That hair is going places…
[Video][Website]
[4.11]
Scott Mildenhall: A song very clearly from the viewpoint of a deranged stalker, sung by a 12-year-old boy. What an absolutely ridiculous work of art. The vocal delivery is suitably intense, the Aviciisms are threatening as well as exciting, the melodic similarity of the chorus to that of MGMT’s “Kids” is a neat thematic reference even if not intentional, and the attempt at Michael Jackson-esque “ad-libbing” on “ooh, let me show it to ya baby” is, much like the song as a whole, charmingly daft.
[8]
Anthony Easton: This is so well traveled, it might as well be the A Train/the Bloor night bus/Bari UQAM at 8:45 AM/etc.
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: Turns out that while America was catching up with the whole EDM thing, the Finnish were teaching kids how to become disposable dance-pop centerpieces in elementary school. Isac Elliot aced his marks when it comes to being unremarkable.
[2]
Alfred Soto: I dreamed a little dream in which Low, Brad Paisley, Jessie Ware, and Hadoken were lieutenants in the Rihanna Army, their parade ground marching triggering a million EDM beats heard round the world.
[1]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The lyric about “times when people lock their doors and hide inside” weirdly stings after last week’s news of Boston turning to dragnet-style searches and mandatory curfews. It is funny how something as milquetoast as “New Way Home” can suddenly plant itself deep in your brain and grant itself worldly significance with one harmless lyric. Pop music is magical like that — it reflects our worst, our best, our fears, our triumphs and can do this best when there are no pretensions on the line, when bubblegum latches onto us and gives our thoughts a direct voice. Perhaps I’m projecting. (I’m projecting.) I don’t even like the song that much. But I received a little jolt in that moment, in that lyric, knowing that music will always find ways to trigger thoughts and feelings that I was unaware were even there.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: On nearly every rational level, “New Way Home” is downright appalling. Its bosh is standard-issue and ham-fisted. The lyrics in the second verse are awful, and the delivery of “I want it that way, let me have it that way” is downright creepy (I blame the producers) and stands in the way of the attempt to paint Elliott as a pint-sized ingenu navigating his first outsized crush. But I listen past the flaws and the rest of it’s damn near perfect The guileless middle eight — “I know that these are the times, when people lock their doors and hide inside” — is weirdly touching. The chorus soars and reminds me of his countryman Antti Tuisku’s fantastic and relatively-unheralded New York album from a few years ago, though with the added benefit of high notes unaffected by puberty. If you can block out the negatives, not think of Bieber, and forgive the lyricist, there’s real lift in here.
[8]
Brad Shoup: For this to truly work, so much needed not to go wrong. There’s an inherent poignance in Elliot’s preteen plume of EDM smoke, and the “Kids” nick wraps up naivete and devotion and grown-up work. But the production team can’t resist going broad on his range. Bieber gulps, proto-tenor, a quick nod to Benny & Björn: what are they doing, trying to establish a workable career plan? The lyric, obsessed with shelter, already offers a half-dozen stumbling blocks; hearing him split time between mournful pleasure and showing off is brutal whiplash.
[6]
Jer Fairall: The sudden, apocalyptic turn this takes in its closing lyrics (“I know that these are times/when people lock their doors and hide inside”) is the only real point of interest here. Perhaps such a perspective is every bit as inevitable for anyone born in 2000 as the “anyone can sing” American Idol/YouTube aesthetic that is the only possible explanation for how a vocal this feeble ever got on a record. I’m not saying I could have done any better at 13 (or now), just that I would have rightfully never been given the chance.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: You know Rihanna’s won when even little Finnish boys sound like her. (In “Stay” srsmode, but still.) Or maybe this just sounds like Calvin Harris before puberty.
[3]