LDR, this year’s Fucking Drake…
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[5.30]
Andrew Ryce: This is a misguided disaster before it even starts. The big-band intro is cringe-worthy, but then you start to realize that maybe this is the role LDR was born for: the retro cipher, doomed to sing torch songs and have her voice thrown around a drum-machines-and-synth-apparatus where she can’t sing the unfortunate words that make everyone despise her so much. Maybe I’m just being ignorant, but I find it hard to focus on Smiler’s totally competent rapping when LDR is bouncing around the track, so I don’t know if that’s a mission accomplished or a big fat failure.
[5]
Jer Fairall: Lana Del Rey completes her admittedly short transition into a full-on cartoon character over a tiresome, witless materialistic rap. I guess it’s supposed to be funny, and it actually kinda is, just for all the wrong reasons.
[2]
Alfred Soto: Delivering the kind of archness that Nellie McKay couldn’t identify with a dictionary, Del Rey belts like she’s the only element in the track which, considering the quality of Smiler’s rap, is just as well. Nothing here works. Who thought that splicing Shirley Bassey and grime would attract the kids?
[3]
Brad Shoup: Smiler’s approach isn’t really one of insinuation; it’s more an offensive, and it’s a reason I’ve still got a major grime blind spot. (He’s got the levels more to my liking here.) Instead of settling in as an earworm, the space-horror sequencing has to shoulder the drums’ abdicated responsibility. Smiler flows nimbly; perhaps he’s got those drums in his headphones. Del Rey’s voice has never sounded so bad, so there’s no hope of entry there.
[4]
Iain Mew: I like the sound of Smiler’s flow a lot, although it’s even better on actual single “Delorean” where he has a bit more to say than the amiable void here. “Spender” has other things going for it, of course: a super backing based on the bass sound of Mario hitting blocks and trebly sparkles and slices. And, yes, Lana Del Rey hamming it up tremendously with a song choice which both fits into the “money is the reason we exist” character established on Born to Die and puts her explicitly in charge for once.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: It’s a damn shame that “Video Games” broke big among the Brooklyn Vegan crowd before the Del Rey project really had time to get going. If she’d come to attention the way she was always meant to — as a hook singer intentionally recalling the Mad Men-inflected (or -infected) space between Blossom Dearie and Shirley Bassey — on a song like this one, she could have been the next Dido or Sia. The beat’s stronger than anything on Born to Die, and Smiler’s hyper, garish interludes are a relief from her having to carry the song on her uncertain own.
[7]
Michaela Drapes: Lana, honey, don’t close up when you reach for that top note — sounds like it hurts when you do that. Otherwise, this really is quite nicely done, what with Smiler dropping all the right names with just the right amount of swagger. And really, wasn’t the whole “featuring” trend just waiting for a old-school Broadway nod?
[7]
Sabina Tang: Lana acquits herself okay: she can’t sell “Big Spender”‘s requisite dynamic shifts, but points for coherent aesthetic evolution at least. As for Smiler, one can’t fault an up-and-coming artist for sitting on a track until the opportune clickbait moment. In any case, I like the verve of the rap, and the intricate arpeggiated fizzle of the background track. I’d’ve given this a point extra if Smiler had sampled Dame Shirley instead, but that’s about it.
[7]
Anthony Easton: “Big Spender” is basically the one song that singers who can deal with belting can sing well. Del Rey is not a belter. They solve this problem by having her mediocre version larded under Smiler’s rhymes. It’s not a terrible strategy, a kind of reversal of the sing-then-rap aesthetic in her most successful songs, but with a featuring artist, because post-SNL everyone is a little sick of her. A couple of points for the genius cynicism.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Nobody outside critland is going to give seven shits about Smiler’s part, so let me get right to the point: “Big Spender” is weak. Every voice student who belts learns a version this passable by recital two, the way sopranos trill “I Could Have Danced All Night” and character actresses enoinciate “Adelaide’s Lament.” Smiler’s release timing is devious but too easy. If he and Lana really wanted to troll us right, she’d re-record this with “Dance Ten, Looks Three.”
[5]