Octasongwriting.
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[5.33]
Josh Love: Put four prominent cooks in the kitchen and end up with a hot mess. The chorus is numbingly bashy and the lyrics worse than nonsense. “You’re the dynamite in my chains.” “You shot me down like a live wire.” The puzzling title only lends credence to the feeling that the words here were translated in and out of English about a half-dozen times.
[4]
Will Adams: There’s an army of industry bigwigs supporting Ryn Weaver, so it follows that “OctaHate” sounds focus-grouped and polished for success. But let’s look at what we’ve got: Lorde snaps and vocal hiccups; one of those Dr. Luke-bred choruses that sounds like a buildup instead of a drop; and Charli XCX vocal affects. There are worse recipes for success.
[7]
Anthony Easton: This is the new GaGa, isn’t it — connected, anonymous, ambitious, starting with well placed gigs, social climbing with an internet frenzy, and a small wink and nod. There are different names though, and the costumes are still mostly digital (see her as FemFemFem covering Newsom). Like Gaga, stop believing the hype and this obsessive desire to start on the ground floor, and recognize a middling talent who will most likely collapse soon enough.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Applying a big voice to muddled romantic banalities over spongy keyboards and drip-drip beat, this comer can flaunt an “all-star team of Charli XCX, Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos, and producers Cashmere Cat and Benny Blanco,” according to Buzzfeed, all of whom do less than one Rita Ora.
[3]
Brad Shoup: The song wants to cry — Weaver’s practically begging it to — but all it can do is fart.
[5]
Hazel Robinson: Christ, I’m such a sucker for this shit this year. This is a whispery, tremulous indie-girl-pop wiggle of a thing and I should probably be way more annoyed about the appropriated beats and the cheap boshing chorus but I’d be completely lying to myself and you, dear reader, if I pretended for five seconds that I wouldn’t charge a dancefloor like a rhino when this came in. It’s got the interesting quality of having much more to do with, say, Cascada than Burial, unlike a lot of this hipster-pop but I can’t pretend that’s justification- it sounds summery, it’s got a desperate heart to it and it’s got the grasping, hopeful need that gives any song a gleaming, main stage glory.
[8]