God, remember Vine?
[Video]
[3.67]
Katherine St Asaph: Unlike Ruth B’s breakout “Lost Boy,” “Slow Fade” to my knowledge wasn’t written in Vine-length intervals, so that’s a plus. Ruth B’s also got a few years on that single — years that, it seems, included some vocal training, or at least better vocal production. The result is a polished ballad rather than a janky one, the kind Låpsley or London Grammar might release, made of gospel piano and airy ambience. I like “Slow Fade” best in the moments that it flickers a bit outside the formula’s lines: Ruth’s feathery melisma in the background, or the way the chorus stops abruptly with a snap (I’m not sure that one works, but it does surprise).
[5]
Alfred Soto: My first thought: “genteel.” Then: “wan.”
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: This wispy-voiced click-track fantasia sounds like it was written for an American car commercial.
[1]
John Seroff: “Slow Fade” slots neatly into the genre I think of as Grey’s Anatomy-core: music constructed solely to be played over the multiple story-closing sections at the end of a Grey’s Anatomy episode. It’s not a song I’m going to intentionally listen to again, but if you’re ever looking for accompaniment to two doctors making out in a supply closet while someone mourns their mother dying next door and two best friends have a playful food fight in the downstairs commissary while a doctor triumphantly finishes sewing up a gunshot child, it’s just the thing.
[4]
Juana Giaimo: When I listened to this for the first time, I thought my teenage self would like it. I then checked our reviews of “Lost Boy” and saw I also wrote that my teenage self would find comfort in that song. “Slow Fade” sounds more mature and definitely has more interesting production, but I wish that didn’t mean simply adding the typical quirky touches in the form of “uh-uh”s and snaps as part of the beat.
[5]
Stephen Eisermann: Having gone through this emotion right at the start of the pandemic, this hit me like a ton of bricks on first listen. As Ruth B casually pleads for the love between her and her lover t dissipate, I thought back to the feelings I had and how badly I wanted him to end it. Thankfully, eventually, he did – but it still really hurt. And maybe I shouldn’t be weighing my personal experience so heavily in how I rank this track, but something peppy lives beneath the melody here and I… it just doesn’t sit all that right with me.
[5]