If this is a Michael Jackson pastiche how come the title just makes me think of Phil Collins?
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[5.62]
Tim de Reuse: A structural cousin to “Get Lucky,” because why change what works, I guess? Daft Punk’s low-energy vocoder sleaze is nice, but it hasn’t got a single surprise up its sleeve; they sound like an incredibly convincing imitation of themselves, staying neck-deep in their comfort zone. Meanwhile, Abel does a thoroughly mediocre job of being sexy and doesn’t seem to get which syllable you’re supposed to put the accent on in the word “coming,” leaving us with a refrain that’s too short and too awkward to possibly stick in your head — which is itself a twisted accomplishment. Even the most phoned-in Daft Punk tunes usually make decent earworms, but he won’t even leave us with that!
[4]
Anthony Easton: Creepy without being sleazy, leaves the slime trail of bad bar pick ups, and a waste of a good Daft Punk environmental soft funk space.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: You know, it never sprung to mind that a possible influence for the OVOXO style of “music that feels like it’s been tuned into” would’ve been Daft Punk’s Discovery, but the way Abel sounds entirely at home here suggests maybe the link is stronger than a fascination with that usage of music from the nostalgic past to provide an emotional tone. Drained of his cliched perversions, The Weeknd sounds fine albeit a bit sanitized, as if now he can only wallow in lame excessive ghoulishness or anodyne pop. Frustrating considering there could easily be a way to bridge the two, but this kid’s too middling these days to commit to any real sense of identity. His pals from France cut a respectably tasteful lounge disco production, very leisure suit slick, and it does better than his worst efforts but also feels a pretty hollow “high point” to accept.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Clapping beat aside, “I Feel It Coming” might have been recorded by Michael Jackson backed by Toto. Better, the self-pitying cipher singing this track sounds as winsome as he wanted to. What Daft Punk offers beyond a few bars of vocoder-ized slime I’m not sure — maybe they snatched Abel Tesfaye’s mirror. I can’t deny how beguiling its surface; it’s all surface.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Proficient in an Easton Ellis-esque vapid slickness I am tiring of. Not for the first time today, I plead: please end this dredging-up of the ’80s. Or at least end the interminable amount of time during which the Weeknd “feels it coming.” For her sake.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: Listen to that bass pop like a Greg Phillinganes cameo, the light touch on the production, the ease with which the Weeknd sings it. This could be an unreleased track off of Thriller, based purely on its sound. And sure, Cirkut and Doc McKinney are involved here, just as they were on “Starboy,” but I choose to give the bulk of the credit for this to its credited Frenchmen, because no one but no one worships the sound of Thriller and its ilk more than the guys who made Random Access Memories. The relaxed groove of “I Feel It Coming” makes it even more perfectly MJ than “Can’t Feel My Face” — bottom line, this is utterly lovely. I firmly expect it to be a bigger international hit than in the U.S.
[9]
Hannah Jocelyn: Not as effective an MJ rip as “In The Night” or “Can’t Feel My Face”, but the vocoder effects are lovely. Too bad “Starboy” and “False Alarm” were flukes, though, because I could definitely listen to the Weeknd’s experiments. This will do, and when it inevitably comes on in a drug store alongside “The Way You Make Me Feel” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”, I won’t mind at all.
[6]
Elisabeth Sanders: this song is fine but i will bet u one hundred (100) american dollars that the weeknd is bad at sex lol
[4]