At least some of us think so.
[Video][Website]
[5.91]
Katherine St Asaph: More sad-girl sulk from Selena Gomez. A$AP Rocky’s verse captures a starlet at the exact moment of tabloid corruption and does a good job, if you think that job is good; Gomez is plaintive, less pretty more hurts; it’s like a teenage “Mascara,” or perhaps Jojo’s “Marvin’s Room.” This is not a universal opinion. Gomez herself claims this song reps women in a good way,” and pop culture agrees; meanwhile, all the music writers I know call this the loneliest song they’ve ever heard. Listening myself — particularly watching the video, which I assume is supposed to be sexy but triangulates Natalie Imbruglia’s “Want,” Britney’s “Everytime” and a couch-bound crampy hangover — I’ve gotta side with the writers. (Someone’s got to.) At first I thought it had to be the chord progression, but pop is trending that way, and the first comparable song I thought of was Kevin Rudolf et al’s “I Made It,” which has a grim undertone but certainly isn’t sad. Then I thought maybe it was Selena’s little-kitten-lost delivery, more pronounced in the original mix, and that a belter — The Fame-era Gaga, maybe — would sass up the song; but this is 2015 and YouTube is quite replete with vocal hopers providing just that, and it doesn’t work. There are little off hints in the songwriting, in how “I’m on my 14-carat — I’m 14-carat” ruefully sinks from slang to objectification or how repeating “trust me” so often so pleadingly can’t be happy, but I think that’s an accident and it’s just poorly written. “Syncopate” is clearly supposed to be “synchronize,” like the songwriters grasped that the former sounded better but not that it had an actual meaning; “doing it up like Midas” is not a brag but a curse out of an Oglaf strip. So it’s culture, then, and of course it is. Men run women through an ever-more-multivariate equation of fuckability functions (variable 119: the last guy I was with complimented me on the texture of the skin on my arms, a trait where his last girlfriend was apparently unsatisfactory), and the HotOrNot decimal results are only getting more visible; then society blames girls and their self-esteem for running the math for themselves. Even the guys who espouse feminism, look at whom they date: thin, curvy, shockingly young, with some allowances toward preppy or alt but otherwise blonde clones. Gomez, who once sung “Who Says” and who’s since careened in a Spring Breakers car into the sex dystopia of celebrity life, has to have internalized all this long ago; we all have. If you’ve not grown up routinely discarded for your looks these will all be just words; if you have, you understand how this is so deeply heartbreaking, and how it works.
[9]
Nina Lea Oishi: I can’t help but listen to this and think of Selena as the freshman girl trying to prove she’s grown, but in reality she’s only acting how she thinks adults act when they’re being sexy because she thinks it’s what she’s supposed to do. This analogy, of course, making A$AP Rocky the creepy older guy who refers to his man-parts as his “minature.” (Run, girl, run!) The problem is the delivery. Selena’s vocals are listless rather than seductive, unconvincing rather than confident. Sure, the transition from Disney channel teenage wizard to full-fledged pop star is difficult. But Selena’s demonstrated before that she has at least some semblance of a personality, even within the highly defined borders of whatever plan her managers and label have probably laid out. C’mon girl, look good for yourself. (And if you still really want to hear a song about impressing your man with a skintight outfit, go listen to “Freakum Dress” or something — it’s a hell of a lot more fun.)
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: Selena Gomez continues her strange career of churning out songs that nobody enjoys based on the merits of “well, she’s famous.” This time she attempts post-Del Rey sleaze/glamour, with whom else but fashionable misogynist Rakim Meyers, showing up to enforce the ugly shell of cubic zirconium around this crusty-ass song.
[1]
Alfred Soto: Descending on a perfumed purple cloud of swag, A$AP reassures Gomez about her looks. The electronic swirl fits Tinashe or Jhene Aiko. Gomez doesn’t have it in her to suggest doubt or insecurity, so her hesitations sound like voices in her head confirming what she knows.
[5]
Leela Grace: Summertime sadness like a flash flood, like you would submit to being made of gold if it meant you would never fall apart, the feeling that the hands touching you are the only thing keeping you together. “Just” is the operative word because it means you’ve been whittled down to nothing but a body, and maybe not even that.
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: This slow-burner of a record could use a little urgency, particularly in Gomez’s vocal, which is all coquettishness and no actual sexiness. The beat plods, as if being played at the wrong speed, and A$AP Rocky’s verse sounds entirely phoned-in. “Good for You” is like a G-rated version of Red Shoe Diaries, where it clearly wants to be at least PG-13.
[4]
Will Adams: While I’m happy that someone else shares my vision for a universe in which Born to Die was a huge success, Selena Gomez does not have the voice to pull off this level of gloom. Aiming for numb but landing on lobotomized, she barely emotes until the heartbreaking “trust me” bridge, only to have A$AP Rocky interrupt. The risk of playing the scenario dead serious doesn’t pan out, and it’s hard to care about much of anything here.
[4]
Ramzi Awn: It’s not hard to hear that “Good For You” is the better Lana Del Rey — with a hook like gold. Gomez has returned, for a brief moment, to the mold that made her.
[7]
Mo Kim: The build on those first two verses is diamond-sharp, want cutting through the synthy haze like ship through fog. The rap grinds it down to dust.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Gomez gets performative at being performative, an amazing thing. Rocky’s melody strikes harder than hers; I know the Lana comparisons are flying, but apparently this is the summer of tears that could be joy, could be grief, depending on how the moonlight hits you.
[7]
Cédric Le Merrer: This is the most memorable Selena Gomez single to date, which may not be saying much, but it’s all thanks to her performance too. Both sultry and a bit creepy, she brings out several potential meanings in the song’s title, which may either have been written by a songwriter too coy or oblivious to stress them. Or maybe they were oddly confident in the unexpected qualities of Selena? Whichever it is, we’re better off listening to the video version without that bland A$AP ROCKY verse.
[7]