Delayed R&B hit alert!
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[7.00]
Jonathan Bogart: I’m all in favor of electrogoth R&B, especially when the elements are pared down so much that a delicate AutoTune quaver on the chorus can stand in for deep pools of emotion. The way this track ebbs and builds is, dare I say it, Princely.
[8]
Brad Shoup: I’m really digging the beds and buzzes. They’re not musique concrète, obviously, but they are a mournful abstraction. Fiona’s fidelity is to the one strident register; mumbles — or even anger — are subservient to the invented drama of someone who knows what to do and does not. I suppose that can be its own kind of poignancy.
[5]
John Seroff: Uninspired Puffy-lite, dubstep-ish R&B production and unnecessary electronic finials on the vocals threaten to capsize this leaky dinghy of a track, but star power tows it to safety.
[7]
Alex Ostroff: After last year’s spate of female-fronted responses to Marvin’s Room, it was a matter of time before a ‘4 AM’ happened. Thankfully, the post-Drake soundscape, the mumbled phone conversation, and the grinding synths from ‘Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart‘ are a starting point, and not the entire point. The lyrics are more like Chrisette Michele’s “Epiphany” than any of the post-breakup anthems that inhabited 2011’s late night R&B template. Melanie’s resigned vocals during the verses lend extra oomph to the chorus, which walks the line between scornful, angry and sad. The skittering drums and the final chorus’ wailing guitar probably overstate the drama — her powerhouse voice is sufficient to convey the emotion — but what really holds ‘4 AM’ back from perfection is the bridge, whose lamentation that “I’d make the perfect wife” seems out of step with the personality otherwise on display.
[9]
Iain Mew: The song starts with Melanie worrying that she’s “feeling kind of crazy… the kind you feel when you love somebody”. The song is powered by that tension between that love and the self-aware realisation that she’s acting irrationally. She circles around between the two, caught in the uncertainty as to whether her man is “somewhere with a dancer” or has just “bumped his head”. The minimal, moody music, her self-awareness and the sense of wallowing in insomniac worst-case scenario horror allows her to indulge in the extreme dramatics of scars on her chest and sacrifices without ridicule, and when the escalating drums eventually kick in its with a beautifully forlorn sense of inevitability.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Amazing, isn’t it, how a female singer might think Drake’s spare crypto-introspection worth experimenting with. When said singer fulfills every cliche about feminine longing and need depicted in a Drake song, though, it’s easy. Fiona can project empathy: note she can’t sing “crazy’ at the 0:20 mark without her voice cracking. But the only way I’ll accept mirror gazing from her and him is if it’s sufficiently insinuating, and I don’t accept how Fiona conflates spareness with hookiness, especially when this thing is one minute too long.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Drake minus Drake, one straw from “I Care” and one barrier from an awakening. In a better world, she’d either have crossed over already, or the latter two wouldn’t help keep her from it.
[7]