Does this mean we’re not hype-proof?…

[Video][Website]
[7.08]

Alfred Soto: I’m a sucker for breathless paranoia, especially when it’s this well syncopated and represents both an advance on a previous single and another reconfiguration of its fascinating parts. Aware of their talent for arrangement, the girls don’t push their modest voices too hard – why would they when they’ve got timbales under that guitar riff like they think a Sheila E.-Robyn collaboration is a smashing idea? 
[7]

Britt Alderfer: The Haim sisters demonstrate an appreciation for the radio sheen of the great Fleetwood Mac singles, and the guitar work is lean and mean and infectious. You can’t compare them to Stevie, you have to compare them to Lindsey. I feel like I could have a conversation with them about how he’s so underrated as a guitarist mostly because he’s judicious with his notes. Not to make this too much about the Mac though, because these ladies seem wholly comfortable with themselves and this song is glittery, star-making stuff.
[8]

Sonya Nicholson: When you see beautiful white women with flowing tresses reconnecting with nature in California’s old-growth forests, you think  “The Magic Mountain” and acid-70s bands + their revivalists like MGMT (and cohort — check Boy Crisis’s “The Fountain of Youth“), or maybe, since this isn’t all that trippy, Joni Mitchell. The sound, meanwhile, is technical-virtuoso. The bongos and some of the harmonies sound like Toto’s “Africa”, the bassline sounds like Prince, the vocal flourishes sound like MJ, and the lead singer has a low voice like… actually the only person coming to mind is contemporary artist Jade Alston. Except the singing is wispier, like Kimbra. So what makes this a contemporary song? Maybe it’s the low voice — or the hand claps? Anyway, it is nice to see an all-female band getting props for technical ability, and this is a very pleasant if not particularly memorable song. A solid B for (classicist) influences, a couple points off because I’m a pop music fan and this is a little too unadventurous and BGM for me.
[6]

Pete Baran: The Haim sound does seem pretty fully formed from this point, and leans heavily on Tango In The Night-era Fleetwood Mac, which is akin to leaning on some very solid foundations. Problem here is that that also shares a lot of DNA with Knee Deep In The Hoopla-era (Jefferson Airplane) Starship, and you need to neither know the records nor get the allusions to know that sounding like something off an album called Knee Deep In The Hoopla is probably a mistake. There is more than enough great stuff here to maintain their slow rise, but there is definitely a roadmap to obscurity which also contains this route.
[5]

Anthony Easton: This sounds like a bunch of white girls trying to combine the studio decadence that marked the late ’70s corruption of the Laurel Canyon with the sound of slightly-too-slick ’90s R&B — two kinds of nostalgia that could work together, but it just seems a little too perfect to justify itself.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I still love the songwriting and resiliency in the lyrics, their voices, those whipcrack drum/clap hits for effect, the videos (still trying to figure out exactly why — something to do with rejecting the supposed dichotomy between dancing to your own music and being a “real” band playing “real” instruments?). At first, all “Don’t Save Me” had over this was that its chorus seemed grabbier to me, somehow. After my second listen, I had to revise my opinion. I still feel like I might be underrating them somehow.
[9]

Rebecca A. Gowns: I wish I had a sister 🙁
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: A funny thing happens about forty seconds into “Falling”, when a bubble-synth suddenly pounces at you from behind the melody and headbutts you into the chorus. It reminds me of nothing less than the time-honoured Lex Luger watermark — that stand-to-attention alert that things are about to go from zero to one-hundred MPH to it’s-too-fast-not-to-fight-someone. And like a Luger beat, Haim’s songs are pieces of instant gratification, locating the listener’s pleasure centres with huge, multi-tracked melodies and just pummeling the shit out of them. “Falling” is the same, another pleasure-centre pummeler that makes good on jumped up 80s blue-eyed soul down to the popping bass and busy-busy percussion. This approach also sounds primed to refine a strain of blog-house rock that the noughties begat, at least judging from its huge MTV Age mix and EQ shifts (you could draw a phylogenetic tree beginning with Midnight Juggernauts’ “Into the Galaxy” and ending with “Falling”). It’s a shame, then, that Danielle Haim’s lyrical content feels blank, all chant-ready accessible blah: “Into the fire feeling higher than the truth! I can feel the heat but I’m not burning!” etc. The jolt of instantaneous glee has a sell-by date, but it’s disappointing when it’s the second you think about the words.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: The discordant noises that accompany the background shouts in the chorus — the ones that sound a bit like a rusty gate closing — really aren’t very helpful. Not off-putting though, because that would imply that there was actually much to be put off in the first place. Haim have a distinguishable style, and that’s great, but they also have a single here that’s practically indistinguishable from their last, with the only difference being that this one is (technical term alert) less songy, all they’re left with is a precocious familiarity and, ergo, a backhanded compliment from a man on the internet.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Great use of echo and space. Crisp percussive guitar work, that bummer of a chorus: this is vintage dusky R&B from a time when producers had mastered their craft to the point of madness.
[8]

Will Adams: Everything good in “Don’t Save Me” returns for “Falling”: sharply attacked syllables, rapid-fire vocal hooks, and clattering percussion. “Falling” is more subdued, though, with Danielle Haim’s voice hovering in a scratchy mid-range. All the better to heighten the song’s best moments, when her sisters’ voices, as I put it last time, wrap around her in solidarity. With each new single, I’m more intrigued by this trio, hooked into the feeling that I’m hearing something profoundly unique.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: You could arrange almost anything around that chorus, those Ariel Rechtshaid echoes ping-ponging down the mountain, the exact sound of those exact words; that Haim chose to arrange a lovely throwback only helps.
[8]

Blissed…

[Video][Website]
[7.17]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Now that’s what I call firme.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Droop-E’s is E-40’s son, though from his verse here it’s tough to gauge how much he’s like his pops. What he does have is the ability to blur in with the zoned-out production, which is a fantastic bit of slow-motion work anchored by a nice vocal hook courtesy of the underappreciated Nite Jewel. J-Stalin, not so hot.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Droop-E’s beat, like most of his esoteric-leaning work for E-40, is a crisp wonder — sloping, finding wriggle room in between sub-bass hits, gauzed enough for Ramona Gonzalez, gully enough for J-Stalin to graphically mangle the word “Malaysia”, cool enough for Droop-E to try on Curren$y’s weed-stroked flow and wear it right. This is what slow-motion rider music sounds like in 2013. This is what slow-motion rider music sounds like in 2018.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The minute and a half between 2:48 and the end of the song, with its combo analog (her voice, what might be a marimba) and electronic (abstracted DJ scratches, subtle disco lazers), are feathered and layered with such sophistication that they seem tranquil — so tranquil that I want a 40 minute chill down mix made from them.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Marimba, throbbing sequencers, and organs comprise a rich rhythmic underpinning, with Nite Jewel adding midnight-hour vocalizing that flirts with the colorless. The raps, however, are colorless. A damn shame.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Downcast and anonymous. I could swim through that production all night, and as I’m in the middle of a screwed ‘n’ chopped kick, that could be a possibility.
[7]

I can never forget our matching white turtlenecks…

[Video][Website]
[6.29]

Anthony Easton: Charming, sweet confectionery — sort of like Cotton Candy without the stickiness.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: This single works because of the lyrics, so get a new tab ready. The song opens a bit like The Mountain Goats “Woke Up New,” with our protagonist taking stock of all the small details missing from their life now that the relationship is over — a toothbrush, strong scent, picture frames. Whereas John Darnielle made way for the future by the end of his song, Sistar19 instead focus on the early stages of post-breakup life, in particular the ugly moments. You know, the desperate calls looking for reconciliation, the sadness, the tears, the drunken nights that get more frequent, more tears. The music initially comes off as a bit unambitious, but eventually becomes the perfect compliment to a song zooming in on a specific situation that doesn’t lead to much personal inspiration. Extra point for being a K-Pop song that makes the sax sound so downtrodden for once.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The sax embellishments and piano solo tease out her longing and the drum fills punctuate it. My favorite K-pop number in months.
[7]

Ian Mathers: It sure sounds like heartbreak in their voices (my fault, not theirs, that I can’t actually understand what they’re saying) but the backing and that kicky little fake horn noise give the track more momentum than you might think. The title is evocative enough, but if they wanted to go the “Be My Baby” route when naming this one I’d suggest “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes.”
[7]

Rebecca A. Gowns: That’s a sexy butt move, I’m going to have to steal that. I’ll need a glass table and a volunteer to mirror me. Wait, this is about the song. I love the tinny sax riff.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: For a while, producer Brave Brothers a.k.a. Kang Dong Cheol’s role in the world of K-pop has been to act as a sub-Diddy, chirping in with adlibs on popular singles while mining a Myspace’n’b sound indebted to the back-end of B2K albums. He is, however, a very successful man. “Gone Not Around Any Longer” is his latest collaboration with Sistar (halved here for side-project purposes), a working relationship that has brought out his best side while retaining the dullest and worst of his musicality, and “Gone” showcases both sides to uneasy effect. Cons are as follows: a tip of the hat to Epic Sax Guy, Yoon Bora’s awkardly-placed sad-rap (of course there’s a sad-rap), the overly emphatic bummer-out atmosphere. What Cheol does right is to play with textures and window dressing, finding genuine emotion in the dialtone that opens the song, a deftly-handled drum break and a lonely yelp that rises and sinks into the stage-glumness of the chorus. “Gone” isn’t much cop — Bora and Hylolyn glide along with so little brio that their trying feels like a roll of the eyes — but it’s a reminder that sometimes hackwork can allow for a little bit of ingenuity.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Is this really only their second single? “Ma Boy” had a killer mix of melancholy and sultriness; this one’s a more straightforward moper, but with a hopscotch cadence and sung/spoken harmonies. Oh, and something that sounds like a Fisher Price alto sax.
[7]

We can use the lyrics of this song to calculate 2 Chainz’s bank balance. Go!

[Video][Website]
[6.75]

Josh Langhoff: DJ Mustard’s from L.A. but he’s shouted out Lil’ Jon in interview, and his “R.I.P.” beat feels like it could slip right into Tommy Boy’s 1999 comp Get Crunk!, where everyone chose dissing over dancing while the Club Crunk went up in flames. “R.I.P.” would be one of the more minimal tracks there, just a step up from the East Side Boyz’ “Who You Wit?”, a call/response cadence stripped bare. Mustard’s drumless beat — a composite of bass bounce, handclap, glockenspiel riff, and his own cadre of barking east side boyz — splits the difference between crunk funk and his minimalist “ratchet” thing. Or maybe it is his minimalist “ratchet” thing, dripping with all the personality of Jeezy’s voice. It’s an ideal setting for Jeezy to veer from Club Crunk stunting to old school shoutouts, and for 2 Chainz to land line after memorable line and rhyme “collard green” with “promethazine.” I could listen for hours but I don’t think they want me at their club.
[9]

Al Shipley: Given the desperation with which most rappers at his level jump on bandwagons, it’s always been more of a virtue than a shortcoming that Young Jeezy has remained steadfastly committed to the same kind of midtempo trap anthems that made him a star 8 years ago. So for him to finally break precedent lately, both with a recent E-40 remix and this DJ Mustard production, raises the question: it’s interesting to hear Jeezy on fast Cali club bangers, but how good is it really? I’m still a little on the fence, but the presence of 2 Chainz is just a reminder of how much better “I’m Different” was. 
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: 2 Chainz is not a particularly good rapper, and he is capable of bringing down otherwise good songs via his guest spots. Yet introduce him to an otherwise ho-hum song – like “RIP,” featuring a mediocre beat and a pretty disinterested Young Jeezy – and you have yourself a wildcard. “Keep shittin’ on niggas/need potty train” is a horrible line, but it doesn’t matter because before that one 2 Chainz drops the gem “attached to your girl like a .JPEG.” And he closes his verse with “I stack my money so tall/that you might need a giraffe/when you was countin this cash.” 2 Chainz being 2 Chainz, but 2 Chainz also being the best part of this song.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Something Houston about the bass stepping and eerie triangle. Kinda reminds me of “Tops Drop.” Young makes his “Cherchez La Jeezy” entrance, 2 Chainz dates his shit with .jpgs and N.W.A. resurrection, and it’s wonderful.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: That fat 808 bassline covers a multitude of sins, though it’s sorely tried by the excruciating pun about “killing the club,” which is about the ceiling of wit to which Young Jeezy aspires. 2 Chainz, as usual, seems to be in a whole different song entirely, in the best possible way.
[6]

Crystal Leww: DJ Mustard provides a sparse, repetitive beat in the form of bounces, hand claps, and quiet “ay!”s. Young Jeezy delivers a couple of acceptable verses, not particularly exciting or memorable enough to really back up the claim “RIP, we just killed the club!”, but not offensive either. 2 Chainz continues to do great work on these guest verses. 
[6]

Anthony Easton: This might be the least obnoxious 2 Chainz featured work that I have heard. The percussion, working slightly louder, and slightly faster than a heartbeat, adds to the general paranoia. I also  like the dis about Cocaine Cowboys as a nostalgic activity. 
[4]

Edward Okulicz: It’s pretty cool how a song with almost nothing in it — just some ominous bassy synth line, a beat and a tinkle (which sounds very 90s) — seems so dense at times. Credit Jeezy here, whose verses are as likely the product of Ritalin as Patron, because he didn’t specify which drugs. As for Chainz’s bit about the giraffe-high stacks of cash, he’s either got a lot more money than you think, or he’s got it in dollar bills in which case this is a strip club the boys have walked into. Only thing dragging this down from the [9] is the so-so hook.
[8]

Pretty blond hair, pretty bland song.

[Video][Website]
[4.75]

Anthony Easton: American Idol being Nashville Star has maintained its consistency, much as nu-country is similar to old rock. This has some excellent energy, but could stand to be a bit more frantic, and might serve better if it was in first person. 
[6]

Brad Shoup: Country songs about air travel better than this: Miranda Lambert’s “Baggage Claim,” Gary Allan’s “Right Where I Need to Be,” Willie Nelson’s “Bloody Mary Morning,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Somewhere Over China.” Not to go all Louie CK on you, but airplanes are magical things, and I expect a song about flight to reflect the wonder somehow. “Crying on a Suitcase” starts with a good groove and stalls on endless waves of ride cymbal. And the line “come on man, be a man” needed better phrasing. Or a total rewrite.
[4]

Alfred Soto: With Blake Shelton exiled to Zombieland, Nashville needs another burnished balladeer. From the solo to the earnest chug to the secondhand courtliness that comes off patronizing, this defines generic.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: This is weirdly Robynian. Rather than telling the listener that all this stuff is happening, he’s telling himself. Seeing as he’s sat at home and probably not omniscient, he has no idea if it actually is. Songs often paint situations as being more cinematic than they might really be, but when the singer is only trying to convince themselves of that they offer a completely different angle. Maybe, if he bit the bullet and went to the airport, the destination wouldn’t be Hollywood. Maybe, similar to what could be inferred from Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend”, she wouldn’t recognise him at all – this could just be the internal dialogue of a deluded fantasist. And maybe, just maybe, that reading wasn’t what the writers were intending whatsoever.
[7]

Will Adams: Well, of course he has to run to catch her, since you talked his ear off in the wordy verses! It’s not clear what stakes Casey James has here. Why is he so intent in getting his buddy to play catch up? Is Casey himself interested in her? Is he just a good friend? And if there’s no buddy, and he’s talking to himself, why doesn’t he just do it instead of wasting time with all this talk talk talk?
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I hate this trope. A woman who’s in the airport crying on her suitcase is probably a woman who arrived too late for the airline to check her bag. A man who skips airport parking and rushes security is probably a man who will be arrested soon. A sniveling ex is one of the few things that can make air travel worse, as is sap like this.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Rushing for the airport legitimately is a frenzied situation, and you don’t need to throw in all the little logistical sub-elements of this particular problem to paint that picture. It shows that the songwriters have missed the forest for the little details in the trees. James’ delivery is workmanlike and while it’s just about earnest enough for the phrase “goodbye sky” to not come across as the clunker it surely is, it’s not bringing the words or the girl or the story to life here.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: She’s ’bout to buy a pretzel / Spend WAY too much on coffee / And once she starts the Jumble / She cannot be distracted… oooooh… / Now she’s collecting baggage / She finds left unattended / Maybe she’ll start a life there / Like Tom Hanks in The Terminaaaaal… / Which — despite its co-optation of “Jazz” as yet another meaningless character trait enabling Spielberg to Say Something Icky About Father-Son Relationships without actually telling us anything about such relationships or, for that matter, about jazz — I preferred to Lincoln… / She’s ’bout to buy a pretzel.
[5]

Not an internet-based dance craze… YET!

[Video][Website]
[6.38]

Jonathan Bogart: I feared the worst when I saw that featuring, but Vives isn’t going for crossover smash, he’s acknowledging solidarity between Colombian vallenato and Brazilian sertanejo. If I like vallenato better, blame it on my Hispanophone bias; but this is celebratory and rousing, rather than dull and cloying like Teló’s solo work. Here’s hoping he profits by the lesson.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Perfectly lush and plucked with soul, “Como Te Gusta A Tu Cuerpo” is an instant white sangria; a heartbeat away from Club Med; and a rude awakening courtesy of your Brooklyn neighbors and their stoop serenades.  All in one.  I can’t imagine how I’m going to get through the next two days before the weekend.        
[6]

Anthony Easton: This is going to get me in trouble, but it sounds like some kind of tourist ad for a mediocre Caribbean resort intended for families, one which offers pre-packaged fun. This might be that it’s the middle of winter and I am in the middle of a depressive torpor. Extra point for the horns. 
[6]

Brad Shoup: A buncha dudes howling is all I want to hear. Even if one of them is Michel Teló.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Mellifluousness and lust don’t result in a collision, thanks to the accordion, beat, and the commitment by the vocalists to use the chorus as an excuse to shout. I mean, they could be singing to each other. 
[6]

Josh Langhoff: Please correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems to be a bilingual ode to someone else’s beautiful body, intended for public stadium singalong, that veers off into a coda about futbol sensation Falcao “El Tigre” García. Which isn’t necessarily weirder than hearing “Tootsee Roll” and “Get Down Tonight” as Jock Jams, or hearing rappers shout out athletes — but maybe blatantly folding public context together with private obsessions and lusts remains a weirder phenomenon than we think. Or maybe I’m just repressed. Anyway, love this, love Teló’s accordion, the whole thing sounds like a logistical nightmare to record but feels easy as a penalty kick.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Having crafted a more-than-passable “ho le le, ho la la” hook that’s big enough to carry a song for people who can’t speak the language(s), let alone those that can, it feels churlish to pick on Vives for not doing very much else. But despite the lyrics, the song evokes half-sozzled on cheap cocktails as much as staring at a beautiful woman. That roughly doubles its relatability, though.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Carlos Vives is Colombian, but that doesn’t mean that TV producers almost the world over aren’t already taking notes from this in preparation for their coverage of next year’s World Cup in Brazil, and, at that, the following Rio Olympics. Well, “taking notes” may be an overstatement; the chorus, along with “Samba De Janeiro” and “Mas Que Nada,” is probably roughly exactly what they’ll be hearing in their heads as they visualise all of the Female Fan Montages they’re going to make.
[6]

From the soundtrack to every damn social media link you’ve avoided clicking this year…

[Video][Website]
[4.60]Jonathan Bogart: I have a weakness for the sort of garish, cartoonish dance novelties that make serious appreciators of electronic music feel ill, but even I have my limits. Maybe if there were more than a couple of ideas woven throughout instead of merely stitched together in an uneven hodgepodge. But after three minutes I’m good and sick of that sine-wave hook.
[4]

Crystal Leww: At the beginning of 2013, this would have been an [8]. It’s a fun dance track that is easily integrated well into DJ sets with a couple of fun build ups and drops. But alas, it is now the end of February, and a couple hundred million YouTube views of people humping the air, a gross interview where Baauer praises “hood” and “ghetto” sounds, and a Billboard #1 later, I am left feeling angry every time I hear this song about the gross lack of awareness, appropriation, and profiting by white people of black culture. There are a couple of positives that have come out of this mess though: 1) we get this awesome video of The Original Harlem Shakers doing the Harlem Shake (the tempo change in the remix does tip you off to the fact that it is impossible to do the real Harlem Shake to the bad “Harlem Shake”) and 2) G. Dep is in the news again for something other than murder.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel:
SUBJECT: Attention Harry Rodrigues, Urgent News From The Future
BODY: Hello Mr. Rodrigues, my name is Patrick St. Michel and I live in the future, February 2013 to be exact. This is not a scam. I don’t want to give away how I’ve managed to send you this message from the future (Google might be watching), but attached is a photo of today’s paper and a copy of the Billboard Hot 100. See anything exciting on the charts? Yep, your “Harlem Shake,” which you’ll release tomorrow, is on top! Congrats, you deserve it! “Harlem Shake” is a great bit of dance music, taking the best aspects of modern-day EDM… the drop, mainly… and merging it with non-headache-inducing noise. Plus, that lion roar, good idea man. You’ve created the evolution of “Barbara Streisand,” and you shall get the critical attention you deserve. Unfortunately, you don’t want to know how you end up at the top of the charts…a s well as on all the wrong Tumblr tags. I urge you CHANGE THE NAME OF YOUR SONG. Call it “Harlem” or “Shake” or fucking anything else man, trust me, you’ll save everyone a lot of stress. If you are worried about any financial gains you might miss out on, I leave you one tip… Joe Flacco, Super Bowl MVP, bet big my friend.
[7]

Alfred Soto: If this phenomenon had boasted M.I.A.’s name and voice, it would have made for an arresting 45-second opening.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Pretty much four minutes too long, as many have realised. There’s too little variation — even when some seems forthcoming it doesn’t really go anywhere — and that leaves too much room for enjoyment to turn to boredom, and maybe even then irritation. Oh.
[5]

Frank Kogan: Don’t know enough about “trap” to know if this belongs in the category or not, but this seems to take everything nerve-wracking and appealing about the form and quadruples it: a big propulsive bass but a song that pulls the floor boards out from under us before we can get footing enough to be propelled; a demanding pang-filled voice that’s perpetually cut short, never permitted to coalesce into its own emotion. Draws you in and slices you up. She’s sampled from the ’00s, right? But she (who Reddit thinks is a he, but that’s not what my ears tell me) feels as if she’s back at the dawn of disco, the Chakachas, disembodied voices as a soundtrack to late nights in airport lounges or seedy dives on 23rd Street that call themselves “The Starlight Disco.” In a way, the song says it all in the 31 seconds of the viral video meme. But I like it this way, on the single, going on, not developing, going on, not developing, going on, not developing…
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: This is my first time hearing “Harlem Shake,” despite being in a line of work where it probably helps to know the No. 1 song in the country. (Other lines of work that fit: Witness Protection for middle schoolers; hip vice principal; prop bet junkie; campus catfish.) I’d been avoiding it because I hate all of the following: memes; memes that supplant actual culture by flooding Google’s algorithm with money and wacky; college frosh tastes as monoculture; brosteppified trap; phenomena with headlines like “How Four-Person INDmusic is Monetizing the ‘Harlem Shake’ Meme for Mad Decent”; seemingly plausible chart changes that, on paper, only Luddites could argue against but that turn over a significant portion of the Hot 100 to tallying who’s got the most clickbots (computer or preteen) and how many different rowing teams used an audio snippet to flail around someone’s iPhone. But now here we are, with a No. 1 song nobody’s heard more than 30 seconds of, by an artist that most non-trap geeks (i.e. most people) care about roughly as much as O-Zone or Psy’s back catalog, soaked in fake importance. What strikes me most is how, as Robert Myers points out, the thing’s essentially unfinished— it is a demo missing its vocalist. Which isn’t itself a criticism — instrumental genres and vocal genres play by different rules, and no way unfinished pop demos haven’t charted in droves anyway — but makes for a track you really can’t listen to more than 30 seconds of, unless you’re recording yourself freestyling over it. If only that was the meme.
[4]

Brad Shoup: The song is five-trick junk wherein only one works (the pause before the bass), but our Billboard robot overlords have done something great with the chart changes. All apologies to the incomparable Chris Molanphy and Jody Rosen, but I yearn for more than a little chaos in the charts. Just imagine: Reddit, 4chan, Popjustice and the Bodybuilding.com forum all duly promoting their nonsense to the tippity-top of the pops. The mind reels at the fuckery possible, all the great and terrible songs that will have to be considered on the always-dubious merit of “achievement” until we stop giving a shit about numerical ordering or Billboard pares its criteria. I pray for a million Harlem Shakes on the CVs of one hundred thousand unworthies.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Huh, so it turns out hundreds of videos of people dancing around like twats does not make a song more interesting or pleasurable to listen to, but it does makes it worthy of a lot of sales and people going around in circles discussing the context on social media until I want to bomb Tumblr to make the pain go away. If you want to know why a lot of earnest critics long for the days when record stores flourished, imagine millions of people giving enough of a shit to go down to HMV and actually spend a few bucks on a CD single of this over… and you’ve just imagined a world with a better #1 single than this. It has to be.
[2]

Will Adams: It loops itself so you don’t have to.
[4]

Attack of the one-liners!

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Anthony Easton: Can I just have a nice cup of a tea and a lie in, instead? 
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Get an interesting idea, first.
[3]

Crystal Leww: This sounds like what it is: some 18 year old kid with a laptop making bloop bleep noises using generic wubs and drum hits from some program. It is a cheap imitation of everything that it is influenced by.
[2]

Brad Shoup: It’s all about that bass, which doesn’t get knottier, just louder.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Pretty much four minutes too long, as KSI realised. There’s too little variation — even when some seems forthcoming it doesn’t really go anywhere — and that leaves too much room for enjoyment to turn to boredom, and maybe even then irritation. The remastered version makes things sound a bit more slick, but it still retains the hallmarks of an amateur.
[5]

Will Adams: What is happening in the stereo field on this thing? The bass sits mostly on the right ear (and it’s way too loud), while the rhythm track (a bit too simple for my liking) gets pushed to the left. It feels like I’m listening to the real song lying on its side, but it’s still just as abrasive.
[4]

Alfred Soto: A bass line waiting for the right grime artist…in 2003.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Truth in advertising shouldn’t be such a revelation, but here we are.
[6]

…Ladies.

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Alfred Soto: Drake can’t perform a rags-to-riches narrative without undercutting it with his abrasive timbre and obnoxious repetitions; he’s a guy “who don’t do much explainin’.” But he also undercuts it with brevity — Drake doesn’t suffer from knowing it’s the soul of wit.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: I come here today not to speculate about the economic status of a Degrassi star’s childhood, but rather to celebrate Aubrey Drake Graham operating in something approaching his best mode. He’s spent so long moping about being rich and horny that it’s a genuine surprise that “Started From The Bottom” doesn’t find him operating in skeezy mode (that gets passed off to the dumb OMG-boobs skit in the video). Instead, he sounds more like Drake around the time of Thank Me Now, upping those who were with him during the “tough” times while also feeling burned out on “fake friends,” all over an icy beat that’s plenty serviceable. The song is pretty bare bones and Drake’s still going on about haters, but hearing Drake sound happy about his current life is way better than him trying to make it seem terrible. “Nigga just as a reminder to myself/I wear every single chain, even when I’m in the house” sounds goofy, but it’s also the most joyful line Drake’s penned in some time. 
[6]

Andy Hutchins: Mike Zombie’s hypnotic, Hpnotiq-soaked beat is the show here, as is usually the case when Drake screws his flows to maximize a few anthemic bars: that ethereal Final Fantasy pause menu keyboard loop hangs over the whole affair like the aurora borealis, and there’s bass, shaking drums, Lex Luger’s signature synth rattle with the “Hype” drop intact, and it’s all just perfect for strolling to the VIP and holding the bottles high. There are at least two and a half hooks here, and two verses zipped inside the contours of the drums; if this weren’t Drake, rap’s finest producer of evidence for arguments about class-based gentrification, telling the world of his struggle, it would go down as easily as celebratory champagne. If you can’t get past that, consider that framing the song as a Toronto triumph in the video and using it to take shot after shot at the Weeknd (“I can turn your boy into the man”) makes this less a “L’Chaim!” to self and more another chapter in Drake’s Jay-Z 2.0 playbook.
[8]

Crystal Leww: That low bass makes this song really work, but it’s indiscernible without either great speakers or headphones. It sets up a fairly simple beat for Drake to rap over. Drake wants nothing more than for people to think of him as a Real Rapper with a story that is worth telling. He might have a more privileged background than a lot of others, but Drake really succeeds because he stands apart as someone who reflects deeply on himself and his position. The (often quoted and shouted) line “I wear every single chain even when I’m in the house” reveals that deep self-reflection and self-examination. His thing, whether you like it or not, is not something that he puts on for the cameras or an audience; Drake’s like that when he’s home alone, too.
[7]

Brad Shoup: If only this thing could’ve been half as fun as the video — or the line “I could turn your boy into the man.” Mike Zombie’s space bass is great; so’s the edited guitar/piano loop. But a come-up song bereft of details? Deadly. There’s a kind of admirable brutalism in that chorus, but once again: no fun.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Smug, douchey, oversensitive, and self-aggrandizing I expected. Boring, though? Boring is new.
[1]

Scott Mildenhall: Sounds like he’s worn out from trying to convince all those people that he doesn’t worry about.
[4]

I just now learned that “Lights” wasn’t particularly big in the UK, and I’m not sure how to cope…

[Video][Website]
[5.29]

Anthony Easton: The angelic choruses read as a cheap effect, as does the mention of ghosts, and the terrible “grace”/”face” rhyme. But I love her voice, and I love how quietly she sings “explosions,” and in the middle of an anxious week, how she says “it will be okay” is genuinely helpful.
[7]

Pete Baran: There’s a precision to Ellie Goulding’s voice which has suited her electronic-heavy previous work and served her extremely well in the rent-a-chorus market that is one of the few growth areas of the British economy at the moment. So this relatively stripped back track is a bit of a departure for her, and she pulls it off pretty well. The build is textbook, the metaphor strong and it grabs the small amount of emotion it is aiming for. For it to work properly though I would want even more of an explosion at its heart.
[6]

Crystal Leww: The problem with Ellie Goulding is that while her voice is very distinct, it lacks personality and power. So while she can be great when she paints a very specific picture with details (the “the crafty smoke that made us choke” in “Wish I Stayed”) or when the production is interesting (“Starry Eyed”, “Figure 8”), her songs are bland when she slows it down and goes straight ballad like on “Lights” and here. This sort of song requires real power to pull off, but there is nothing explosive about this song.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: The old nineties trick of tortured pronunciation standing in for emotional content is as well-done as it ever was, but the solemn cannonfire-in-the-distance percussion only underlines how little is actually there.
[4]

Brad Shoup: She can still make explosions, at least the controlled-demolition kind. I do love her vocal grain, that pack-a-day grit, but still I’d have to give MVP honors to the choral warmups.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Her smoky voice deserves post-Robyn dance-pop settings, not sub-Rihanna crossovers.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: The video is comprised of tour footage, but wait — the album campaign isn’t over just yet. That’s mainly down to a widely-seen video featuring people standing, looking moody, walking, looking moody — even sitting and looking moody — before exploding in to such explosive actions as a passionate kiss, a fight, and shouting off a bridge, blowing this not-really-that-big audio dynamite up into the lofty heights of the UK top 20. What’s more, it’s all been done via the old-fashioned warm glow of television. The anti-“Harlem Shake,” if you really must.
[7]