Arson is the slamming screen door, sneakin’ out late, tapping on your window…
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[3.57]
Andrew Karpan: It’s no understatement to say the peculiar fantasy of Mimi Webb’s biggest hit so far haunts the psyche. West End Caleb. Jacob Elordi’s turn as Nate in “Euphoria.” Somebody should really do something to these dudes, and Mimi Webb has an answer that’s allegedly informed by getting right under the line of the burden of proof needed by your local prosecutor’s office.
[4]
Will Adams: An electropop “Sunny Came Home”, eh? Sure, I’ll take it. but at least Shawn Colvin didn’t conspire with cops.
[5]
Leah Isobel: Opening a light meme-bait pop song with a line about making friends with the police? In 2022?
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: “Before He Cheats,” minus the country, plus a higher class of felony. Also a little bit of “Call Your Girlfriend” and “I Love It,” in how Mimi Webb and producer Cirkut summon SURGING POP ANTHEMRY! in hopes that the resultant dopamine flood will make listeners forgive the narrator’s crappy behavior. But while they do bring the loudness, they don’t bring the emotional stakes. Not once does Webb’s performance feel fully, viciously engaged with either the heartbreak or the crime.
[6]
Ian Mathers: Well, that’s two “on fire” songs in a row here where it feels like there’s a weird tonal mismatch, like there’s no real heat to them. There it was a minor problem; here it’s a major one. If you’re not going to go for intensity to match the text, then your relative restraint still has to give us something — to be imperially icy, or sharply disdainful, or even stunned into blankness. “House On Fire” just feels like someone acting the way they think they ought to act.
[3]
Ady Thapliyal: The pop singer Carly Smithson, then known as Carly Hennessy, was unceremoniously dropped from her deal with MCA Records after just one push. One (pretty good) single, one promotional campaign, one debut album, and that’s it. Her story became one of the definitive snapshots of the dysfunctional 2000s-era music business, just as Mimi Webb’s will be one of the 2020s. Today’s media landscape rewards a firehose-like release schedule, so Webb, backed by Epic Records, has blasted us with single after underperforming single. As for the music, I can honestly say that “House On Fire” captures the feeling of being endlessly doused by Big Content’s water cannon.
[0]
Alfred Soto: After a scrumptious opening synth squiggle, “House on Fire” settles into benign post-Lorde anonymity mitigated by a conceit that Mimi Webb may or may not mean. If she sets the house on fire, no wonder she made friends with the cops.
[5]