No puns, no groaners, in fact this entire entry is entirely free of Dad-ju Jokes.
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[4.43]
Jessica Doyle: Ohh my Lord that credit: “Dirécted by.” I’m laughing! I mean, the joke’s likely on me, as a far-from-native speaker, but I’m still laughing. Anyway. Song? Okay. Let’s see how much French I do still understand. Hmmm… the translation I’m getting is, “Guys are jerks, and I know, because I have a long history of being a jerk, which I present to you in the guise of remorse but really I just want to remind you that if I treat you badly it’s not you, it’s my habit, no reason to get mad or even emotional. But I believe you to be hotter than this particular former WAG, so continue to be something I can show off, please.” Y’know, when we were all enjoying Aya Nakamura saying Trop tard, trop tard a few weeks ago, we didn’t realize she was addressing another French singer.
[3]
Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: It’s a pity that such an effective sense of melodicism and such a seamless flow come wrapped in a monument to male insecurity. “If I love you, I’m jealous/when I love you, I’m jealous” is kind of a red-flag statement, isn’t it?
[5]
Iain Mew: After Halsey and Rosalía I might just be starting to hear “Cry Me a River” everywhere, but doing so adds something extra to this outro. Good thing, since the appeal of Dadju’s conversational vocal line, a series of one-more-thing surges slowly blurring into one, has worn out by then.
[5]
Tim de Reuse: Wish I didn’t know enough French to understand what he’s saying: “Homme-femme y’a pas d’amitié” is such a rhythmically satisfying phrase to rattle off before you realize what it means! The delivery in the chorus is a convincingly desperate lament full of out-of-breath turnarounds, but it takes an awfully charitable reading to make an emotionally healthy human being out of the narrator.
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: The slippery guitar is screwed behind the monotonous drum programming which keeps promising a breakdown, then obliges on the chorus, even as the washed out synths float into the clouds, pulling away from Dadju. He still sings passionately and sweetly, yet still cannot pull himself any higher and the sinking and settling production only serves to pull him lower into the bass drum morass.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: I don’t speak French, but Dadju performs “Jaloux” with touches and inflections that are understandable in any language. It’s universal stuff, and all of it I find tiring. There’s that four-note ascending hook feels really early 00s (I keep coming back to it being a hybrid of the touchstone “Cry Me a River” and the non-touchstone “I Can’t Break Down“), but with up-to-the-minute sad boy whining about having bad feelings and knowing about it which makes it the woman’s fault if she has a problem with it. Yawn. I’m guilty of enjoying songs about being a lousy boyfriend or girlfriend if the song is a bop, but this takes a promising melody and mopes so much that it drowns; it’s just such a joyless cocktail of week-old champagne and decade-old fake remorse.
[4]
Will Adams: The conceit of “It’s my right to be hellish/I still get jealous” is easier to swallow when not delivered via falsetto-whine-Adam-Levine-disco but rather a plaintive guitar + trap arrangement. But a quick examination of the lyrics makes one realize it’s just a Trojan horse filled with the same bullshit.
[4]