One of Türkiye’s favourite new girl groups, if less of a fave of the Turkish courts…
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Claire Davidson: There’s only so much mileage I can get out of this kind of confrontational pop track, all clipped, rubbery synths and outsized percussion thumps. Oddly enough, though, “Amatör” could actually stand to be more abrasive: maybe add some sort of clattering melody, or amplify the track’s low-end resonance, and you’d have a song that’s far more actively gripping than its current muted impact allows. Still, in the wake of Manifest being issued actual prison sentences by the Turkish government for acts of public indecency in 2025 (charges that were later suspended), there’s something cathartic about listening to this particular girl group make an anthem explicitly rebuffing male ego, acknowledging all the bluster and false bravado needed to make such defamatory claims.
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Jessica Doyle: Even with a long-established high tolerance for K-pop-inspired groups operating primarily in Turkic languages, I’m not loving this. The verses are muted–much too muted in Esin’s case at about 1:11, I wonder if the mixing did her a disservice–and the choruses not powerful enough to provide the necessary contrast. That said, given what Manifest has been through, I’m glad to see them again, showing their presumably nation-destroying bellybuttons and declaring, “If I upset you, I’m gonna keep on.” (In a lovely coincidence, Alice Evans, who has studied both cultural change in Türkiye and how women’s rights influence and are influenced by art and consumer goods, is also back.) None of the groups I linked to in the first sentence are still around, so: keep on, Manifest! Better songs will come, or be irrelevant; either works.
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Iain Mew: It’s cool to hear this flavour of 2NE1-style banger being done by a group with cultural origins closer to those of some of the sounds. The title is just a hint too fitting in places, but that’s a good chorus and I particularly like the way the last one builds up to a sudden stop, sirens heading off into the distance.
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Nortey Dowuona: I don’t know what prompted Elber to provide the girls with such a flat musical progression with these synths – the sharp, sawtooth synth jabs over the limp, flat drumwork are disappointing – but there is a dropping synth riff during the first pre-chorus that instead saps the song of the momentum. Then he dispenses with it once the next pre-chorus happens, leading to a flat, dull transition that doesn’t help build more momentum, then finally the final bridge brightens with light piano chords which enliven the song, then are zapped away once the final chorus arrives, returning the tepid torpor and draining the song of any color with a dry, empty fade out. Yuck.
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Katherine St. Asaph: “Naughty Girl” was a good single!
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Ian Mathers: I listened to this so many times trying to figure out what to say about it that I think I incepted myself into really liking the chorus.
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