Please break up with all significant others who put arrows through your head, no matter how chill they are.
[Video]
[4.38]
Kalani Leblanc: Joji, riding on the coattails of his Filthy Frank/Pinkguy fame, releases a 3 minute reiteration of “SAD CHILL ANIME BOI” Youtube compilations. The subgenre has been lame since its emergence, so they don’t need a posterboy. His honesty doesn’t excuse the murky and muddy piano looping because neither are effective. Entirely emotionless, though it’s insisting on being something heart wrenching. Joji loves to flex how deep and meaningful his releases are without actually hearing its stale state–or maybe even his songs at all.
[3]
Micha Cavaseno: Oh, Spooky Black. So much to answer for. And so many other forms of lifeless faux & B tracks of dreariness as a cheap substitute for emotive interactions will continue to moan us off into the night, leaving us with nobody willing to be held accountable for once for their words or for what they’ve enabled.
[1]
Tim de Reuse: The self-obsessed self-sorry numbness of it crystallizes into something affecting in a few scattered lines (The disaffected “Will he treat you like shit just the way that I did?” chief among them) but for the most part it’s shallow and cartoonish; our narrator sings in a tired groan, mopes through somber piano tinkling, seems less a sympathetic schmuck and more like someone who needs to shut up, go home, get some sleep, and get over it.
[4]
Alfred Soto: From the depths of his self-absorption — signified by the filtered piano, trip-hop beat, and Nebraska harmonies — Joji stirs some semblance of anger. If “Will He” has novelty, it’s in how it stays connected to bitterness. Brevity helps too.
[5]
Ryo Miyauchi: Faint vocals of “Will He” leak into the nocturne pianos like a conversation from the neighboring room. The separation between the music and lyrics gets in the way of the two fully coming together, but eavesdropping upon such naked, private matters is an unnerving experience in itself.
[5]
Anjy Ou: I find the music video an odd pairing with the song. Sure, you get the sense that Joji isn’t “just [making] sure you’re okay”, but any rage or anger expressed in the lyrics is muted, almost as if underwater; the sparse production gives the impression of depths to which light can’t reach. It sounds like a sensory deprivation tank, or the bottom of the ocean – deep and dark and heavy and lonely, no sound except that of your own breath, and your heartbeat.
[7]
Nortey Dowuona: Soft, understated piano drifts atop flat 808s as Joji desperately pleads for his ex to give him thumbs up about her new boo. Somehow this is less loathsome. Maybe it’s Joji being a much better singer?
[6]
Will Adams: Vibe in search of a song.
[4]