A title like a Lionel Hutz business card…
[Video]
[4.00]
Alfred Soto: They tell each other lies, sweet little lies, and the telling has got Yung Bleu reaching into his satchel for suitable boilerplate.
[4]
Oliver Maier: Bleu and Kehlani both manage relatively well with a beat you’ve heard 5423783 times before, but they couldn’t have less chemistry. There’s no interesting dynamic between their voices, and the lack of contrast dulls the whole affair, rendering it less than the sum of its parts.
[4]
Ian Mathers: The production here is the same “sad guitar + beat” thing we’ve heard over and over again, but it’s kind of wild how much better Kehlani sounds over it, right? Is it as simple as “she’s a much better singer” or am I missing something?
[5]
Ady Thapliyal: Yung Bleu is cold and anonymous in the verses but reveals flashes of tender soul in the chorus, which is apparently enough to make “Beautiful Lies” an R&B radio hit. I just wish the lyrics had any color or specificity at all.
[4]
Harlan Talib Ockey: Wikipedia knows of eighteen songs and two albums named “Beautiful Lie(s)”, so that doesn’t bode well. The opening lines rhyme “you had me at hello” with “it must be the devil”, which bodes even worse. Fortunately, the rest of the lyrics aren’t quite as cliché-infested; they are immensely generic and simplistic, however. We get bland, facile references to the narrators’ relationship being toxic like “you lied to me” and “you keep fucking up”, but there’s nowhere near enough detail to make you actually feel bad for either of them. The production is also a trite and faceless void. This guitar riff could be from half the songs on the Hot 100 right now. Yung Bleu musters up a solid rapport with the percussion in his verse, though that’s hardly enough to save it. Kehlani, too, sounds like she’s trying to elevate these incredibly flat lyrics with a graceful vocal performance, but it reads as aimless instead. It must be difficult to know what nuanced emotions to inject into something this nondescript.
[3]
Scott Mildenhall: Needs a Freemasons remix.
[4]