Or, when in America: Zeee…
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[5.14]
Brad Shoup: Was anyone else hoping “stay” would function as a transitive verb? I dig the chorus, excised from a Heart power ballad that never happened. Williams is holding back, but I think that was what Zedd had in mind. The martial tattoo becomes regular ol’ EDM snares; even the filtered, Daft Punkish bit is deployed at a stroll.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Turns out Hayley Williams is more like Ann Wilson than I thought: dropped into any context that’s not punk-inflected hard rock with tricky melodic twists, she’s a loud cipher.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Hayley sings with all the crystalline, meaningless nicety of a hotel receptionist. Zedd is the CD the hotel lobby played 15 years ago.
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: So… it’s “Clarity” but with Hayley Williams slipped in for Foxes. It’s the sound of Zedd not wanting to alienate the folks who found him through that smash hit, to the point where he recycles sounds and tricks already found in “Clarity.” The only sonic development of note is that Zedd listened to Daft Punk this year and decided to jock the robot-voice thing. It should serve its purpose well — here’s your fresh single to use as your EDM set’s climatic moment, the track that’s going to get hands in the air — but we’ve already been there before. One extra point because Hayley Williams sounds a touch better than Foxes, though I could also always just listen to “Still Into You” for a better time.
[5]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: After finally catching up this past week with Paramore’s self-titled album (long story short: omg buy it omg), it’s startling to hear Williams imbue her butterfly-stomached romance with a glimmer of sensuality. The chorus — “are you gonna stay the night?/doesn’t mean we’re bound for life” — is performed with her usual gutsiness and passes by relatively unnoticed first time round. But by the time she’s delivered a double-entendre about having her gasoline-metaphor paramour “pour” themselves onto her flames, it’s settled: yup, she’s talking about sex. Sex! It’s a welcome thing to hear from the band that equated sexual congress to a “ticking clock” on “Misery Business”, had a protagonist that offers her bed to another become “(One of Those) Crazy Girls” and wrote a song for the Twilight soundtrack. And while “Stay the Night” is full of fatalism, it’s no less romantic or longing than another ten or so songs in the Paramore back catalogue. Most likely, it will be a career footnote, but it matters to hear this new shade of Williams’ lyrics and personality.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I love how desperate this is, and not desperate in the usual ways — that she is not sure that the person should stay the night, or if she wants them to, and that’s okay. The question “why you gonna stay the night,” a question often unasked in pop, is asked here with genuine curiosity but little pressure. I like how the vocal effects push forward and retreat, adding on chipmunk vocals, a scandalous line about gasoline, a fantastic piano coda, and all sorts of formalist ornament. It might be too long, but the negotiation for these sort of things are often on just the right end of tedious.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: It’s funny that right now the only way the pointedly American Lana Del Rey can get a hit in her homeland is with the help of pummeling (and weirdly affecting) bosh. Not that things have made a universal 180, but it was only four years ago that the US made a hit of Kid Cudi’s “Day ‘n’ Nite” while the rest of the world took the far superior Crookers remix. What does that have to do with this song? No idea. But it is, at least, interesting.
[5]