Me. I Am Steven Zhu… The Elusive Chanteur…
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[5.11]
Will Adams: Perfectly captures the ennui of a late night at the club, when culture tells you that you should be blasted at this point, that you should have found someone to take home by now, that you should have followed the rules. There’s a melancholy that undergirds the whole affair, suggesting that all of those go-hard anthems may not be as cracked up as they seem to be.
[8]
Alfred Soto: A bit of alright until the distorted vocals and Dirty Vegas vibe.
[5]
Crystal Leww: “Faded” features a listless male vocal with come-ons so terrible, so boring, so lacking in effort that if he tried these on you at a bar, and especially with vocal modification, you wouldn’t even bother being grossed out, instead laughing him off with a “no thank you, buddy.” The instrumental is quite nice though. Someone should free it, and give it to someone who tries.
[5]
Brad Shoup: I’m craning to hear the Latin-jazz organ in the verse before the bass munches on it. It’s the one sparkle in this languid nightmare of a song. The sentiment is depressing, the vocal treatment dull, the repetition torturous. It sounds like a suicide note addressed to Kid Cudi.
[1]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Alongside the pulp-novel depiction of longing, those Latin-esque key stabs in the first pre-chorus portray a perverse type of jolliness. It meshes oddly against the rest of the song, becoming an island to escape from the needlessly frowning thumping.
[4]
Anthony Easton: Entropic and decoratively abstract, this says nothing but has all of the exhaustion of 2 a.m. on wet surface streets, and all of the implied danger. You wait for it to crash, and it just fades into nothing.
[8]
Patrick St. Michel: My interest fades pretty fast too.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Vaguely longing, vaguely menacing, vaguely minimalist don’t-give-a-fuck house, like a shadow “Solo Dancing” maybe. And yet it isn’t even the creepiest single called “Faded.”
[7]
Mallory O’Donnell: Moody, pretty, withdrawn and dull enough for a Depeche Mode album track. The worrying excess of vocal effects makes it sound more like an interlude. Better catch a cab.
[4]