Break me off a piece of that Kitschy Katchi Bar…
[Video][Website]
[4.57]
Ramzi Awn: Gimme a break. Literally. Down to the canned vocals, “Katchi” is tailor-made for a Kit Kat commercial. Except Kit Kat already has a jingle, and it’s much more catchy.
[2]
Nortey Dowuona: Decent synth horns, decent bass, decent 2014 EDM drums, doo-wop ad-libs (why?), a bongo somewhere, scattered piano, and Nick Waterhouse trying so hard to be Mick Jagger and ending up at Joe Jonas with a sore throat.
[5]
Julian Axelrod: Nick Waterhouse played a lot of the low-budget music festivals I frequented growing up in Los Angeles, usually in a thankless mid-afternoon slot. And even when he had to compete with grueling heat and indifferent crowds and the noise of a nearby taco truck, he always put on a rousing, hook-filled show. This song reminds me of every time I saw a talented performer like Waterhouse struggle to compete with sound bleed from the EDM DJ spinning a block away, creating an awkward accidental mashup. Although this remix is intentional, he still deserves better.
[3]
Alfred Soto: No human can duplicate what this deejay and singer do with the title hook. I’m convinced they’re robots.
[4]
Ashley John: “Katchi” is precisely concoted to be a crossover hit — borrowing bits from each genre shamelessly and without finesse. Together they are mildly convincing but hopelessly catchy.
[5]
Hannah Jocelyn: Everything about this sounds like a future meme (which is how I think of pop hooks now, yes) — the talkbox intro, the horns I’m already picturing over that one Aerobics video, the plethora of tweets trying to figure out what “katchi” is. I suppose charts are extra unpredictable now as songs like “Feel It Still” and “Gucci Gang” co-exist in the top ten, but this seems like the kind of hit that can appeal to all demographics with the organic instrumentation of the former and the viral potential of the latter. It should feel cynical, but it’s really just pure fun. Bring on the funky massage memes!
[7]
Edward Okulicz: I’m sure people with taste will (pretend to) hate this, and I suppose there are reasons to. For the meme-ready track, Waterhouse is massively overreaching as if it isn’t a meme-ready track. The word “katchi” would be no better if it meant something than if it didn’t. But there comes a point where something with this many catchy parts, put together with this much evil intent is just too hard to resist. Oh, earworms, have my brain, I wasn’t using it anyway.
[6]