By “do it again” she means, “say ‘do it again’ again”…
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[7.00]
Abby Waysdorf: The best Britney Spears song of the past 5 years — and I trust those reading this website know how that’s a compliment. Britney at her best and most interesting was the sexy robot as a tragedy, gleaming dance-pop with an underlying uncomfortableness about how present she really was in the whole thing. Robyn, the moment’s most celebrated pop robot, takes that idea (and the gleaming Scandipop of Britney’s best) and pushes it up, giving her robot more agency but no more of an ability to stop. It’s propulsive and irresistible, ready to not only dominate the summer’s dance clubs but with the sort of classic pop sound that suggests it’ll get the floor packed for the next few years. And yet there’s still that hesitation, that wondering of why we’re at the club at all. But we can’t resist our programming.
[9]
Alfred Soto: It hurt so good — sometimes love don’t feel like it should. Setting these sentiments to music requires loudness and hysteria. Over Röyksopp’s bank of keyboards Robyn gets loud and hysterical. Behind the times though, reminding me that Britney’s Femme Fatale did this louder and more hysterical.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Robyn’s voice sounds as brittle as always, and her brokenness redeems a track that tries to hard to prevent us from noticing how anemic the lyrics are.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: At time of writing, the world’s greatest football team, Grimsby Town FC, have just failed to escape England’s fifth division through the playoffs for the second consecutive year. In truth it’s the latest knockback of a well-documented, lengthy and irresistible decline, and yet to thousands of people the club itself is still just as irresistible, as irresistible as a different one is to Robyn. With more show to the tell than usual, her meta description of tension and release is one of everything that you can apply to anything — for some reason, all you can ever do is do it again.
[8]
Crystal Leww: One of my favorite terrible and corny musical tropes is the use of music as a metaphor for love. “Do It Again” takes this trope and flips it on its head, letting love be a metaphor for music, Robyn’s lyrics functioning as both an indictment of a circular relationship as well as the command prompt for the music. That pre-chorus mirrors her emotional turmoil, the build-up, the anticipation, the “mmmmmmm.” Robyn has had a long and documented history of being a robot or loving robots, and “Do It Again” is what happens when the robot learns to close the positive feedback loop and learns to love itself.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Röyksopp strobes between parts that are highs — the icicle trance of the chorus, that low synth that whips like a pulled-apart glowstick bracelet — and parts that sound like La Roux. Robyn gets the lows, namely the on-the-nose lyrics — “the anticipation like ‘mmmm,'” really? Circa “The Girl and the Robot” Robyn might’ve pulled it off anyway, but something died in her delivery when she went from “feat.” to “&.”
[6]
Iain Mew: The single version of “Do It Again” is impressively tight, and as a representation of compulsively diving into something its jerky intensity works out. Its collaborators feel a little too tightly meshed into the idea of the partnership to shine as they could, though. Röyksopp provide a straightforward imitation of Body Talk‘s more glistening pop sounds, and Robyn’s performance has something of the guest vocalist to it, never taking the chance to go all out on emotion. It’s like they’re needlessly stepping out of each others’ way at crucial moments.
[6]
Brad Shoup: When the synths aren’t hitting like gauze, they’re being waggled like giant sheets of rubber. I don’t like comparing tunes to past glories, but this feels like a roller-rink flip of “With Every Heartbeat,” but like the couple-skate portion where the DJ’s just kind of going for a feel and the kids have to hustle really hard to make these lyrics work.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Great as a pop song, great as a dance song, great as a theoretical guide vocal for a track intended for Britney (that “one! more! time!” that opens the song!). Feels like a shower of hedonism and guilt in three glistening, grinding minutes.
[8]
Will Adams: The genius of “Do It Again” is that it keeps the “it” vague for almost half the song. What is “it?” There’s talk of a comedown, implying that it’s drugs; there’s talk of the build-up, implying that it’s about music; there’s talk of not caring what they say, implying that it’s about partying until the sun comes up. It’s only when the strings seep in during the middle eight that it becomes clear: “We should not be friends. We just do it again.” It’s as if Robyn has been dancing (with someone this time) happily until realizing she’s caught in the same toxic pattern. It’s a crucial switch; until that moment, “Do It Again” seems lyrically rote. But wait for it, and suddenly it hits, and Royksopp’s gorgeous backing of gated synths and twisting bass turns into something much more sinister.
[9]
Megan Harrington: I know this song is, more or less, only about sex, but I also like how vague and fill in the blanks the lyrics are. If anything is capable of posing a threat to “Problem” as the summer anthem it’s other Iggy Azalea songs going to have to be more dance (specifically, EDM) oriented and capable of applying to a range of situations. “Do It Again” is your shots anthem, your Instagram anthem, your fifth street fest of the summer anthem. Whatever it is you do, do it again. Especially if that’s listening to Robyn, because the command is also directed at the play button.
[8]