IDK abt Gryffin x CRJ tbh, wbu?
[Video]
[5.08]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: In terms of these collaborations, OMG < OMG < OMG < OMG < OMG.
[6]
Ashley Bardhan: Is this The Chainsmokers?
[5]
Will Adams: That conspiracy theory about Avril Lavigne secretly being replaced by a clone mid-career but instead it’s Carly Rae Jepsen being replaced by Tove Styrke.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Distinguishing CRJ’s good from mediocre work presents difficulties. She’d present “Oh my god, ooh/I think I might love you” as a hook in a song without Gryffin — a better song. Although she inhabits “OMG,” the paint job, tile, and wainscots aren’t worth boasting about.
[5]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Carly’s performance does the topline justice, but there are points where it’s trying to cram too many words in at once. More important, the decision to have a predominantly instrumental chorus is a tragic one — Jepsen’s best with big choruses, and the final one here really shows what this could’ve been if she wasn’t buried in the mix. That “Oh my God! I think I might love you!” is the sort of generic hook that Jepsen sells so well, imbuing it with a surprising depth of emotion. Why stymie that?
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: The beginning evokes “Overpowered,” so it’s inevitably downhill from there; the chorus hinges on a sudden realization that Clairo did better as an aside, and the drop drowns Carly’s voice in generic electrobibble.
[3]
Iain Mew: The clumpy bass and thinly predictable drops aren’t going to do the work of supporting lines like “can you hear my body is calling your name” so it’s entirely on Carly Rae Jepsen’s performance. Raising this to the level of adequate is as impressive a display as I’ve heard of the concentrated feeling she can bring to anything.
[6]
Josh Buck: The confident, pulsating eroticism of Carly Rae Jepsen is something that I think has been brushed over in the mountains and mountains of praise that has been deservedly heaped on her in the past few years. Here she builds the hook of the song around sex so good that you confuse it for love, and makes the whole thing sound playful and casual, and yet electric. What’s even left to say at this point? She’s been genetically engineered to put out sparkling pop gems with such regularity that it’s easy to take her for granted. But don’t sleep on this one. It might be the last great pool party song of the summer. I only liked a lot of things before CRJ started serving up bops, but I love the way she does it now.
[7]
Joshua Lu: Considering how Dedicated isn’t even three months old yet, I think it’s a bit early for Carly Rae Jepsen to release what feels like an album reject, even if the reject is still pretty decent. “OMG” shares several qualities with Dedicated that helped distinguish it from Carly’s other albums, some of them good (a compelling sense of restraint, like she’s now hesitant to being taken to the feeling) and some of them bad (slightly wonky vocal mixing). The only aspect that differentiates this song from the album is that inapposite drop, seemingly rendered by Gryffin mashing his dick into the soundboard.
[6]
Iris Xie: “OMG” gives me the same suffocated feelings as when I first listened to Perfume’s “Cosmic Explorer” and understood how it was the new direction for their sound. With “Cosmic Explorer,” I got so upset at how Nakata threw away his sticky, intricate hooks and arrangements for utterly generic EDM tropes as to create a soporific blanket of sound — “OMG” does the exact thing here and lays waste to an incredibly anonymous pop song. Jepsen sounds like a bland demo singer struggling above an unfun cash register ring and an oscillating synth beat that sounds as dull and muddled as the processing on her voice. It’s utterly phoned in — did Gryffin never learn that you can use synths to, I don’t know, elicit Emotion, instead of trying to slot a song into an indistinguishable Spotify New Releases playlist?
[4]
Michael Hong: There are moments where Carly Rae Jepsen seems poised to absolutely burst across the track, so it’s really a shame that she seems buried in the mix across the chorus and particularly on the bridge. Points at least for Jepsen’s breathy and seductive vocals, but even that won’t save this lovely but generic EDM fodder.
[4]
Kayla Beardslee: Appropriately fun, summery, and (except for the feature attached to it) disposable.
[6]