Bad Habits” has the secret novelty that it’s comprised entirely of bad habits itself.
[7]

Andrew Karpan: Our generation’s most well-intentioned song-and-vibe thief had put on one of those recent Phoebe records and figured, for good reason, that a man of his acoustic talents could pull such a thing off himself. And he did. Not a great take per se  — like, say, Maroon 5, Sheeran’s career is tightly wrapped around the idea of carefully avoiding greatness — but more disappointingly is the total lack of confidence behind the board, where Sheeran’s voice is, instead walloped with a barrage of anonymous drums that cause his voice to, at times, inadvertently fade into itself. 
[3]

Call us if you need blurbs…

[Video]
[6.57]

Nortey Dowuona: Old fave pull up, young fan hop out.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Tyler delivers the best opening line this year, over a Gravediggaz loop no less. That mission statement of an intro bar strikes with pop concision in the way rap classics do. The nonchalant flexes that follows involve opulent imagery at its finest, all in service to rub it in the faces of those who wish a black person can’t. Because while the second bar is memorable from its juvenile humor, it’s the section a couple parts down that inspires another “oh shit” moment: “whips on whips, my ancestors got their backs out.”
[8]

Tim de Reuse: Tyler reminisces about his mother’s reaction to his success and then gets cynical about it over a skittering, dissonant sample. His flow is easy on the ears, and his wordplay as clever as you’d expect, but not terribly incisive; DJ Drama and Jasper serve only to fill the empty space around him. The result is moderately poignant.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The buzzing indeterminacy of his self-productions was his biggest attraction, not the emphatic way he hits crudeness like a guy using a mallet to kill ticks. He ain’t got nuthin’ now except a go-nowhere title.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Admittedly I was never particularly a horrorcore aficionado, but I genuinely like the backing track here better than on “2 Cups of Blood”. Not just in terms of content, but the grain of Tyler’s voice seems to fit the slate-grey environs better than the Gravediggaz did, and there’s a genuine chorus here too.
[7]

Frank Falisi: Sometimes I think Tyler’s got the biggest spotlight of anyone making sounds that remain fundamentally committed to conceiving of living as a process requiring life-affirming experiences and feelings. Sometimes I think this formulation is reductive: these sounds sweep and wobble like no before things, puncturing all our brittle horizons, goo-gunning shapes we mount sweaty and dig painty nails into and get hauled through and into. Sometimes then, we become new. Sometimes I think these sounds push push push push — that’s all we could want from sounds. Sometimes I think there’s more to it than that. Sometimes I can’t help but smile. Living mixtapes all our sometimes. Tyler sings to our onlytimes until they wiggle out of themselves. Look out there: sometimes it’s just nice to be.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: I don’t think “Lumberjack” makes much sense as a single per sé – Tyler does a great job making album-length pieces of work, whether he wants to call Call Me If You Get Lost a mixtape, or whatever – but I’m gleeful that this short/sharp/shock samples a Gravediggaz song from the ’90s, as it’s always a job to hear RZA’s boom-bap from any angle. This is straight-down-the-middle Tyler out of its album context, but that’s good enough.
[6]

Talk to him; he talks back…

[Video]
[7.43]

Oliver Maier: The T-Painaissance continues apace. He and Kehlani are a good match here: his goofy Auto-Tune and her velvety natural register reconciled by their inexhaustible shared charisma. A little too much here and there perhaps, but when was the last time you heard a new R&B song you could reasonably critique for being OTT?
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: It’s about time for a T-Pain comeback, and I am here for it. Damned near half of everyone on contemporary R&B/hip-hop radio these days is soaked in Auto-Tune already, so why not bring its original don back to the party? Almost 15 years on from “Buy U A Drank,” T-Pain crosses it with the lyrical DNA of Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent” and brings in Kehlani to duet with him, providing the female perspective. Whaddaya know: she sounds great here, their harmonies sound great, and the bassline on this is indestructible. I want to hear this booming out of cars this summer, because it’ll sound superb in that setting. Or, actually, in any setting.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: “Suspicious listeners might notice that this independent woman also happens to be a low-maintenance girlfriend,” said Kelefa Sanneh about a Webbie song from back in T-Pain’s original heyday that also celebrated a woman who had the means to provide for herself. “I like that: she don’t even need me to buy her nothin’,” T-Pain says here, but he also says it like he’s really swooning, in awe of someone who might find him superfluous. (Auto-Tune has often helped T-Pain sound like he’s swooning.) As a remix of “Buy U a Drank,” “I Like Dat” doesn’t have that song’s easy and austere pleasures, but rather drifts along in a merry haze. Kehlani fits into that vibe nicely, but as T-Pain’s counterpart, she doesn’t hold our attention the way she seems to hold his. That should not matter; he is willing to shine a spotlight on her.
[7]

Leah Isobel: It’s overselling a little to call this a “‘Buy U a Drank’” flip from the female perspective,” since Kehlani’s more of a feature than a duet partner. But her cool confidence blends well with T-Pain’s exuberance, updating the original song without losing its joyful excess.
[7]

Alfred Soto: T-Pain at his peak worked best when paired with a vocalist whose “natural” pipes complemented the painterly precision with which he Auto-Tuned his voice. The contrast between him and Kehlani produces the delightful tension I’d expect from good R&B. I like that!
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Sweet and gorgeous as per usual, and Kehlani and T-Pendergrass make a fantastic team.
[8]

Ian Mathers: In the words of the GOAT Jeff Weiss, “No T-Pain slander shall ever prosper.”
[7]

Next time, maybe Diana might be better off sending us flowers or candy instead of a song.

[Video]
[4.12]

Vikram Joseph: I’m sorry but this sounds like something you’d sing at Sunday School — saccharine, slightly reedy and full of the sort of milquetoast declarations of devotion that they pack hymns with to prevent them from sounding accidentally sexy. It’s basically a key change away from “Shine Jesus Shine.” There are better ways to thank your fans than this, Diana.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: If someone decides to ever reboot The Golden Girls (which would be a terrible idea, please don’t do this), then this would be a perfect theme song. It doesn’t seem to have any particular other use to my ears.
[4]

Dorian Sinclair: If anyone has earned the right to a four-minute paean on their fans’ support, Diana Ross is surely near the top of the list. And it’s always a pleasure to hear new material — new originals! — from her. But the lyrics for “Thank You” are sentimental right up to the point of being cloying, and while her vocal performance is as charismatic as ever, I can’t help but wish the material was a little bit fresher. It’s clearly evoking her ’70s heights, which I’m entirely in favour of, but instead of the triumphant revival, it’s a muted echo.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: I wanna get behind this, I really do. But the music is so generic, just not-even-average untrendy pop (seemingly designed for Adult Contemporary radio), and these lyrics are the epitome of anodyne. I get that this sounds like a love letter from Miss Ross to her fans, but come on. “Thank You” is hooky, I’ll give you that. Hooky, but utterly bland, like a bowl of plain oatmeal.
[3]

Alfred Soto: She approaches “Thank You” like a housekeeper cleaning a shelf of crap china beloved by their owner and no one else: approach the edges, touch the top, avoid serious wiping. In other words, Diana Ross is inhumanely Pro Tooled, which wouldn’t matter if “Thank You” were a song. 
[3]

Austin Nguyen: Optimized as an encore for a performance on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve — replete with hand-warming breathy affect, crowd-pleasing platitudes, awkward spoken asides — and perhaps best enjoyed under similar conditions. Which includes, but is not limited to, post-midnight delirium, stranger-kissing desperation, firework-rattled ears, Time Square-bleary eyes, weak buzzed smiles, glittered-cardstock flair. I am currently 1/6 of these (take your pick), hence,
[2]

Andrew Karpan: Even in an pristinely laid out set-up and ballpark-surpassing performance, it’s interesting that Ross’ message is aimed so directly at the listener, a spirit that Ross both channels and thanks profusely for the opportunity to do so, the showman touch of anonymity that would feel crudely anachronistic coming from anyone else. 
[7]

Claire Biddles: My favourite moment comes at 2:37, when after singing and speaking the titular phrase two dozen times, Ms Ross grows impatient with bestowing gratitude on her fans, and hollers “thaaank youuu” like she’s addressing a corner shop salesperson while running outside to light one of the fags she’s just bought.
[5]

Returning minus a few enlisted members…

[Video]
[6.11]

Juana Giaimo: “Don’t Fight the Feeling” is supposed to be a special release to cheer up fans while EXO members are away doing the military enlistment. If we take that into account, I think this song is a success. The first time I listened to it, I felt it wasn’t very risky and I really missed Chen and Suho’s more melodic and deeper tones. (Also, Chanyeol is singing more here and you can realize he is mainly a rapper rather than a singer.) But after some listens I actually stopped fighting the feeling (sorry, I know, that was a silly pun) and started moving along to it and discovered that there’s so much going on in the background! That bass seems to burst out of the speakers and I love how it’s full of backing vocals and harmonies throughout the song, acting almost like another instrument. And at the end, well, Baekhyun simply shows off his high notes and honestly I don’t mind a bit.
[8]

Anna Katrina Lockwood: EXO have been prone to primarily releasing belabored sexy dirges the last couple years, which haven’t been exactly bracingly entertaining. “Don’t Fight The Feeling,” however, is fun as hell, zippy, energetic, and as upbeat as any EXO comeback since “Tempo” at least. Sure, there is an air of… cast-off-ness, not only to this comeback but the EXO project as a whole at this point, but that doesn’t entirely dampen the high spirits here. Kai in particular seems to be having a whale of a time, as is Xiumin in his first post-enlistment comeback. Pretty nice to see EXO-M’s CGI’d-in Lay also, joining us presumably from the Chinese speaking region of the Kwangya. There’s not a whole lot to this one — a chipper piano part, a minimal bass ‘n’ voice verse for DO to absolutely flex his vocals on, some Kenzie flourishes — it’s simply a standard SM boy group summer jam and you know what, that’s just fine with me. 
[6]

Crystal Leww: “Don’t Fight the Feeling” is perfectly lovely when it is just zooming along but there is something so sexless about this — EXO is immediately missing the presence of Baekhyun. That, coupled with the fact that the chorus is just a little too close to the Trolls 2 theme song, makes this a disappointing turn from K-pop’s biggest sluts. Also, I cannot believe that EXO has to talk about the KWANGYA, too. Does everyone at SM work for aespa now? 
[5]

Alfred Soto: Regard “Don’t Fight the Feeling” as a hopped-up repurposing of Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” and it makes even more sense. 
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Chorus from Justin, just a little bit woozier, pre-chorus might be a little “Rock With You,” drops from every song of the last 10 years. The transitions from the soft bits to the pounding chorus are almost too slick to believe; this is precision-engineered to please in every way possible, and does. With that said, it is curiously lacking in any actual personality, which is not something I expect from an EXO single.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Very early ’10s turbo-pop going in about five directions. It doesn’t sound fresh, but it does sound shiny, and the boys of EXO sound great. But there’s just too much going on here.
[5]

Michael Hong: Each time EXO tries to cut the momentum, be it on one of two trap breakdowns or the bridge, “Don’t Fight the Feeling” comes back stronger and brighter, the pause like a pit stop rather than a blockade.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Solid faux Chance the Rapper/Lido style pop. The boys all sound cool and like they can hit notes. The rap verse includes a Juice reference, the pre-chorus has a fantastic synth chord progression. Bridge is wet and warm bass. Ticks all the boxes for a song… doesn’t feel like one, tho.
[5]

Mark Sinker: As an asthmatic, all this densely performed breathlessness makes me very anxious. 
[5]

Tall and tan and young and kind of okay..

[Video]
[4.67]

Dorian Sinclair: The thing is, if you’re going to lean so heavily on “The Girl from Ipanema” — a song people have been riffing on for nigh on fifty years — you really need a fresh take to justify the choice. I think there’s a strong idea here, and Anitta has been very open about the personal motivations at play, but musically it just feels like the throwback-to-innovation ratio is a little too heavily slanted toward the former.
[5]

Juana Giaimo: Anitta used to have a lot personality — like a lot — that didn’t consist in saying every two words that she is from Rio. The backing vocals are fun, should have been louder though.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Y’ever notice nobody just covers songs anymore? [/Andy Rooney]
[3]

Mark Sinker: Pretty comfortable here as a self-confessed Anglo know-nothing being fingerwagged for getting some of my image of Rio from Astrud Gilberto — I mean, yes of course Anitta knows more about modern favela womanhood than I do (or ever will) and has every right to re-set any such picture to suit her honest lived experience — or even just to suit whatever brash mini-swerve her career (her “persona”) currently requires. The teasing is mostly affectionate — but the ghost of the earlier does most of the early work and everything Anitta brings just cycles round after its first introduction, seeming smaller than it thinks it is.
[4]

Oliver Maier: The sample flip is a cute idea but not every timeless Latin song is destined for contemporary greatness. The whimsical melody of the original doesn’t really land in this context, and the insipid lyrics don’t help matters.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: The lilting synths and tacky guitars lie behind Anitta’s soft croon, slinking between the heavy bass and scratching percussion and papery snares and alighting into our ears, chuckling and piecing together the little bits of the memories she scrapbooks into a movie lookbook that entrances us all so much we forget we lost our hotel keys and we are now in Brasilia.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: What I love about Anitta’s first major dip into English-language songcraft is that it’s not what you’d expect: considering its title, and being based around an interpolation of “The Girl from Ipanema,” you might well expect a stereotypical Brazilian postcard. But with lines like “Hot girls, where I’m from we don’t look like models” and “Yeah, the streets have raised me, I’m favela,” Anitta shows that she’s not interested in that. (And be sure to check out the song’s video for some glorious body diversity.) Musically, this is a summer breeze, pleasant but a bit wispy, but its lyrics get it over and make it much more fierce.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Pursuing the Ariana Grande market has diluted Anitta’s force: if this unprepossessing Latinized shuffle becomes a hit, I’m Camila Cabello. I hope it does for the sake of hearing “babies having babies like it doesn’t matter” on the radio.
[5]

Austin Nguyen: I can’t help but think of this as a TikTok response POV to “24 / 7 / 365” that at least revamps Surfaces’ summer fling with, uh, actual beachside raunchiness and trap-beat variation. The bar is low — and the illegitimate brother plot line comes from left field — but hey, it’s cleared.
[2]

They don’t look (or sound) so tough for a gang, though.

[Video]
[6.56]

Juana Giaimo: I can’t believe there are still songs about the angelic woman who saves a man. There could have been something pleasant in the beginning with the acoustic guitar, fast beat and loud bass but as soon as the vocals came, I just lost interest in all of it. The combination of deep spoken words with a sudden dramatic hoarse melody is weird. I guess they aimed for an emotional build-up towards the end, but just repeating “there is heaven in you now” louder and louder didn’t do anything for me. You know, the other day I saw a tweet that said “anytime a woman is freed from being a mommy girlfriend to a straight man i am so pleased…” and I just have to agree with that. 
[3]

Ian Mathers: The emotional tenor and especially the lyrics here are a fine blend of a specific kind of sincerity that makes me a bit uncomfortable (not the same as thinking it’s bad, or doesn’t work here, or even that it’s not effective in general… don’t worry, I’m already in therapy) and the kind of grace notes that help me get through my discomfort to appreciate what the song is doing. Sonically it makes me wonder if proper examples of Big Music are going to be in vogue again. I can think of worse things.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: Vocal delivery reminiscent of the guy from Future Islands (i.e. chewing the scenery), lyricism like The National (i.e. a succession of vague profundities), pop-post-punk momentum from The Killers (i.e. relentlessly upbeat to the exclusion of all other emotional states). All of these elements are fine in the oeuvres I’ve cited them from, but putting them all together results in something that delivers a powerful first impression with little to hear past the surface: blustery detail with no core concept.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: I’d not previously clocked how much these guys could sound like The National, though David Le’aupepe is a far less emotionally guarded singer, unafraid to aspire to anthemics in his rambling verses and heaven-directed choruses. It remains an attractive sound, and there’s a creditable attempt to make something like a “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (if you can imagine an optimistic version of that) at the end. It’s not half as profound as it superficially seems but it works. 
[6]

Vikram Joseph: David Le’aupepe and friends take us on a whirlwind tour of the last decade or so of indie-rock, taking in (in chronological order) “Keep The Car Running,” The War On Drugs circa Slave Ambient, “Graceless,” the entire Future Islands discography and eventually Gang Of Youths’ own sprawling 2017 effort Go Farther In Lightness. And fine, this is nothing we’ve not heard before, but it has an earnest, anthemic, romantic sweep that makes it clear it wants you to feel something big — and at a time like this why would you resist? The over-caffeinated bassline, propulsive Bryce Devendorf-esque drums and lashings of wiry acoustics are a potent combination, even before Le’aupepe comes in with a grand, rambling story of love and redemption. There are not many who could get away with being this hyper-literate, this painfully sincere, with describing someone’s love as “a tide of tender mercies”, but goddamn he actually pulls it off. When he sings “I wanna lay me down/and be lover of the year/in this strange new town, this strange hemisphere,” it’s as wild and disorientating as it should be — a love song that embodies the feeling it describes, capturing not just euphoria but also the dizzying realisation of what are the fucking odds?
[8]

Oliver Maier: Sometimes a song isn’t doing anything functionally impressive but still forces itself to matter. David Le’aupepe is not a distinctive vocalist, neither the lyrics or even the melodies here are really anything special. Arguably it approaches luminescence only by virtue of sounding like “Age of Consent,” the way that the moon reflects light off of the sun. Still, we all have to make exceptions, and I am predisposed to do so for a certain type of indie rock song. “There is heaven in you now” is the exact kind of poetry that it so earnest in its triteness, so of this idiom, that it’s all the climax needs to be transcendent, just for a little bit.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: The spiralling guitar rises above the heavy drums and smash against the rumbling bass and sprinkling mandolin licks as David runs alongside it, his tearing croon spinning and flying into the guitar atop platforms of synths as a spiralling guitar falls from the spiralling guitar clouds right into David’s hands, and he rocks it to sleep.
[10]

Alfred Soto: Wait, The National have influenced bands, wtf? It’s there in the caffeinated pulse of the drums and the baritone sincerity. Fortunately for The National, though, their self-obsessed dolor doesn’t encompass angels or Eighth Avenues.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: When your rock song is this simple-not-basic, well-constructed, and has a hand-clappy rhythm track, yeah, I’m a sucker for it. Not to mention that the joy inherent in this record is, well, a real joy.
[8]

“Break” > “Take” > “Shake”

[Video]
[6.25]

Ian Mathers: Not sure why I “knew” that something like that break was about to come in (maybe it’s the Roni Size-ass bassline, also great), but as soon as it did I was gone. Genuinely wish this was longer, which is a rare enough sensation that I treasure it when it occurs. I suppose it’s easy enough to go back to the source material, Adam F’s “Circles”, not least because she’s very vocal about crediting and loving it.
[8]

Tim de Reuse: Jungle-pop, huh? The static drone and quickly looping bassline keep it faithful to the conventions of the genre, which is cool, but there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of jungle tracks that start fading out after a minute and twenty seconds! That’s enough time to get an earworm out there, but it’s not enough time for a groove to percolate and get memorable. If we’d gotten a little development it might have felt like a fully formed idea; four or five more “What’s stopping you?”s wouldn’t have hurt either.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: 93 seconds of a young-sounding female vocal over Adam F’s 1997 drum’n’bass classic “Circles,” which is fine, but — why not just listen to the original? PinkPantheress doesn’t do anything here that I need, other than possibly remind younger generations that “Circles” is utterly timeless.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: “Circles,” I could listen to forever, and it’s not a difficult song to make an endless loop of. So given that, why not accept that it’s just as valid to cut it off at any point, and put something short, sharp and great over the top and call it a day? Some thoughts and feelings don’t need any extra words or extra repetition — this is a perfect moment.
[8]

Juana Giaimo: I sometimes feel these really short tracks we’ve been seeing more lately are an excuse to just display an idea without developing it further. When the beat came in it was a shot of adrenaline, but then it doesn’t happen a lot more after that — just the same melody with the same bass — and the song fades out without leaving any trace behind.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Better to end an idea of mild promise before lethargy sets in. In addition, I can play “Break It Off” before “Circles.”
[6]

Dorian Sinclair: My favourite part of “Break it Off” is the bass groove, which originates elsewhere. It’s recontextualized well though, dominating the mix as the vocal line circles around it. I’m a little frustrated by how fragmented and incomplete the song feels, but I can’t deny it’s appropriate; in the lyrics, PinkPantheress is asking questions she doesn’t have and won’t get answers to. If she’s left hanging, maybe it makes sense that we are as well.
[5]

Oliver Maier: PinkPantheress’ modus operandi — at least prior to her newest (and best) track, which I believe to have been produced from scratch — has been to pluck grooves from older songs and string new toplines overhead. It feels cheekier than sampling normally does, I think mainly because of how irreverent her usage is. I mean that in that the literal sense of the word, that she seems to treat these sources with little reverence or concern beyond what they can add to her miniature cosmos, no matter how massive or beloved they may be. She sings a little lackadaisically, rarely ventures past the two-minute mark, and sometimes allows the samples to loop imperfectly, just a tad off-beat. It would feel designed to annoy purists if it felt like it cared remotely what they think in the first place, but only feels like an obvious development in the TikTok ecosystem, where nostalgia and ahistoricism co-exist, reconciled by the immense power of Vibes™. What lets her pull this trick off at all is that she is obviously talented, and has good taste in magic moments (I think often of Jacob’s assessment of “Say So” on this site — “it’s not a genius song, but it’s a glorious loop” — which I think is the guiding principle in PP’s work). “Break it Off” is probably the strongest offering this approach yields, not just because Adam F is a more left-field pick than Michael Jackson, but because the sample brings out the best in her voice (a de Casieresque coyness with a sad Lily Allen pout) and vice versa (“Circles” takes on a melancholy reminiscent of “Walking Wounded”). Is it worth getting indignant that a handful of teens might not know it’s a sample? Probably not.
[8]

Nine Doja Cat singles reviewed, nine scores between [4.62] and [6.38]. We operate on a “Need To Know” stasis…

[Video]
[5.12]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: For an artist that has built her career by expertly navigating the contours of virality, Doja Cat still has yet to create a whole, genuinely amazing song worthy of her talent. “Need To Know” exemplifies this: the relentlessly paced, horniness Olympics, alien sex aesthetic makes a lot of noise, but what’s left when the loudness settles is a series of one-liners without any true standout moments. 
[5]

Leah Isobel: “Need To Know” is the closest Doja’s gotten to making her idiosyncrasies fit cleanly into a single. From the seduction-becoming-threat of “spank me, slap me, choke me, bite me” to the rollercoaster “oh-whoa-whoa” hook, her vocal smears the performance of her sexuality into hysterical, uncomfortable cartoonishness. That confrontational edge suggests that the centerpiece here isn’t her screaming about 10/10 dick but her calm assertion that “I mean what I write.” As an expression of control, it’s a blast to hear; given the production credits, I still can’t enjoy it as much as I want to.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Hey, look, it’s Grimes in the video, and I could almost believe this was recorded after a heavily stoned Elon Musk flew Dr Luke to Mars to produce it in a thin, bleak atmosphere while suffering from spacesickness. Doja Cat’s performance is desirous and occasionally ear-shattering, but it feels like work to get through three minutes poring over the same gritty terrain. Desperately needs someone to write a completely new track for her vocal.
[5]

Oliver Maier: Gallons of jet fuel expended on a trip to nowhere in particular. When Doja’s delivery is frantic and comically horned-up it feels at odds with the beat, a pale vortex that deflects humour and eroticism. When she cools down to match it, the song is just dull.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: We get it, we get it: you like to have sex and make deathly boring pop records, same as it ever was.
[1]

Andrew Karpan: Not going to lie: I felt the Blade Runner vibe before I saw the clip and I’m not going to say I don’t resent team Doja for beating me to the punch. But it’s a good bit; writing off Doja as horny-on-main-for-lolz has always missed the point. Even if nobody wants to take a Dr. Luke-produced sex jam seriously — for good reason! — somebody might as well, if only because nobody else is putting out Doja records. And Doja records are great, because who else sings so precisely about the physical performance of yearning, the body as an instrument molded nightly into an image of desirability? “I do what I can to get you off,” she says on “Need To Know,” her voice sputtering, overwhelmed not by pleasure but the sheer unsatisfying thrum of wanting, also known as the blues, which comes here by way of Vangelis.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: The chomping synths swerve across the bulbous bass as Doja catapults across it, catches their mane and rides them easily, laughing at our shock. Then she does an amazing cartwheel across the belly and lands on the synths’ back, purring in delight.
[8]

Alfred Soto: She gulps, snaps syllables, and squeaks like prime Lene Lovich on a production in need of full habitation.
[4]

Really, we didn’t plan the score this way…

[Video]
[5.00]

Alfred Soto: Mariah Carey released an album called Caution in 2019. Brief and tuneful, it made something out of its guest appearances and Carey’s middle aged helium wheeze vocal performances. She and Jam & Lewis coast through “Somewhat Loved,” though “coast” is the wrong verb for a tune with such a burdensome verse and rinkydink chorus. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Like trying to recapture the glorious past if that part of you that contained the past’s glory and gut and glee got hollowed out years ago. Which is to say that while Jam & Lewis’s production is authentically effervescent, Mariah’s voice sounds hollow, and that in turn deflates the track.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Jam & Lewis aren’t rehashing their glory days but rehashing someone else’s. The mid-section with Mariah’s whistle register is great, though, and a little funky too. Without that, you’ve got a largely frictionless mid-90s R&B sort of thing of the type a contemporaneous J&L production would have sounded epic and thrilling next to.
[4]

Samson Savill de Jong: Jam & Lewis tried to prevent this song from being boring by switching the beat up in at least three distinct ways. They failed.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: The piano and gossamer synths gather around Mariah’s fluttery flow. Mariah hovers in her higher register, perfect yet disembodied, as each drum progression hammers down. Her voice swallows the piano and synths whole as the bass cycles the pedestrian drums, which simply keep time as Mariah, Jam and Lewis vamp right out.
[6]

Oliver Maier: Total glamour and consummate sleekness. The feeling that Jam & Lewis and Mariah are trying to out-dazzle the other via their respective contributions pushes this beyond feeling perfunctory into being at least a little bit enchanting.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: This all comes down to the chorus, which gives you what you want, meaning classic-sounding Mariah. In this case, that’s a serious callback to the piano of “Always Be My Baby” — ironically not a Jam & Lewis record but one by Jermaine Dupri — and the bridge, which features the whistle tone. The verses are a little wispy, a little nothing. And don’t examine the lyrics too closely. But the chorus? That’s the stuff.
[6]