Possibly a lower score (with higher Controversy Index) than we’d have expected from these two…

[Video]
[6.00]

Oliver Maier: What should be at the very least a reliable [6]+ given the calibre of the artists involved instead collapses under its own weight into sludge. Etten and Olsen go in guns blazing on melodies and lyrics that simply don’t deserve the effort, neither of them playing to their respective strengths. I’m reminded of early Arcade Fire in tone but there’s none of the push and pull, little of the granular, paint-peeling-off-the-wall detail.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: A massive caterwaul of pianos and guitars crash over the strong frame drums with a thick coat of bass as Angel and Sharon’s strong voices carry the frame, with Angel letting loose a little scampering synth just before she begins to sing, the song flying right through the sun and soaking up all the flares and circling until they speared them across the galaxy, every single one turning to a star.
[10]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Two artists that have never quite clicked for me don’t do any better here. The Orbison vocal vibrato feels overwrought, the vibraphone and glockenspiel feel a bit too trite, and the arpeggiated keys feel tacked on by the end. Not even the delightfully crunchy guitar can save this for me. 
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Strong women singing strongly: Van Etten and Olsen sound marvelous singing against each other. I’m kind of amazed Jack Antonoff didn’t produce this, because it has his peak-big-pop (as opposed to folklore) sound all over it. 
[9]

Andrew Karpan: The pair have been grouped together by playlist creators, savvy demographic marketers and, lately, by indie producer John Congleton, who recorded some of Olsen’s most popular records before turning to Van Etten’s latest, the divisively loud Remind Me Tomorrow. Here, Congleton has brought these long-winded efforts one step further by awkwardly splicing their voices together onto the same bombastic four-minute single, which comes off more as a novelty-value mixing room experiment or demo reel than a duet or even a conversation. In smashing their voices together, the record flattens their sound into a noisy, shapeless indie pantomime made to hover dangerously for the next few months around the edges of XMU’s programming blocks.
[2]

Samson Savill de Jong: This is essentially a nostalgic song, pining for a time when the singers were younger and freer and less worn down by life, and making half hearted attempts to ape the processes (having a lie in) even though they know they can’t really replicate the underlying factors. The lyrics are a little obtuse initially (I only got that “One more session overdrive/The ceiling is the roof” meant getting publicly wasted when reading it written down) but I’m inclined towards saying it’s because they’re poetic rather than naff. None of that really matters though, because the song just sounds good. It’s just a pleasure to listen to these two sing, and I could put the song on back to back to back and not tire of it, which is a rare accolade.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Sharon Van Etten specializes in the well-etched grand, Angel Olsen the quietly overwrought, and while this dialectical tension might’ve resulted in a triumph “Like I Used To” is rickety, big to no purpose, like Stevie Nicks fronting Pulp. 
[5]

Indeed, we have few!

[Video]
[7.20]

Vikram Joseph: Far more understated than either of the first two singles from Blue Weekend, “No Hard Feelings” is numb, bruised but tinged with the faintest glimmer of redemption. The muted guitar arpeggios provide a dull background hum like a ceiling fan on a warm night, while Ellie Rowsell tells an ex that it doesn’t hurt any more, repeating it like a mantra, struggling to convince even herself. It’s telling that despite her protestations, the line that sticks with me is “crying in the bathtub to ‘Love Is A Losing Game’” – which, I guess, is the sort of thing you’ll be able to laugh about one day, but just not quite yet.
[8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Faint, feathery guitar loops undulate as Ellie Rowsell whispers the denouement of a relationship that was held together by gossamer strings. “No hard feelings, honey/And we both will take the win,” she concludes: triumphant in message, but devastated in demeanor. 
[8]

Claire Biddles: Considering how well Wolf Alice have done complex, delicate heartbreak in the past, the broad strokes of “No Hard Feelings” are disheartening. It takes a lot to make a guitar band interesting in 2021, but Wolf Alice’s lyrical specificity and unfashionable proggy tendencies made them stand out. Here nothing twists the formula — just a guitar track that’s pretty I guess, a cliched string/knot metaphor, and the now-tropey namedrop of a relatively contemporary pop song. Apparently this was developed from the introduction of a heavier song, and I WISH I could hear the original. As with their Dirty Hit labelmates The 1975, let’s hope this descent into bland platitudes is temporary.
[4]

Ian Mathers: There are enough songs that sound basically like this that you really need to find some way to stand out, and even though it’s not exactly a new trick, that gently pulsing guitar line running throughout pretty much does it, especially with the brief choral synth bit in the middle.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m probably overrating this track that really should build more than it does (and, after Wolf Alice’s last single, like I expected it to) because it’s the first time I can remember that a recent pop song has reminded me of Carol Keogh. The hushed synth-choral bridge is an unexpected oasis.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Confessional sparsity is increasingly Not My Thing, but Ellie Rowsell pins down the painterly details with a pitch and timbre which understands where to stress and when to glide. It’s not a second longer than necessary, too.
[7]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: A well-sung breakup song driven entirely by bass guitar is a thing impossible for me not to love.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: Ellie Rowsell’s soft pastel voice climbs the spiralling bass and swinging guitar backed by tart cries, calling out to you. It feels like a companion to “Don’t Delete the Kisses”: Ellie is now ending that hopeful relationship in a kind way.
[8]

Samson Savill de Jong: If Olivia Rodrigo perfected the ridiculous adolescent response to being dumped, “No Hard Feelings” provides a counter-balance, a reminder that holding on to anger and spite toward someone who would’ve been more unhappy staying with you is unhealthy for you both. There’s room in this world for each, but I can’t deny that the maturity in Wolf Alice’s lyrics instantly make me kinder toward this song. It doesn’t do a lot musically, stalling for a little while, finding the “choir” button on its Casio keyboard, then abruptly ending. More work could’ve been done to match the music to the complex emotions the lyrics express. But Ellie Rowsell’s voice makes up the difference, and the core of the song is strong enough to carry me through.
[7]

Dede Akolo: Wolf Alice are dear to my heart, as their last album, Visions of a Life, riddled my Summer ’18. Ellie Rowsell’s voice is so haunting, which always comes off best in the band’s ballads. Nothing fancy. A simple, quiet plea. 
[8]

With one minor exception, the TSJ crew are well ahead of you there, Jonases.

[Video]
[4.00]

Natasha Genet Avery: “It’s messing with my head/how I mess with your heart” could be a fantastic line, depending on where you situate the speaker. In “Leave Before You Love Me,” Nick and Joe over-emote and croon and growl as they imagine the torment they are inflicting on last night’s conquest, who obviously must be lovestruck. My guess, though, is that the irony is lost on soft boi Nick Jonas as he’s speeding away the morning after his booty call. Pick up the damn phone! She’s probably just calling to tell you that you left your wallet on the nightstand, you self-absorbed dork.
[5]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: After the existential doom of 2020 made a proper song of the summer impossible, “Leave Before You Love Me” is the closest I’ve come to imagining what an heir apparent could be in 2021. It’s vapid, it’s bubbly, and it’s charming, and — if it’s allowed the right circumstances — it should receive pretty constant airplay. 
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: The first thing the song has is velvet guitar, but it’s drawn away under the perfunctory 80’s drums and flattened bass faking as they’re singing Disco, with Nick and Joe’s voices cracking and writhing, struggling to keep up with even this bland groove, and the genuinely cruel lyrics make it all the worse. At least it’s short. 
[3]

Tim de Reuse: The Jonas Brothers attempt to channel Julian Casablancas and succeed only in writing something that sounds like if what you’d get if you took every slow song by The Strokes and blended them together into a gray pulp. Marshmello doesn’t attempt much of anything, dissolving into the watery synthpop background. A sharp listener paying close attention to the snap of the snare drum might think, “That’s funny, it’s like someone involved in this track’s production used to make EDM.”
[2]

Ady Thapliyal: Nick’s biting Abel Tesfaye a little too hard in the opening verse, but at least that sounds better than the chorus, where Marshmello blends all the Jonas’ voices together into a bland, unappetizing mush. And the lyrics are on some male manipulator shit. Still, one point for each of Joe’s deliciously thick eyebrows.
[2]

Camille Nibungco: Honestly a strange combination of two very different artists that weirdly works? It’s insidiously catchy and I’m not sure if I can credit it to either the Disney boy band of my teens or the mildly famous EDM pop producer.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Marshmello managed to somehow make the JoBros sound wimpier while putting none of his own musical “personality” in the record. Is that talent?
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Marshmello finally lives up to his eponymous marshmallow skull and makes a Daft Punk song, the closest approximation of Random Access Memories I’ve heard since… ever? (It’s about time that Influential Event Album became actually influential!) He’s very clearly patterning the song on “Instant Crush,” but the Jonas Brothers are a brighter vocal presence than autotuned anhedonic Julian Casablancas, and their songwriters far, far less oblique. Marshmello and his co-producers make the melody sweeter to match, and the whole thing comes off, pleasingly, as an ABBA cover.
[7]

I dunno, you’re the one shouting that chorus at me…

[Video]
[4.88]

John Pinto: Chris Gethard has a great bit on the Medieval Times in Lyndhurst, NJ and what it must be like to work there as a knight. Now understand: this is a job that SOME OF US (cough, cough) may have wanted after, say, a sixth grade field trip meant to conclude a World History unit on the Middle Ages. But Gethard punctures the heady grandeur of working in the arena (the battles! the fair maidens! that falcon!) with his observation that once you clock out, you go back to being a weird North Jersey metalhead. As the bit plays out, you start to imagine one such sad-sack driving aimlessly and catching a snippet of “Stop Making This Hurt” on the radio. For a brief moment, maybe this de-frocked red-and-yellow knight hears something not totally washed out by Antonoff’s Phil Spector-in-a-wind tunnel production. Maybe he accidentally unbuckles his seatbelt while reaching for a sword that is no longer there. Maybe he feels an inarticulable emptiness and makes a face like one of these guys. But maybe he doesn’t; the feeling is so faint, and the moment is so brief.
[5]

Oliver Maier: Surely I have not, in a haze of anti-Antonoff spite and malignance, simply imagined the fact that this song sounds like he is turning a big dial that says “Volume” on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right. Maybe the bizarre mixing here is meant to capture a sense of ephemerality but it’s also intolerable, and kneecaps what is otherwise a pretty solid hook, the rare one where Jack’s voice sounds up to the task.
[3]

Dede Akolo: The nostalgia that ripples through The Bleachers and Rostam’s new release reveals what I imagine to be the vibes of New Jersey and New York City respectively. Whilst both of these musicians now live in Los Angeles presumably, they reek with the chutzpah of these places. Antonoff evokes this cornucopia of sound that reminds me of the sunrise coming up from behind a mountain. I would compare this to Rostam, but listen to that song on your own, we’re talking about Antonoff. My only complaint is that Antonoff doesn’t seem to know exactly where to place the vocal in the mix. Here is sounds too far back and shrouded by the horns. Otherwise, my opinion of whether or not you should listen to this song hangs on the question, how much earnestness can you take? 
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: A loping piano under sharp, heavy drums and spinning bass with jangling guitars underneath Jack’s surprisingly strong croon, so close to crumbling but just about to leap away as the sax swings away and up the stars, Jack howling to the moon in joy, and facing away as the song slowly slips back down to the street, and Jack counts the dollars and smiles. There’s enough to take the PATH back to Newark.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Do you think he always seems to put his voice so far back in the mix because he knows he’s not a very compelling performer? Do you think he thinks having those “You Can Call Me Al” horns at the beginning works as an homage instead of just making a bunch of people want to listen to Paul Simon instead? Do you think one of the stans in the YouTube comments who calls him “the millennial Springsteen” has ever fucking heard a single Springsteen song except the guest spot the latter did on “Chinatown,” which is lacklustre in the same way this is?
[3]

Andrew Karpan: One of his most gentle and unpretentious piano riffs and one that made me realize that, at the center of all of Antonoff’s anthemic, lovelorn tales of suburban hurt is the same prodding question: what if Billy Joel was from New Jersey instead of Long Island? 
[4]

Vikram Joseph: Sure, this would sound pretty great driving to the beach with the windows down, all rolling Graceland piano and horns and call-and-response choruses; Jack Antonoff is clearly hoping for groups of friends to shout “STOP MAKING THIS HURT!” in unison, and doubtless he’ll get his wish. But there’s something a bit watery about the production nonetheless, and the lyrics read like a messy patchwork of stock Americana tropes, like pieces from a dozen different jigsaws pressed awkwardly together. Antonoff treads a narrow tightrope with his unabashed sentimentality, and for it to really work we need to believe in his narrative, which just isn’t the case here — I mean, who are Ray, Daniel and Jimmy? Are they real? Do we care? The chorus has lodged itself in my brain, though.
[6]

Samson Savill de Jong: I just can’t get into this completely. The song is deliberately loose, but it doesn’t feel free and easy to me, just messy. The shouty chorus is meant to be anthemic, but I’m not entirely clear on what is meant to not hurt (a romantic breakup? Living in America?) and I don’t find the ambiguity interesting, just annoying. I’m left with a feeling that I’ve heard this song before, even though I can’t name a specific tune this reminds me of, but that it’s been done better.
[4]

Petition to make Shakira the only one allowed to do theme songs for football tournaments, y/n?

[Video]
[3.13]

Katie Gill: Generic-ass sports songs peaked with “Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)“; I’ve got no idea why generic-ass sports songs continue to exist. And I’ve got no idea why they continue to spew the same trite sentiments of victory, triumphing over adversity, highlighting the strength of the athletes, etc. And I’ve also got no idea why this one has such remarkably weak lyrics compared to all the other generic-ass EDM artist ft. singer who desperately wants a paycheck sports songs before this.
[3]

Mark Sinker: Guest pundit Bono on being handed the UEFA EURO2020 update results: “I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for u tho! Or sorry that happened!” Meanwhile no more perfect fit for Garrix’s practiced corporate roll-out will be found than The Edge’s infinite guitar-glue, so epic and tension-free, like a world-class sports competition stripped of logistics, scoreline and meaning.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: What could be more fresh and vibrant than a song that’s gathered dust since April 15 2019, when Bono switched on the news, saw a cathedral on fire, and decided to rework his “Dublin to Rotterdam” line? By cleverly pronouncing it “Notherdam”, Martin was none the wiser, and the job was done. Admittedly alterations have been made since then — this video shows the producer consorting with an orchestra, yet they remain disappointingly absent. While Garrix’s little riffs have just the right feel for unobtrusive interstitial purposes (keyword: “corporate”), everything else is flat even by tournament standards. The Edge is fine, but he’s no Pitbull.
[4]

Will Adams: Two weeks out, I clearly still have Eurovision on the brain, as I can’t hear this has anything but an entry submitted the year after “Heroes” won in the desperate hope to recapture its success that failed to make it out of the semi-finals.
[3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: This inspirational ballad sounds so generic and indistinguishable that when I listened to it on YouTube, I instinctively looked for the “Skip Ad” button on in the bottom corner before realizing I’d already arrived at the song. 
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: This is so basic, so simplistic, so empty, it makes “Beautiful Day” sound like “Marquee Moon.” And is that overly heavily treated guitar lick supposed to be The Edge? My god, how embarrassing. Up with People might even be edgier than this.
[1]

Nortey Dowuona: We are not the people, Bono, we are the citizens. The middling piano and dull horn stabs under the smushed, poorly made over drums (with The Edge somewhere, I guess) are pretty mediocre. But Bono actually sounds like he likes what he’s singing, and even his chorus is soaring. Unfortunately Martin isn’t a good enough producer to buoy it, and his drop is absolutely pathetic.
[4]

Andrew Karpan: The record takes on a curious quality of spiritual uplift, divorced from its purposeful electronic din, manufactured to be heard in massive stadiums. This is Bono’s fault, in part: even spouting hollowed out shells of Gen X leather jacket profundity, his voice still mysteriously commands the stillness of a preacher. In this new context, the messages, dusted-off from a year in the closet, carry new meaning and it turns out that he is telling me that it’s okay, right now, to simply be because, as it happens, we are the very people that we’ve spent so long waiting for, I think?
[3]

Ian Mathers: Come back, “Things Are Different” by Picture This, all is some things are forgiven.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: “A heart that hurts is a heart that works,” eh? If only Juliana Hatfield could sue these morons. While I’m immune to the idea of football as a uniting force, this seems like a particularly clumsy invocation — I’m not sure if Bono is in the mind of the fans, the players, or a corporate sponsor, or is trying to make this universal even outside football, but it’s just too clumsy and earnest to hate, which makes me really want to hate it. Settling for feeling nothing will have to do, though.
[4]

Vikram Joseph: Inevitably, Bono phones in a series of overcoming-adversity wall-art cliches, but this nonetheless does what a decent football tournament song should do. The flickering guitars and sunburnt synths are suffused with nostalgia for past summers, triggering memories burnished and sanded down with the passage of time. The thing is, if you’re a football fan then summer tournaments are mile markers in your life; the recollection of watching the World Cup Final in my aunt’s house in India and hoping the power didn’t cut out (1998), having to sit a GCSE exam just after seeing England knocked out by Brazil (2002 — I still remember the BBC’s elegiac closing montage set to “Stop Crying Your Heart Out”), being packed into a bar at 1am after a day of drinking in the sun as England capitulated to Italy (2014), and so on and so forth down the long, bittersweet wormhole of lost summers. Martin Garrix and The Edge understand that it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to tug on those heartstrings; as such, “We Are The People” could very conceivably have been the official song for Euro 2000, and it works.
[7]

Jeffrey Brister: Ten years ago, this might have moved the needle, though it would have been overshadowed by “We Found Love”. As it stands now, it’s just a treacly, dated anthem that doesn’t even have the good sense to slap hard.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Fealty to communitarian boilerplate or delusion keeps Bono in arena belter mode. He’s been most comfortable seeing masses, not persons, and U2 have offered commensurate backdrops. Martin Garrix and The Edge give him Morning Joe bumper music.
[5]

Harlan Talib Ockey: There’s a Tantacrul video where he posits U2 are the progenitors of “nothing music”, a vacuous and inert little subgenre used when uncontroversial industries need to stimulate some light emotional catharsis in their commercials because the alternative would be complete silence. I was initially skeptical, since I still have fond memories of The Joshua Tree, but there’s really no other label for “We Are the People” and its mindless corporate dreck. Instrumentally, this is essentially a set of Samsung ringtones stitched together, jangling nondescriptly to kindly remind you that a friend texted without causing anything stronger than faint amusement. The lyrics are cloying, platitudinous inspiration-core; their most interesting moment is when they almost grab onto the image of the Notre Dame fire (?!) before realizing how brutally morbid that is and jerking back into the sea of empty inanities. Bono, fittingly, seems to have finally completed his transformation into an android, with his few attempts at Vocal Timbre™ sounding like they were carefully calculated for the optimal degree of heartstring-tugging. It’s all immensely creatively bankrupt, but as boring as it may be to listen to alone, this is “nothing music” at its finest. The ads will be brilliant. Don’t you like soccer? We do.
[0]

Samson Savill de Jong: Look, I get that any official tournament song is going to be the most inoffensively bland version it can possibly be. But I feel like this is an argument against the idea of even having an official tournament song at all. Football is not, and never has been, about coming together in a show of unity. It’s about competing with others to figure out which one of us are better and bragging about winning forever. Songs for individual national teams can lean into that whilst exposing the inherent silliness of it that makes sport wonderful, but tournament songs can’t, having to pretend like a literal competition makes us all on the same side. The lyrics are obviously and necessarily drek, but at least make the song fun to listen to. “We Are The People” can’t even give us that: slow bits with nothing but Bono singing inanity (i.e. emphasising the exact wrong thing) followed by uninspired EDM chords that you’ve heard a thousand times before. The success of a football song should be judged on whether you can imagine 1000s of boozed up people singing along in a stand, and this is as far away from that as it is possible to be.
[1]

That’s about 7°C, in case you were wondering…

[Video]
[5.57]

Samson Savill de Jong: An uptempo Dua Lipa pastiche about sexy sexy vampires — what more can you really ask for?
[7]

Iain Mew: The twanging canter sets a mood well enough, but not more than that, and the barely sketched details and swallowed words make it feel like a snippet from a journey with the interesting bits left out.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: The heavy, sinking guitar and drums and mowing bass are led by Drew’s thin, raspy voice that is surprisingly stronger than you notice at first as the synths are swept down. Drew strides forward with purpose, her voice lifting the song higher, and then drops it, disappearing into the smoke.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: I assume “45 Fahrenheit” is some sort of reference I’m not getting, thus giving some referential sexiness to being vaguely above but not quite freezing, and some sense to a Danish artist in a Celsius world just dropping “Fahrenheit” into the lyric, only a little less clunkily than when Suzanne Vega did it. Appealing to US streaming, maybe? The Dua Lipa impression might’ve been appeal enough two years ago, the vampire theme 15 years ago, and the Western-flick-via-“Toxic” instrumental any of the past few times that’s been a nascent trend. Not a bad bouncy chorus.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Whether it’s the autoignition point of euphonious numbers or something to do with vampires, the temperature befits a clinically cold blood. While the theme is off-kilter, the production’s punch is direct and the length is streaming-friendly. If anything it could be longer, but Drew Sycamore has a laser focus on elegance; it’s as if she’s used it to cut down “Lost on You”.
[7]

Alfred Soto: What the title means…well, your guess is as good as mine. But it’s up to the singer to define it, and Drew Sycamore’s nicotine rasp won’t get out of the way.
[4]

Juana Giaimo: A smooth western disco pop anthem. I have no complaints, but also nothing to get attached to.
[6]

This ain’t build-a-controversy either…

[Video]
[4.82]

Ady Thapliyal: When I first heard “Build a Bitch,” I assumed Warner Music had assembled a crack team of industry veterans to cook up the perfect anthem for the TikTok generation, but a quick look at the credits reveals that Poarch’s team was cobbled together and unproven. The biggest names listed are Salem Ilese and Sub Urban, C-listers who have scored one viral hit each with “Mad At Disney” and “Cradles,” respectively. With their help, “Build A Bitch” sounds alright, trendy but insubstantial; it’s entirely carried on the way it tweaks American anxieties around the e-girl phenomenon.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: Bulletproof execution of a concept I don’t like. Everything, from the carnival-ride bassline to the chirp of the backing vocals echoing “a bitch” is immaculate, candy-sweet, right on the money: the best possible version of a song specifically designed to make the listener feel they just ate their body weight in funnel cake. I suppose I’d feel it was more than empty calories if the lyrics did something more shocking with the (admittedly pretty fun) “Build a Bitch” metaphor.
[6]

Katie Gill: I cannot wait for the day that the music industry realizes that they don’t need to release a full-length track for a song that is basically just a TikTok hook. Because that’s all this is: two minutes of a song built solely around the line “this ain’t build a bitch.” I guarantee you, Bella Poarch: if you just put up a 1:30 version of this song that’s just the “build a bitch” chorus and the la-la-las in between for filler space, it’ll get you the same amount of downloads and save you so much money on the video budget.
[3]

Jeffrey Brister: At 34 I’m a fuddy-duddy when it comes to TikTok, but I’ve figured it out! You make a plain, non-descript song with some sticky lyrics (not melody–there’s hardly any melody here), and then let the visuals do the work. Makes for a reliable formula, but results in incredibly poor music: nothing to latch onto, nothing to engage with, just a container for 30-60 seconds of goofing off on camera.
[2]

Dede Akolo: Remembering the fact that Bella’s predominant brand does consist of being pretty on camera and crossing her eyes, I think having a song and video with this concept works beautifully. I know, an industry plant grows wide blah blah blah, but you cannot argue that “Build a Bitch” isn’t the best release from a TikTok star yet. It’s childish without being infantilizing, it’s catchy without being grating (although that depends on who you’re asking with that Melanie Martinez-airy vocal performance), and it tells a funny and provoking story. All this coupled with the very grounded and chill vibes she gives when she actually opens her mouth, and I think imma stan. I think we’re going to look back at Bella Poarch like we look at Megan Fox and say “oh, we hated her because she was pretty… whoops! My internalized misogyny is showing.” We all gotta survive under the cis-heteronormative racist capitalist patriarchy, and if I can shake my behind whilst doing so, I will! To this song!
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: One risks ok-boomering by pointing out that the whole concept was stolen from a video on the archaic platform Vine. One risks it even more by pointing out that Build-a-Bear Workshop was a dying mall brand even before COVID accelerated malls’ demise, and thus an obsolete reference verging on a dead one, but like other dying mall brands Build-a-Bear’s stock is lately at a five-year high, so what do I know? What I know is that I laughed harder at “Bob the Builder broke my heart” than anything else in the past few weeks. And while that wasn’t in a good way, it provided more enjoyment than the music — Melanie Martinez except not known problematic — or the concept. In accepting with a frown but without question the current definition of “perfect” looks, and ignoring that people do pick and choose for them constantly, this becomes even more retrograde than “All About That Bass.” Points for effort, I guess — i.e., one point for that backing vocal that kind of sounds like Ariana Grande trilling “I’m Coming Out,” the only effort here.
[1]

Nortey Dowuona: Bella’s soft and gently-taped-together voice carries a very overladen song that surges on the lyric “this ain’t build-a-bitch.”
[6]

Edward Okulicz: “Build a Bitch” really aggravates, rather like if a fairground ride’s music started taunting you — which is something of a shame as “this ain’t Build a Bitch,” the reason this song exists, is one hell of a hook. Those five words are quotable and pithy, as the wisdom of the TikTok masters often is. But even though you get quite a few repetitions of those magical two seconds, the rest just fills out the running time, and not in a very clever way. At least, because it’s 2021, the running time is mercifully short.
[4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: I’ve been trying to avoid using the word “catchy” on here due to its incredible vagueness, but “Build a Bitch” hasn’t left my head for a week. About half of that is its unhinged nursery-rhyme energy, like Marina when she still had her Diamonds. The other half is what it represents. There’s something intellectually fascinating about a TikToker who seems to have initially gone viral for being pretty taking a literal axe to her objectifiers, and there’s something intensely cathartic about an Asian woman doing the same. I could critique this song for being short or repetitive, but maybe that’s the point; it’s a snappy, quick-draw “fuck you,” meant to both gouge you in the moment and leave you bleeding out for days.
[8]

Alfred Soto: I mean, I suppose Doja Cat’s been around enough to serve as influence.
[3]

David Moore: This song was really funny the first time I heard it, like I actually laughed out loud at it, so I am very tempted to give it credit there. But alas, it is plagued with the affectations of all post-LDR(?) pop: it’s saggy and drab even with a literal music box in there somewhere and a bunch of impish sprites providing the back-up vocals. It all calls for something sunnier, and all I can think of is the post-Duff Disney blankness of the last viral Bella I’m aware of, on her song that also made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it almost ten years ago. I really need to write something about how 2002-2012 got memory-holed from public consciousness, huh?
[5]

Take me home, country bros…

[Video]
[3.89]

Nortey Dowuona: HEY THOMAS! (RUNNING HARD, NORTEY CLIMBS ON THE TRAIN, A SCROLL CLUTCHED IN HIS HAND, JUMPS ON THE CABOOSE.) YOU FORGOT ABOUT ME. So as the sickly sweet guitar swallowed by slide guitar, squashed bass, flatly drawn and papier-mâché drums, sweeping violins and Thomas’s slick voice, all proper and Southern and mannered, sitting brightly in the front of the mix slide down your throat, you’re meant to see this as some sweet reconciliation with the roots that birthed him. THOMAS, you were trying to leave, and since it didn’t work out, you want to come CRAWLING BACK!??! Fine, go sit there next to Jon Pardi and if Sam Hunt crashes and burns, we’ll call u.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: This spate of “I’m country again”/”it’s great to be country again” songs peppering country radio right now — because you can apparently, only “be country” by living in the South/driving a truck/etc. — is such unbelievably pandering bullshit, and I loathe everything about the trend. You wanna know why I don’t listen to country radio (along with their almost male-exclusive playlists)? Here’s Exhibit A. Musically, this isn’t bad at all, but I cannot and frankly, will not get past the song’s lyrical conceit. 
[0]

Ian Mathers: A revolting mishmash of cultural anxiety, dispatches from the zone where shibboleths and dog whistles meet, and complete nonsense (paying more attention to your spouse than your phone isn’t “country,” you dipshit). Would be less provoking if I didn’t grow up around people who hear this kind of song and immediately rush to make — or more likely share — Facebook posts about “real music” being back again.
[1]

Michael Hong: I hate when artists do this. When they completely reject everything they were because they were underperforming. “Look at the sepia tones! I’m holding an acoustic guitar! Look how scruffy I got!” It’s still the same thing Rhett’s always been. Corny. Like really corny. Country with a bit of pop. Except it’s just not fun.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Eric Church, I hope the namecheck swells your heart. Wearing its poignancy as easily as old socks, “Country Again” is decent corn. 
[6]

Al Varela: The thing I respect most about this song is that it celebrates small-town lifestyles and growing up, but doesn’t dismiss its previous experiences with the big city. It’s no secret that Thomas Rhett has at least some interest in being a pop star, but it’s nice to see him settle down and take advantage of some beautiful steel guitar and warm textures as he sings about coming back to his hometown and falling back in love with his culture. But it’s not done to disparage the glitz and glam of California; rather, it’s simply finding peace in the little moments of life that made you the person you are now. For once, a mainstream country song actually pays tribute and feels like the small town instead of using it as a gimmick. 
[8]

Samson Savill de Jong: That a song all about reconnecting with your country roots should sound so generic (as in, of the genre) should probably come as no surprise. Thomas Rhett’s lyrics are really good in my opinion, as they display feelings he’s going through. He avoids putting the glitzy L.A. lifestyle on blast, which would’ve been an easy trick to pull, instead he is contemplative, and reflects more that he’s a little older and wiser and his desires are more towards hanging out and drinking beers with his bros than running the rat race, and I can respect that. So it’s well written, but lord is “Country Again” dull to listen to. The song matches the mood of the lyrics, but there’s so little energy and nothing to cling on to, it’s putting me to sleep and slipping out of mind every time I listen to it.
[5]

Dede Akolo: Honestly, I’m not well versed in the pop-country trends of the moment. All I have are assumptions of an entire genre being comprised of nostalgia-soaked, pint carrying, guitar-slinging white people who inconspicuously want to make something “great again” (America or otherwise). My favourite country or folk tunes enrich themselves with yearning. There’s nothing like a guitar that gently weeps. This song, serviceable. I use that word so much because the ingredients present themselves in all the ways that make a song delicious but… it doesn’t feel filling. It doesn’t satisfy any hunger within me. Not that every song needs to have a “greater meaning”, but songs, especially pop songs, should at the very least strive to sound different from each other. I feel like besides being an outsider to the genre’s core audience, there is this stagnancy I feel in this song. The voice grovels when it does, the strings flourish when the need to, but nothing ever provokes. No thought, line, or melodic phrase gives me pause. So I let the song float away like a tumbleweed into the sunset. 
[3]

Edward Okulicz: “Southern Comfort Zone,” only really, really tired.
[5]

BTS gives us English single number two…

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[5.67]

Katie Gill: It’s interesting that they reference Usher when this song is obviously more Bruno Mars. Likewise, it’s very weird how this song has a mostly Western songwriting team when a few of these lyrics feel like they’re translated from Korean into English — “side step right left to my beat” is the worst offender. Anyway, it’s just basically “Dynamite” again, an attempt to firmly cement the band on to the Western charts with a bright, dance track with vaguely retro stylings. But at least it’s a more fun “Dynamite!”
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Yes, “Butter” is definitely a “Dynamite 2” and, even though they mention Army, it is evidently directed to a worldwide general public who doesn’t even care who BTS is and who can casually enjoy this while shopping or listening to a playlist they didn’t make. As much as I like when artists release singles that target their fandom, I also find “Butter” extremely fun. I like the contrast of the beat-marked verses with the more melodic pre-chorus and chorus. My favorite parts are the rap verses, especially those “OH!”s and chants that add mess to an otherwise too-pretty song. This isn’t unique, but who doesn’t like butter? 
[7]

Kayla Beardslee: Butter is not a great title (although it is a hilarious way of pandering to the American market), but, considering that its lyrics are a parade of vague, forgettable cliches, it’s not like there were any better options. You can’t even say that the writing seems AI-generated, because an AI would be funnier and weirder and feel much less focus-grouped. I don’t even hate this song: a better, fuller, and richer-sounding improvement on “Dynamite.” But, damn, it’s so easy to dunk on, because “Butter” is a song completely devoid of any artistic meaning or purpose. Even “Dynamite” had a bit of spirit and novelty to it, with its desire to break the Western market in a way that hadn’t been done before. But BTS has broken the market, they have cracked the code, and they could easily now stagnate at Blackpink levels in their English-language efforts. Let’s hope not, but this is a sign that Hybe leadership is at least thinking about it, because I can’t find a scrap of substance or originality in this song. We all eat junk food and pay attention to pop culture, sometimes by choice and sometimes not: empty calories like “Butter” are a fundamental part of the systems of consumption that we exist within, for good and for bad. Also, screw being existential: “No ice on my wrist, I’m that n-ice guy” prevents me from giving this anything higher than a [5].
[5]

Al Varela: One day I’m going to have to admit to myself that I love BTS’s shameless attempts at winning over the American market. There’s something to their energy that always puts a smile on my face, no matter how formulaic and calculated the song is. I know what this song is trying to sell me. I know there’s not much personality or creativity that went into it. But I don’t care because it’s such a joyous, delectable song that takes its concept and goes all the way with it.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: The strangeness of Butter isn’t in the music — the music is pretty well made, standard proto 80’s robo-funk. It’s not even the singing by JungKook and V with assists from Jin and Jimin, nor the perfunctory rapping by Suga and RM. It’s that it’s entirely in English, and sounds like something the 1975 could make in their sleep.
[5]

Dede Akolo: My friend Katrina (who I know is reading this, hello!) brought up an interesting point with the release of BTS’s first English-language song, “Dynamite,” last year: not everyone has the charisma to pull off that song. It’s not just charisma, which has seen BTS beautifully transition from rough-n-tough schoolboys to heartbroken angst-riddled teenagers. No, it’s disco charisma. The kind of charisma that verges on corny and hinges on sex appeal. Seeing “Butter” however, I am inclined to say that not everyone got the part they needed to pull off “Dynamite.” It hit me in the first pre-chorus: Jin sings the word “two” with the same charm as that “ding!” in “Kiss Me More.” It makes me smile because Jin’s voice is stable, nothing with main vocal potential, but it sustains in all that dancing and brings a distinctively boyish quality to their songs. A brightness, the way for Jimin to finish the first half of the song and for everyone else to sing the remainder. My least favorite part of the song is the first verse; it’s a rocky start. I feel like it should’ve had a longer pure instrumental, but I know that doesn’t help streaming numbers. 
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: The bigger they get, the more that BTS seem to become the Backstreet Boys of the 2020s, and that’s not a positive. Five to seven years ago, they were making really progressive pop, but nowadays, chasing the dollar, it’s just more of the same pop-by-committee — “Butter” has, surprise surprise, seven credited writers — guaranteed to be globally huge but artistically empty. Invest well, guys.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Clearly the work of complete nerds, this pulls off its slavish retro tendencies with such a rictus grin you can’t help be won over. Once you get your groans out of the way at the opening line, “Butter” shares more properties with things you might put butter on rather than butter itself — popcorn, primarily. Adding a ’90s boyband rap to an ’80s bassline is never not going to work, and all I’m sitting here wondering which out of RM and Suga is Abs and which one is J.
[7]

Alex Clifton: “Butter” is an unappetizing title and the song doesn’t do much to help itself either. It’s bland, yet I know it will be everywhere this summer. Since BTS broke into the US market, it seems that their releases have become less daring and more radio-safe, a way of toning themselves down for Western audiences. In addition, Army will eat everything up, as it’s a public stamp of approval of the b(r)and, but that doesn’t mean that the product itself is good. While I applaud how hard BTS have worked over their near eight-year career to achieve an astronomical amount of success across the globe, I’m frustrated with how mediocre their biggest songs are becoming. BTS were scrappy underdogs who fought their way to the top, but now that they’re there, it feels like they have pushed aside a lot of the risks that made them interesting. 
[3]