Our opinions change all the time…
[Video]
[5.89]
Alfred Soto: Eventually an artist will figure out how to put this spate of post-1989 synth pop to more thrilling uses than wringing the bitter from the sweet.
[3]
Elisabeth Sanders: A solid pop bop with the familiar, slightly tired “I think about you all the time, let me list the things I’m thinking about, and also the various times and places I’m thinking them” theme, “All The Time” isn’t as memorable or as fresh as Larsson’s previous absoLUTE slappers “Ruin My Life” or “Lush Life,” it’s certainly not something I’d be disappointed to hear come on at the club. Perfectly serviceable fun.
[6]
Kayla Beardslee: Easily in my top five pop songs of the year, this is all I could ever want not just from Zara Larsson, but from the genre as a whole. Larsson’s songs have sometimes stumbled over awkward lyrics, but here the rhymes and narrative fall easily into place, even the vaguely archaic phrasing of “the breaking of the day.” Her vocals are mixed incredibly clearly, enough to give every breath the suggestion of emotion, and from the first vocodered refrain, the song’s pace is relentless — it builds in glitzy layer upon layer, explodes into perfectly crafted choruses, and even finds the space for a proper bridge. Music as bright and thrilling as “All the Time” feels out of place in 2019, but that just strengthens its appeal.
[10]
Joshua Lu: I’ve been thinking about a quip from around a month back on how scores of [9] or higher are reserved for songs that are “transcendent,” and I’ve realized now just how effective an adjective that is at differentiating between good songs and good songs. The word connotes a quality that evokes a certain response from a listener, one that’s not contained in the physical or aural realm, but instead just something you have to feel in order to recognize. Zara has a lot of good songs, and for the most part, “All the Time” is one of them, with a unique, omnipresent, unwieldy hook made possible with the incessantly upbeat, disco-tinged backdrop. It’s all agreeable and catchy and good. But that bridge, where the hook disappears for the first time, the instrumental curls inward, and Zara’s delivery suddenly rings as despondent, and you realize that this has been a sad song the whole time and the lyrical dissonance was acting as some kind of auditory coping mechanism, and you get hit with this pang of despair that you’re sharing with Zara, whose belt bleeds perfectly into the final chorus? Now that was transcendent. I will score accordingly.
[9]
Michael Hong: That autotuned “from the breaking of the day to the middle of the night” might be a mildly annoying intro, but it ends up being an even more irritating drone during the verses and completely ruining what could have been a perfectly fine chorus.
[2]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I can appreciate the repeated hook on a conceptual level: Larsson can’t stop thinking about a previous lover, so these lines detailing how often she’s thinking about this person present an obsessiveness, but the fact they’re vocodered transmit an incompleteness. The instrumentation never quite captures the depth of her mental state though. Really, “All the Time” is mostly just a slog that has an unconvincingly chipper sheen–perhaps an appropriate representation of how life feels for her, but it’s certainly not something that’s fun to hear. As with many of Larsson’s songs, its failings come down to how unconvincing she is as a singer. There’s a bit of intrigue with how the second verse flips the New York line, hinting that her trip to this state has her wishing for a chance encounter, but Larsson makes every line just sound like a string of words. Isn’t she supposed to sound impassioned? Desperate? Like a person with emotions?
[3]
Will Adams: A “Doin’ It Right” vocoder hook paired with the drumbeat from “Hold On, We’re Going Home”? If this came out in 2013 it would be the most derivative, desperate song of the year. But in the kinder light of 2019, its sad-disco drive is a winning formula, allowing the typically malleable Zara Larsson to sound a lot more memorable than usual.
[7]
William John: In which Zara Larsson enlists the help of a vocoder to convey the insurmountable delirium brought on by desire; together, the ceaseless pull of the looped hook and her lusty delivery ensure that her motives are perceived as romantic rather than possessive. If we hadn’t already been graced with Dedicated, then I suppose this would be the best Carly Rae Jepsen song of the year.
[7]
Kylo Nocom: Zara Larsson does “Doin’ It Right” right: the looped vocoder is surprisingly inspired as a low-pass filter instrumental and as a heavy pop-drop. However, this production could have benefited from some restraint; the guitar in the second half of the earlier choruses crowds an already loud mix that only gets even more hard on the ears by the end. The bridge does strip down considerably, allowing Zara to reach into the emotional core of the song before the chaos comes crashing back in.
[6]