(Spoiler: We did.)

[Video][Website]
[4.22]

Patrick St. Michel: An easy-breezy celebration of the South and the women in it that gets pretty corny (“a little bit crazy like New Orleans/Memphis blue and Daytona sunny”) and seems a little lazy. Still, two details make me like this more than I should — first, the way the electronic organ perks up when he says New Orleans; second, the post-chorus “Southern girls/rock my world” delivered through… vocoder? Didn’t see that coming, or how nice it sounds.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I wonder if a Macon chick taught him how to use the vocoder.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: The overt Van Morrison reference situates it directly in the lineage of ’70s soft rock. The Frampton talkbox, the lazy Petty rhythm, and the goofy guitar solo even more so; and then of course there’s the premise, old as the Beach Boys and filtered through generations of country-crossover slicksters from Glen Campbell to Kid Rock. I don’t buy the sincerity of the fanservice for a second, but I don’t need to; smarm this precisely calibrated sells itself.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: The vocodered parts feel a very strange addition to what feels an extraordinarily ordinary song, bringing to mind the time Cliff Richard fooled R&B radio stations into playing a rubbish/amazing white label garage remix of one of his rubbish/rubbish 90s singles. Beyond them, what’s most extraordinary is that it’s so bland it’s easy to not realise that it actually has a chorus.
[4]

Crystal Leww: I am really tired of men prescribing the “right” type of behavior for girls. This is so boring; please make it stop.
[0]

Katherine St Asaph: I grew up in the South and can report that some Southern girls — most, in fact! — have neither hazel eyes nor blonde hair. They probably live in subdivisions, no barns allowed. They probably despise sunburned lips (between this and Keith Urban, are country songwriters just never allowed out in the sun? Someone do an exposé!) And they’re about equally likely to embrace these Dixie-sticky cliches as scoff. It wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the song weren’t so boring. A vocoder is not differentiation.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: “Kisses sweeter than Tupelo honey” is cute by itself, but when it’s paired with “Daytona sunny” it seems like Southern word association bingo.
[4]

Brad Shoup: “Southern girl, rock my world… play a country song,” goes the tiny processed voice, as if somewhere, there’s a computer in a Belmont basement, quavering out foolproof pop-country text nuggets for songwriting scientists too dumb to think of ’em themselves. Setting aside the conceit that turns Southern girls into just another feature on the map, or a particularly sexy natural resource, this is a leisurely song. Like, obnoxiously so. The song exists for the chorus, and the chorus has always existed. Every organ fill or guitar croak becomes a sort of vaudeville bit, a corny way to comment on the action, such as it is. I’d much rather McGraw plant himself into the Southern earth, if only to see what the bloom could possibly look like.
[3]

Anthony Easton: Better-written than many of these kinds of songs, and much less of an attempt at chart success than his last single, and this has a delightful memory of “California Girls” — which all raise it to sort of okay. 
[6]

Will we allay Scott’s confusion? STAY TUNED…

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Scott Mildenhall: What a revelation it was a good while ago to discover that Gavin DeGraw and that man from that Nelly song are not the same person. Who exactly DeGraw really is remained a mystery until just now — he’s the guy from Train, isn’t he? He has at least updated some of “Drive By”‘s lyrics – if you found “my love for you went viral” a bit two-thousand-and-late, then you should be pleased to note the beyond zeitgeist “hipsters” line — but it’s all a little too eager to please, as if Tim’s tried to capitalise on the fun of “Drive By-uh-uh-y!”, and instead just capitalised it.
[6]

Jer Fairall: Free associating a list of contemporary maladies (climate change, drone strikes, hipsters) alongside a love story that apparently began with his copying down a phone number off a bathroom wall, DeGraw delivers this nonsensical verbal splay with such earnestness that one imagines him claiming this as “Dylanesque.” Which would be laughable enough even if he didn’t already sing like a funkless Adam Levine and sound like the product of a studio freshly equipped with a preset labelled “Mumford.” 
[2]

Alfred Soto: This hoedown given faint electronic propulsion professes confusion about “hipsters” and obligations: two things about which good pop shouldn’t be weak-kneed about. I’m recommending it, though, because DeGraw is working up a sweat while sounding buoyant. A neat trick.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Please, no more mentions of “hipsters” in song. Also, nobody be like this walking eye-roll factory.
[1]

Iain Mew: I spend most of the song wishing DeGraw would shut up (“neon gypsy”/”desert rain” beats out some close contenders for the worst bit), but he never, ever does, and behind him things are even busier. The moment closest to quiet involves him and others going “AAAAAAAHHHH.” It’s an experience, but I don’t mean that a recommendation unless you are curious about how Train to the power of Train would sound.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: People say Mumfordite rock (a pointless “genre,” but whatever, we’re stuck with it) is self-serious, but it can be so deeply, deeply goofy. And unlike Imagine Dragons going GUHHHH in what’s otherwise a portentous slog or Train tailoring their metaphors to the Lyttle Lytton Contest, I kind of think Gavin McGraw means to be goofy. “Best I Ever Had” isn’t about a Manic Pixie Dream Girl so much as Gavin’s mental pinball trying so hard to imagine he had one and is now in deep mourning. As you might expect, this produces social commentary far less incisive than it thinks it is (“night sky full of drones” onward), race buffoonery (if “savin’ Africa” didn’t do it, “neon gypsy” will, and if neither did there’s a 1-in-4 chance you’re writing an angry comment that includes the word “Tumblr”) and outright cynicism (arguably the premise, but definitely the multi-state shoutouts, which falls just short of LMFAO recording umpteen custom versions of “I’m in Miami Bitch.”) But for every moment like that there’s something like a giddy “I failed algebra!” which is silly and strained and embarrassing and flat-out amazing. It helps that the music’s good; that intro sounds like Crayonsmith, the folk rave-up is properly raucous, and the moment of clarity (or at least “Clarity”) when the parade passes by the first chorus for once feels earned. It’s OK to like this, really. (If you scoffed at Gavin’s “too many hipsters” line but swooned at Taylor’s identical line, ask yourself why.)
[7]

Brad Shoup: His prattle about hipsters and booze and nicotine isn’t transgressive in the least — but neither are most people I know. This slots well next to the new Avicii: frantic cornpone yielding to a swell EDM-absence chorus. His mouth is less mushy than it once was, and he gives a shout-out to the lesser states, so I’m good.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Too many details, too much nonsense, too much grinding power, but it doesn’t go anywhere, even as it opens up into that coda. 
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: When a chirpy piano-folkie Drake cover with the same title would have been a better-case scenario than your “original” (Christ) song, it’s time to set your fedora on fire.
[1]

No. 1 result on Google, for the record…

[Video][Website]
[6.90]

David Turner: To be Syd tha Kyd, in a white tee, skinny jeans and not even a pair of shoes. To appear cooler and more aware of it than the biggest white boy R&B sellers of this year, Timberlake and Thicke. No extravagance, only funk, groove and love — and my god, the LOVE and LUST. It’s beautiful, makes one want to dance; to find your partner and say “I love you,” or at least go up to a friend and say “I don’t think I’ll be able to ever afford Syd and crew at my wedding, will I?” 
[8]

Cédric Le Merrer: This sounds exactly like the kind of thing my uncle would awkwardly dance to, played right after “Get Lucky.” I’m still a bit confused as to when filling floors with everybody’s drunk uncle became the hippest thing.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Lounge disco in the Boz Scaggs vein, with hints of the Roots’ use of female voices for “mystique.” A decent atmosphere in which to relax with a single malt, in other words.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Harkening back to small-voice R&B from 15 years ago while also sneering “I hear you jags are into disco again.” The combination of quiet confidence with a trendy glide is too much for me to resist.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: You thought The Internet wasn’t going to shamelessly glom onto the trendiest sounds going — space disco, ’00s R&B? They’re called The Internet! That’s the joke. Anyway, here are some things The Internet likes: cloudy production, in the sense that close up it’s made of all these tiny interlocking ice crystals; the chorus of “Rock Your Body,” reimagined so that the key lyric is “please stay”; pretending you’re a Pussycat Doll while feeling like a wallflower. It’s genial, relatable, shareable — but hey, sometimes thousands of shares can be right.
[7]

Jer Fairall: The Odd Future gang’s other queer representative affects a surprising and credible Janet Jackson coo, but I would have liked to have heard a little more urgency and personality in her placid vocal. Ceding the spotlight to the warm, amorphous disco-funk groove might prove to be a wise move, however; this sounds as much like a Pharrell Williams composition as anything he’s actually been involved in this year, and such things seem to be doing pretty okay.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Trading in the sub-R. L. Stine atmospherics of her OFWGKTA pals for this slacker-Prince groove is a major step up, even if Syd tha Kyd can’t particularly sing and the band can only barely bump. This shy, eyes-averted chat-up is way more appealing than the towering infernos of confidence represented pretty much everywhere else in pop.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: Smooth and spacious, but what really sells this one is Syd tha Kid’s vocals. She sounds a little nervous, a little vulnerable, singing about someone she really, really wants to get with, getting close to mumbles at times. She doesn’t stretch herself thin, rather coming off as earnestly nervous. It matches the mood.
[8]

Crystal Leww: Syd doesn’t have the strongest vocals, but she’s learned from her Odd Future pal Frank Ocean that emotion can go a long ways to make up for that and add something special, too. Her delivery in the chorus is similar to something that Frank would do. It’s a certain shyness that comes across even as she’s asking the most straightforward of questions in “Don’t you want me?” Coupled with that bassline that simply grooves , “Dontcha” fits right along with “Thinkin’ Bout You”: simple little love songs.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Historically minded but not nostalgic, with a delicate balance on exactly what the implications of desire mean; it’s difficult to know if the attachment is to the history of the work, or a person in general. (The band’s called The Internet, which instead of producing new ways of information provides endless ways of systematically sorting, new narratives from old, shuffling and repeating forever.) Abstraction as a formal move has been played since the mid ’70s, since Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby,” maybe, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t love it.
[8]

Are those Robin Thicke’s pants?

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Jonathan Bogart: Umpteenth-generation photocopy of the “We No Speak Americano” template, this time from Slovakia, with slightly more steroidal EDM than the average and as little sampled ragtime piano and swing clarinet as they can get away with. Mirgova’s the best part, a warm voice that invites you to a party that turns out to be a lot less fun than she promises.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Like Nellie McKay doing “Call Me Maybe” at the karaoke bar, this Eastern European vamps more than swings, which is perfect: this is a karaoke bar in the Omaha Courtyard Marriott.
[5]

Iain Mew: The reference to “Call Me Maybe” is telling. “Swing” may appear at first to be a novelty retro dance record with drops that barely hit, but that’s just trappings which can’t get quite in the way of its core of sweet teenpop, to which Mirgova’s bright vocals are perfectly suited.
[7]

Anthony Easton: This doesn’t swing as much as it pounces–even the piano vamps in ways that seem more Viperish than they do as pure swing. I am actually wondering what it offers the track at all. 
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: For a song that promises swing in the most Ronseal of ways, this is pretty light on the stuff. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge. Normally the swing part of electro swing isn’t just tacked on, but focal. Parov Stelar must hear this, more “EDM” swing than anything, and hear nothing but sad trombone. He shouldn’t worry though, it’s catchy, and fun — and fun is what it’s all about, right Parov? It’s no Doop, it’s not some kind of “My Nie Hovoriť Slovenský” (if you can be bothered to Google Translate that), it’s not even a Gramophonedzie, but at this moment — pi-pi-pa-ra-pa-pam — it’s alright enough.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I was all set to write this off as another pop star reaching for that jitterbug brass ring, but that chorus goes to some stirring places. Even the swingier parts are redeemed by a direct, fully inhabited vocal performance. Linking the shuffle of ancient jazz and modern pop is still a gimmick, but achieving weightlessness never goes out of fashion.
[7]

Blue skies, broken hearts… next 12 exits…

[Video]
[6.29]

Jonathan Bogart: Look, I’m clearly biased: I moved thousands of miles across the country to get away from where the sky is blue forever. But I’m still a goddamn sucker for Diplo’s sonic layering.
[6]

Anthony Easton: This is how you insert a Diplo production: the ironic gravitas of a perfect dance beat in the midst of a hysterical fall apart love song.
[7]

Iain Mew: Not since Gold Panda have I known such a strong combination of “I enjoy listening to this song” and “I can’t remember any specifics when it finishes”, and “XXX 88” has words and everything! I think it’s because the pleasure is all from listening to MØ’s expressive voice, above what she’s singing with it. The secret of the song is that it works as a vehicle accordingly.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Every ten seconds an element tugs at the ear: submerged background vocals, organ fills, a horn chart recalling Timbaland as much as TV on the Radio. The vocal is the pivot point: as mysterious as a fog horn, as evocative as the memory of an ex.
[7]

Josh Langhoff: Hey buddy, is MØ like a lounge singer? She sounds woozy. The synths sound woozy. But wooze is just a decoy to distract us from the rote businesslike four-chorder about a bunch of people moving to Arizona, I think. During the chorus things perk up with horns and skitters and an extra chord, proving that she who woos with wooze will not lose me to snooze if she’ll choose to peruse other hues of synth cues.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I assume this song was cut because someone had to cut it. Everything’s loose in its socket, from the afterthought horns to MØ’s curdled mumble and stream-of-boredom talk about hearts of gold and blue skies.
[3]

Cédric Le Merrer: Sometimes it appears the “Nuke The Cat” screenwriting syndrome has also touched a lot of songwriters and producers. Their songs have to be bigger, to reach ever higher heigths of epic epicness. After beautifully avoiding epic epicness on “Climax,” working with MØ, Diplo has found someone who knows an oblique way to reach those crowded heights. The wonderful vocal performance is obviously the main anchor: MØ packs so much pathos in her “buddy don’t you cry” that Diplo has to do is making sure the horns sound huge enough on the pre-chorus. This ends up being the kind of songs where mountains are leaped repeatedly, but the feels are never less intimate for it. And oh, are those feels many!
[10]

I wonder if T-Pain is also in this club?

[Video][Website]
[6.67]Anthony Easton: Valium just makes me fall asleep, so love like Valium would just be like cuddling. And then I would get hot, and the person sleeping with me would knock their elbow into my face, and it would be a mess, but it would be less of a mess than what ever this dancey-housey-boshesque thing is.
[3]

David Turner: Why Valium? Anything but Valium? Can a word ruin a song’s mood than what this poor metaphor does to the merely okay “5 AM”? A lot of questions, but I guess it’s just expectations being too high. Katy B’s debut album, On a Mission, is one of the best of the decade, and “What Love is Made Of” was a great opening single for her sophomore album. But a dud single is not a career-ending or fandom-revoking measure, so I’ve made my criticisms and will still be ready for the next single!
[4]

Alfred Soto: But she doesn’t sound like she’s on Valium! Irony! Imagine this track as a belated sequel to Everything But The Girl’s “Lullaby of Clubland,” in which Tracey Thorn wanders into a packed club at 3 a.m. without a coat looking for her lover. Two hours later, she’s forgotten the coat and the lover after dropping some fantastic X. Katy squeezes herself between the percussive lines, yelling through an impossible din.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Katy B’s best single was “Unfinished Sympathy” for ’00s kids; her second-best single, weirdly, turns out is “Gimme Gimme Gimme” for clubbing hours, or perhaps “Just Dance” minus Gaga. Katy deploys details like quick cuts. It’s 5 a.m. — Katy sings it like a shudder — three hours after nothing good happens. Katy’s lost her friends, and they didn’t even care enough to text. Nobody’s texting — no girls, no guys, no friends or otherwise. The room’s somehow more crowded, the lights less natural, the guys more threatening. She needs to not be there, but she’s still there; that inner switch that flips when one’s decided to flirt is lodged at On. The night is a sunk cost fallacy. And the trip’s shorter and safer-seeming to whoever’s place, with whomever, than hers alone. (Cheaper too, if it’s the Tube.) It’s substituting sex for intimacy, a substitute that backfires — but Katy knows this. On the bridge, she submerges her cries beneath come-ons; in the chorus, her plea that “I need somebody to knock me out” isn’t even masochistic really; it’s resigned, to whatever ends the night. (It reminds me — I’m sorry — of Elizabeth Wurtzel in New York: “For a while after my first book came out, I went home with a different man every night and did heroin every day–which showed my good sense, because the rest of the time I was completely out of control.”) The genius of Katy B is how well she makes pop of it: a chorus that soars for a second, then tumbles floorward; frantic-tired vocals; and a backing more conversant with Top 40 than ever — Usher’s “Scream,” maybe, recorded on older tech to a file gracefully fragmenting. (They could be answer songs.) Is it a bit On a Mission 2? Yes, but who among us doesn’t want that?
[9]

Patrick St. Michel: The sun is such a disorienting sight once you step out of a club. After a all-night affair, the body usually aches and the world outside looks surreal – other exhausted individuals staggering home, folks passed out in alleys, people trying to make a last-second hookup happen. It only gets more intense if you are alone – the memories of the hours before, along with all the encounters and missed connections, replay, and things can get lonely fast. That McGriddle combo starts looking like the only companionship in the world. Katy B gets this sensation, and she knows what the dawn brings and how isolating it can feel (especially if your friends vanish). “5 AM” is the emotional roller coaster that hour deserves.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: “That beat’s so sick” is a lyric that could come off as terminally clueless or grossly poseur in a throat less carefully calibrated than Katy B’s, but she puts such a spin on the velar stop that you can hear her subtly making fun of herself for saying it. (Ke$ha would do the same thing, but without the subtlety.) That same sense of thought-out control prevails throughout the track, which sounds remarkable composed and unruffled for needing a lover like Valium. Those of us whose emotions are rarely worn on our sleeves, though, may appreciate the external composure. Still waters, etc.
[8]

Daisy Le Merrer: Sometimes meeting expectations is great, especially when they haven’t been met in a while : When you get a Katy B song sounding exactly like you’d expect a Katy B song to sound, a song called 5AM that sounds exactly like the kind of song you’d want to play at 5AM, that song deserves the exact grade you’d expect a TSJ reviewer to give a Katy B song.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: Whether entering a room, standing at the bar (with her friend Oliviah) or just having got paid, Katy B is her best at night. Her best, too, is rarely light (part of why her last single didn’t really hit the mark), and she’s rediscovered that here. Moody but fevered, she places you right alongside her, inside the story, watching as she loses her friends and checks her phone, feeling her anxiety and paranoia as much as her longing. The production is the set, and everything else is hers; the details minor and major, she plays the immediate drama to a tee. If she wanted to she could have made a brilliant night-in-the-life-of concept album already. In lieu of that, this will suffice.
[8]

Brad Shoup: Katy’s gouged out a significant niche turning dance subtext into straight text. In a typical track, the club is an agar plate. You’re always aware of the world outside your particular compression; despite your deepest hopes for the experiment, the music and drugs facilitate the same reactions every time; and there’s bounds to how much you can thrive in this environment. In “5 AM,” a boy is the reagent, per usual. But something keeps Katy from giving herself to the situation, some combination of a scattered mind and the dreaded daylight and history. I want her to wake up and feel different, no matter how easy it is to stick to routine.
[5]

Our yearly run-in with them…

[Video][Website]
[5.33]

Jessica Doyle: Back at the beginning of the year, I put Nine Muses’s “Dolls” on repeat for a while. And it’s a charming song; but it’s more charming for ignorant English-and-not-much-else speakers. Once I read a translation of the lyrics, and found out that “Dolls” is actually a breakup song, I got indignant: but the horns! The horns are telling you to kick that man to the curb and go dance! (Alfred Soto was right.) In a similar spirit, “Damaged Lady” has the churning guitars and opens like a kick: the whisper of “I want it to rain now” leading to a yell. But I’ve seen three different translations of the lyrics (here’s one) and all contain variations on “I feel so pathetic” and “I can’t lift my head.” Well, clearly they can. They can even do Mireille Mathieu impressions. (Bless the folks who decided to ignore the lyrics and create the video for the song that should have been.) Two songs of insisting that women must be heartbroken and self-lacerating, all musical cues to the contrary, better not make a trend.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The tempo shifts and hysteria do suggest damage, and the guitar interludes suggest someone’s been listening to industrial noise.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: I read the lyrics to this song before actually listening to it, and based on the words I was expecting Kara in downtrodden ballad mode. Not a squiggly little pop number with guitar chugs and zig-zagging electronics. It’s a slightly more dramatic, busier reimagining of last year’s “Way,” adding a sense of optimism to what could have been a real downer of a single. 
[8]

Iain Mew: I tried to put my previous dislike of Kara aside, but the popping and talking intro — sounding like a less fun version of “I Got a Boy” — had me approaching “Damaged Lady” with little excitement. Then the horribly thin guitar growl and annoying squeaking came in and, yeah, I don’t think it’s just prejudice that has me thinking there’s far too little song here to compensate.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: Good energy, excellent melodicism, decent rhythmic switchbacks. Production lets the side down badly (especially after that teasingly sparkling intro), and none of the voices stands out as anything more than capable. I bet this is one of those songs where the lyrics matter.
[6]

Brad Shoup: The combination of lyric and fractured presentation is scrambling me a little bit; Kara pings from Aaliyah-style stepping to stadium-mook guitars. So good on Sweetune for putting me in the right headspace. I don’t know whether that space belongs to someone immature (as this note claims) or someone with more permanent concerns. It sure sounds like the latter. 
[5]

Make sure to tip your screengrabber…

[Video][Website]
[5.71]

Anthony Easton: This is all about the slightly Californian uptick on the final vowels, and how that affects how they sing oooh — it could be the Ronettes, but they mashed in a slightly sleazy synth track — and about how chic it is. It’s almost timeless. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: I’m unsure what she’d do without the syncopated guitar and keyboard lines — go crazy?
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Simple but effective indie-pop, elevated a touch by just how good Au Revoir Simone’s singing is.
[7]

Brad Shoup: There’s half a great song here. The refrain is elegant, and the band assembles vast amounts of tension. But the tension is plowed into a low-mixed one-string solo, and if you’ll forgive the hackiness — is Au Revoir Simone’s definition of crazy riding one guitar line and expecting different moods? 
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: It is twenty-thirteen. You’re going to have to work harder to be interesting than that.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: I’m surprised Au Revoir Simone have made it to four albums without either breaking up or landing a minor hit single off the back of some movie (ball’s in your courts, Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Zach Braff). Would need a lot more actual buzz to pick up the metaphorical buzz to cross over, but I’m weak for the expansive outro and vocalists who remind me a bit of Nina Gordon.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The Au Revoir Simone album’s frustrating; it generally veers pretty where I’d prefer it to veer otherwise. (I may have gotten the wrong impression from track one.) Here’s a perfect example: pretty, certainly, but not crazed.
[6]

We really just aren’t very fond of Michael Jordan…

[Video][Website]
[2.86]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Make it stop.
[0]

David Turner: Mike Will’s dozen plus songs on the Hot 100 in 2013 isn’t the Neptunes from 1998-2002 or Babyface/L.A. Reid in 1989-1993, but it’s still very impressive. “23,” though, is by far the worst song of the bunch and it’s hard to pinpoint the blame. Wiz, a rapper I do like, does nothing here; Juicy J does the same amount of nothing; Mike Will tries one too many things with this beat as it fluctuates between a Mario level and a Three 6 Mafia song. Then there is Miley. *Sigh* Right now Miley is trading on the currency of a non-controversy of a career path treated as controversy, because she is a white teen star going “wild”. But she isn’t going “wild” — nothing provocative is happening except for maybe the VMAs, which was so racially misguided I can barely give her that. She is doing nothing with this moment. White privilege in the music industry fucking fanuted “Wrecking Ball” to #1, as its not-that-raw-or-bare and not-that-sexy video traded on an assumption of both to over 100 million views in a week. Maybe this is a mirror on our own culture. Maybe we should just break the mirror.
[2]

Brad Shoup: I never got into Jordans; they all looked like capybaras, and even if I could’ve afforded a pair of XIII Flints, my 10th-grade basketball team was bad enough without my footwear lending us an air of farce. I respect the collector game, though, but this roster is the definition of “spare parts”. The kicks-track ideal lists effortlessly; “23” gets three from Juicy J and just one from Cyrus. (Her reference is almost certainly secondhand: not because of gender or age, but because her appropriation game is not that immaculate.) Khalifa is, as we know, a Converse guy, and it shows: he has neither sneakers nor an MJ nugget to display. But like a pair of Tokyo23s stitched by the finest sweatshop hands, the song holds together. A melody that could code as menacing if mixed louder comes off as ruminative. Miley’s hook melody transcends her hoary puns. And Mike didn’t think himself out of having Juicy say “Js on my feet”. Your move, DJ Mustard.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Man, Mike WiLL Made It needs to find a new group of folks to run with.
[2]

Crystal Leww: Gosh, what a wonderful Mike WiLL beat totally wasted by the most basic of crews. Miley Cyrus stays sounding like everything but no one all at the same time in the worst possible way. Who is she trying to play this time around? Ke$ha? Rihanna again? That flow and intonation is ripped straight out of someone’s playbook, but it doesn’t sit right with her slight white Southern girl drawl. I wonder if Miley is pissed that she wasn’t included in Spring Breakers. Definitely, right? Whatever, she’ll 100% star in the direct-to-DVD sequel co-starring one of the dudes from Drake and Josh as a Justin Timberlake character and directed by Brett Ratner. (Thanks, Josh, for helping me brainstorm that.) Wiz Khalifa laughs, and that’s about the most charming thing he does with his time. Juicy J shouts out his “Show Out” work with Mike WiLL. Oh god, I’m just so bored with all of this. Mike WiLL and Nicki Minaj are suffering from the same problem: I would literally love to hear this song with only just them on it.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: Juicy J is the only one of this crew old enough to remember Michael Jordan at his peak, not that you can tell from the performance; his bit doesn’t stand out any more than the rest of them. Miley’s sticking to her Rihanna impression, Wiz sounds so bored that he can’t even make his boredom productive, and Mike WiLL’s beat isn’t even very distinctive. If you’d told me it was Lex Luger I’d have nodded and forgotten about it. Just like I’m going to anyway.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Let’s face it: a different libretto and vocalist (let’s say, oh, Ciara) would have ridden Mike Will’s beat into the top ten. Let’s face it: this still might.
[3]

How long until the Destroyer collaboration?

[Video][Website]
[7.17]

Jessica Doyle: There’s this moment that comes after you’ve done something seriously wrong — not small like misplacing your keys, not something you can apologize for easily — and the punishment has come and you’re standing in the aftermath. (This assumes you are privileged enough to be accustomed to fair punishments.) You’re hushed and chastened, with the defensiveness burned off, and now you have to pick up and keep going with your new self-knowledge. You are not as good a person as you thought you were. And in that recognition comes a sort of peace. This song is the musical articulation of that peace.
[9]

Patrick St. Michel: Petition to make Devonté Hynes the head of all bass-guitar production in 2013 starts now. “Chamakay” follows up “Losing You” and “Everything Is Embarrassing” as Hynes-produced (and in “Chamakay”‘s case, performed) tracks featuring really smooth bass work. What makes it great is how non-flashy it sounds on all three songs, allowing the lyrical sadness and other noises to play out, but being assertive enough to give each a bit of a backbone. Plenty goes on during “Chamakay” to indicate Hynes isn’t phoning it in, but that bass (and the ennui) remind that the dude has been developing his own little pop formula over the past year.
[8]

Anthony Easton: That sax riff is ludicrous. I am not sure if that’s a good thing yet. 
[6]

Cédric Le Merrer: Between this, Solange’s “Losing You” and Basement Jaxx’s latest single, someone more qualified than me on identity politics and cultural appropriation should probably write something on the flurry of hipster African tourism music videos. “Chamakay” seems to be the more “authentic” one, its beat sounding like a slowed down Mory Kante single, and the whole thing coming wrapped up in Dev Hynes’ own family history, but what strikes me on this song is the stellar production work. It’s not just the usual Hynes as Blood Orange mastery of mood that impress, but also his understanding of his own limitations as a vocalist and his very smart use of the sometime insupportable Caroline Polachek. Alone, his mumbly delivery would have turned this into dull chillwave, while Polachek’s performance could easily have ruined the fragile mood with too much vocal acrobatics. I know it’s a bad look to credit the male producer for the female voalist’s performance, but he’s the one with his name on the marquee, here, so I’ll go ahead and do it anyway. What keeps this from being a 9 or a 10 is the slightly aimless melody. Sometimes, you can’t avoid the Chill Wave.
[8]

Brad Shoup: The inclusion of Caroline Polachek doesn’t do much for the notion of duets. Hynes’ quivering loverman obscures the topspin Polachek applies to her parts; she sounds like Jessie Ware, but Jessie Ware as a trumpet. (For the intro, she does this sustaining wordless thing where she alternates between the fricative and nasal — you can really hear the horn.) As a duet, then, it’s middling, but as camp-softcore atmosphere, it’s great. The snare drips as if from a faucet; the bass muscles in for the occasional quip; the bgvs sink the sun. All good, until the sax solo. 
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Unfocused and invested in atmosphere over hooks as this piece of soft-rock-according-to-memory is, there’s no denying Dev Hynes’ ability with a melody, especially on the chorus. I’d call the saxophone that comes in at the end “healing” if there had been anything in the three minutes preceding it sharp enough to leave a mark.
[7]