Pop, to two decimal places.
We hope everyone is relaxing this weekend, American federal holiday or no. Our annual Amnesty Week is peeking over the horizon, and just like last year, there will be a reader component. Fine print will deploy Monday, after the day’s blurbs. Until then, stay safe, consume in moderation, and onward local sports concern!
2013: A T.O.P. odyssey…
Madeleine Lee: Four years ago, “Turn It Up” was left for dead, baking in the desert; now it returns, staggering, loopy and vengeful. The heavy beat and one-note chorus have warped and darkened into a drone. Fashion (Givenchy, McQueen) has aged into art (Basquiat, Kubrick), and the preening messages of seduction have dissolved into a cut-up that layers images of nuclear apocalypse against a recitation of the Korean alphabet in the space of a verse. In the end it’s more noise than signal, but the endless repetition of the title is true dada: an incantation against order, an excitation to an action that never arrives, and ultimately, its own obliteration.
[8]
Sonya Nicholson: HEADLINE READS: World’s Sexiest Man emerges from six months of (not semi) seclusion, updates his previous single, surprises everyone no one some people with a hit despite having a supposedly “non-mainstream” sound. But are we not at peak nonsense, peak hip-hop and peak alphabet? Why shouldn’t the public love T.O.P’s dadaist-ode-to-nonsense chorus over a hard hip-hop beat? What we observe here is therefore the happy accident of someone’s genuine artistic impulse (see: the namedropping of “Basquiat”) lining up perfectly with the ultra-current-trend. Besides which, T.O.P. can rap whatever he wants and elevate the material, even the alphabet or the national anthem.
[8]
Cédric Le Merrer: I’m deeply sceptical of proclamations of power in songs. Put a little silliness in it, though, and I’ll gladly let your boot stomp on my face forever. Like G-Dragon, T.O.P is just silly enough that I gladly believe anything he says about how great he is.
[8]
Jessica Doyle: YG artists don’t make a lot of political noise: PSY’s commentary on Gangnam materialism is about as hard-hitting as it gets. Not that swagger can’t be a political statement in itself, but repeated swagger backed by cultural appropriation starts to look empty after a while. So T.O.P’s sneers on “Korean” and “mass media” promise more than they deliver, and there ends up being less to “Doom Dada” than initially meets the ear. But it’s still worth it. That combination of dread and strut make for interesting listening: TOP seems to not know if he’s unleashing the coming chaos or preparing himself for it. I hope he finds a safe enough space to keep going with this. We know labelmate CL has partied with M.I.A.; CL, can you make introductions?
[7]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Between “Doom Dada” and Taeyang’s recent dud “Ringa Linga”, it certainly feels as though YG Entertainment are handing out G-Dragon cast-offs. Perhaps it’s good business, with G-D’s future-pop off-kilter enough to seem cool and melodic enough to feel friendly; perhaps it’s damage control after CL’s Rustie-gone-ratchet-in-deep-space solo single bombed. (Familiarity breeds revenue, as Manohla Dargis says.) Taeyang couldn’t get a grab on his slippery-but-milquetoast EDM, jettisoning his skills as a singer for Life of the Party chants. By comparison, T.O.P knows his strengths and sticks to them — a commanding timbre and a nimble flow to go with it. Musically speaking, “Doom Dada” is nothing surprising: heavily filtered trap drums and wailing vocal samples mark it as a darker cousin to G-D’s “Nilira.” What surprises are the vocal acrobatics T.O.P displays, an Eminem-esque skill for morphing nonsense into commands and hopscotching around hard syllables until they turn into percussionist scrambles. He makes like gunshots and tablas and speed-raps “uju wireul bogo deudneun neukkim” (“it feels like I’m looking above”) like he’s gliding over the words. He brings the weirdness out of the familiar, which is some skill.
[8]
Brad Shoup: T.O.P’s timbre is usually a highlight for any given Big Bang tune; at full-length, his bassy flatness isn’t going to give Tyler any nightsweats (when he sings, he actually sounds like Savage), but he’s got enough ‘tude to sell the trappy, Diplo-influenced production. He’s more goon than goblin, though: purple references to his skills and the cataclysms they’ll cause, bourgeois references to pinot noir and Basquiat. There are also some weird winks at the developing world at the end; between this and “Badman” there’s some animating principle I’m just not getting. It’s hard to stay in your lane when you’re prone to free association, but I’d love more goofiness.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: G-Dragon’s more of a visual presence and better at zipping off in sudden directions, but if I had to draft one dude from Big Bang to step forward and tell me why he’s hot shit, it would be T.O.P. His voice hides a snarl, one that knows he’s great and, like Kanye West, isn’t hesitant in letting everyone know. “Doom Dada” is pure Jumbotron-flexing, complete with lines aimed at “mass media” and the especially great boast “I’m a 21st century extraordinary Korean.” And the track oozes confidence, which he caps off by actually saying the words “Hakuna Matata” without any hesitation.
[8]
Will Adams: The modulated vocals and massive bass presence recall the menacing soundscape of “Wild For the Night.” Unfortunately, amidst T.O.P’s force-accumulating delivery is that “doom dada” hook, a blank that renders the rest of the song far less threatening than it wants to be.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I like how this races forward, but paradoxically loops backwards — layering and extending, retreating and building, collapsing and reasserting — with all kinds of sounds that move to the edge of what could be considered musical, without fully committing to noise for noise’s sake.
[9]
Alfred Soto: I like the contortions and gymnastics, both of which suggest a way out of EDM for American pop if producers care to listen.
[6]
Kuiper Belt then?
Crystal Leww: Future’s Auto-Tuned emotions have been deeply affecting to me in the past, but this does very little. This is a love song, so it’s just a little bit weird that there’s three people on this. As a duet this might work, but Mr. Hudson is crowding. Like seriously dude, can’t you see that you’re the third wheel here?
[4]
Iain Mew: For the cold depths of space, this gets awfully crowded. I predict a case of Kessler syndrome triggered by the collision of orbiting hook singers.
[3]
Brad Shoup: That tinny lowing! It sounds like someone’s stretching a pulled muscle for four minutes. It’s a love song that starts with an epic humblebrag and concludes by fussing over mistakes, a shitty gift he tries to return in the final line. It’s a song about Ciara that makes Miley the cardboard-cutout duet partner. It’s an Owl City slow jam.
[2]
Alfred Soto: With a reference to the cold depths of space that works for a voice that sounds broadcast from Io, and a dialogue between two performers whose well-matched tonalities acknowledge the distance between a histrionic Englishman and a rapper adept at subsuming his tendency to bathos behind electronics, this track limns the definitions of real and true. The weakest link is its realest element: the castaway known as Miley Cyrus, cast as the feminine support to which bathos and electronics aren’t immune.
[6]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “With all the mistakes I’ve made, you’re still listening.” Future closes out his last verse with this lyric, Cyrus harmonising alongside him, and the direct connection to each artist’s audiences is something that can’t go un-noted. Cyrus has spent the last year in Thinkpiece Nirvana following a turbulently odd sprouting — if you visit this or any website regularly, you will know all about it. Meanwhile, Future has settled into his role as melancholy turn-up merchant, his vocal roboticisms turning him to Tyrell Corp–standard: more human than human. Before this, there were transitional periods spent as Meathead in Da Connect and as an Atlanta street goon, then time spent rapping and slurring and caterwauling and hooting his way through mixtape after mixtape. “Real and True” is an end credits-styled tearjerker, less victory lap for both artists than a sweet grace note to lovers and fans and family for patience: we’ve made it, and you’re still here with us. Mike WiLL’s gooiest piano lines and belting from a cosmically-minded Mr. Hudson (taking his destined place as the Rap Game Mick Hucknall) help make “Real and True” as unsubtle as the Grand Canyon. You may feel slightly nauseated by balladry this full-on and who can blame you? I was. But I also felt my heart proudly swell twice its natural size.
[8]
Anthony Easton: Pitched low and soft, with that piano almost polite and, even Miley, in a career of material and musical excess, becomes as modest as she has been in years. The whole thing is slightly old fashioned: the radio reference maybe, or the Jimi Hendrix cite, or that it could be an almost Taylor Swiftian love story.
[8]
David Turner: Miley Cyrus was on the Disney Channel. Mr. Hudson worked with the 21st Century Black Walt Disney. So maybe it’s no surprise that Future continues to push further into Disney movie soundtrack music. I love “Feeling I Get,” “Long Time Coming,” or, really, any song where Future gets all emotional, which certainly happens here. But this needs Elton John, not Future, and certainly no Cyrus or Hudson.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Mike WiLL Made It, Mr. Hudson ruined it.
[4]
Call us The Squidward Jukebox…
Crystal Leww: Who the hell told these over-educated, rich, acapella singing frat boys that they should make music?
[1]
Anthony Easton: Is being annoyed at this a mark that I am growing too old to engage in teenage shenanigans, or is it that there is just too much shit going on here?
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: “How I feel is that the Internet has ruined the human race” — Lil B on “Age Of Information“/me after some Animal-Collective-meets-fun. urchins used a Spongebob sample before a bass drop.
[0]
Jonathan Bradley: I want to praise the inventiveness of the arrangement — the Nickolodeon hook, the iceberg-sized bass chunk, the handclaps — but none of that matters when that cheery white soul vocal enters. The combination of the DIY and the synthetic is uncanny like homemade margarine.
[3]
Iain Mew: I would never have placed its sample as Spongebob if not for Josh, so bear that in mind, but I like “I’m Ready.” AJR’s gormless enthusiasm is just the thing to make “ooh-weeeeeeeee” joyful, and between the unusually sparing vworps, claps, and the sample there’s a lot of invention and enough variety to keep any of the novel elements turning irritating. Only the fear of making sense of the words is keeping me from loving it more.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Those are some wet handclaps. Can’t drown that hashtag reference, though. I admire the moxie of these boys, cooking up so many jivey pop simulacra. The brostep fizz is fresh out the box. The Mrazzy piano breakdown goes for a joke but becomes one instead. The Spongebob sample is a Spongebob sample. The shuffle bit doesn’t have much current chart company, but do they really think bass rings? It’s the grotesque funhouse mirror version of pop radio.
[5]
Alfred Soto: “Indie pop” their bio says, confident we’ll know what it means. Songs with hand claps? Reggae presets? Lyrics that mention hashtag signs? Vocals as scrubbed as a new toilet? So different it’s familiar.
[2]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Well now: twenfth-wave ska, piano balladry, slobbed-not-chopped cross-genre hobnobbery, #jokes, all the studio effects. Lumbering, charmless, fluttery optimism, like a Buzzfeed listicle turned into aural reality by A Band of Bros. Lawdhamercy.
[2]
Will Adams: “Someday I’ll be so damn sublime” is one of the more obvious references in this already derivative piece of lite-reggae. But where Sublime had a lo-fi haze enhancing Brad Nowell’s mumbles, AJR opt for a sanitized, trebly sound; the multi-tracked vocals, bass sweeps and out-of-the-box drums are compressed and polished to an inch of their lives. Combine the squeaky clean everything with a self-conscious, Internet-savvy video, and “I’m Ready” is an aural sycophant. Too bad there’s nothing good to back it up; the song is built upon a leaden chorus and is plagued with unpleasant sounds (hearing Spongebob’s enthusiastic motto being thrown into a reverb tunnel is one of my least favorite musical moments this year). If this somehow anticipates a trend of pop that is even more saturated, cloying and sterile in 2014 than it is now, let me be the first to say that no, I’m not ready.
[1]
Plugging away…
Anthony Easton: This is Autobanish in both the Kraftwerk and the German motorway sense, and it makes me want to drive all night to escape my inescapable ennui.
[7]
Cédric Le Merrer: It’s been a long time since a Mogwai song was interesting for anything but its texture, and this is the equivalent of the dull, sturdy carpeting at my office.
[4]
Iain Mew: “Remurdered” slowly and painstakingly sets up an atmospheric scene, just in order for its MONSTER SIZED SYNTH GROOVE to come along and stomp around it knocking things over. Except that then the plants around the previously peaceful looking ground rear up and drags the monster down until it can move no more and is part of the scenery. This is the most exciting thing I have heard Mogwai do since… ever?
[9]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: More instrumental pulp moodiness from the masters of instrumental pulp moodiness, with just enough malaise in those keys to keep it from becoming aural vapour.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Although I don’t have much use for these people, the patience with which this unfolds impressed me, notably the Music For the Masses-era synth guitar and stomp at the 3:30 mark. Like Depeche Mode, they have silly ideas about titles and sex.
[6]
Brad Shoup: The beloved clockpunchers of instrumental rock: their manner is mild, they’ve never let a full three years pass between albums, their collaborations work on the page and in the headphones. I’ve not been paying super-close attention, but it’s also possible they’re funny. There’s something about the serpentine solo — the spaces and phrasing, specifically — that seems like an imitation of some streetwalking ’70s rock vocalist. The synth line turns over and over, reshaping itself here and there, but then Bulloch leans into the off-beat, they drape a guitar sheet over the works, and we coast to close.
[6]
Josh Langhoff: This gave me double amnesia.
[4]
Well, roll again…
David Turner: The wordy, nice twee band from across the street! And their name is Hospitality! Perfect. Their self-titled debut was a solid tour of sadness in the guise of smiles. “I Miss Your Bones” hits the same mark until makes a full stop a third of the way to reveal an extended instrumental section. This section is strong, but Hospitality works best with the tension between the dour lyrics and overly perky guitars. And if a choice had to be made between the two, never choose guitar.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The workaday voice complements the lyric qualities of the guitar lines. Nothing you haven’t heard before and will possibly play again.
[6]
Anthony Easton: For a song by a band named Hospitality, the bland guitar work and a silly sentence repeated endlessly are not very welcoming.
[2]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The lyric “I get what I miss” slowly turns from tight pronunciation to mush, from mash notes to séances; the music follows close behind, rumbling and unfurling. It’s an impressively unhinged depiction of unwinding inhibitions, performed with flickering, understated cool.
[7]
Crystal Leww: Amber Papini is a hero on the guitar, which is why it’s painful to say that her guitar solo at the end just goes on a tad too long. “I Miss Your Bones” is most compelling in the parts where she is repeating words to the point of ad nauseam. Papini’s voice goes and goes, and her backup vocals (provided here by some very clever production) echo the words until they matter even less. This is anxiety to the point of claustrophobia to the point of nothingness.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: I loved Hospitality’s debut album from 2012 — it struck a balance between breezy guitar pop and coming-of-age confessional, Amber Papini managing to make songs about liberal arts and saying goodbye to one’s twenties funny and catchy. “I Miss Your Bones” puts too much stock into Hospitality’s technical muscle — guitar solos and various other instrumental wonkery — while shuffling away from the lyrical side of things. Hope this isn’t what maturity looks like.
[4]
Brad Shoup: It’s been a banner year for this kind of synecdoche. But the phrase, repeated, is a weak linking device, especially given Hospitality’s skillful grim advance. Amber Papini and crew create a formidable queue of contrasting sections with nary any bloat. (If they don’t stop on a dime, it’s a silver dollar at worst.) Even the closing solo points up negative space; I imagine it’s a live killer at three times the length.
[7]
Josh Langhoff: Oh, this drumming! So dry and scrapy, it makes me feel anxious for them. It may be the most plodding thing that’s ever made me anxious. (No wait, there was that one time my parents sang “In Bloom” along with Rock Band.) You can tell Hospitality is working so hard! That opening riff obviously took weeks to master. It’s still gonna be iffy on tour, and pretty soon the audience will figure out the band is reaching for “creative” metaphors because they have nothing to say. Media reports of turbulence, freakiness, psychedelia, or even sadness in this music are also reaching.
[2]
Third time the charm?
Anthony Easton: What miracle made my favorite folk duo become one of my favorite dance bands? This glittering heartbreak fully shatters me because it is too spiky and angular to fully melt.
[8]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Technically buoyant yet wounded. Compact yet literally, utterly, sadly bereft of fascination. The drama/dullness quandary: yup, sounds like a Tegan & Sara song.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Mimicking the siren ringing in the girls’ heads, the synth adds the drama to a situation so common that it needed to be articulated: “You never ever saw me like they did.” After a year of releasing unassuming single after single, Tegan & Sara have moved heartbreak to its natural home as a mirror move dance in your living room, where your boyfriend never ever sees you like you do.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: “Goodbye.” “‘Goodbye’? I don’t wanna.” “I don’t wanna feel the need to hear your voice.” “Feel the need to hear your voice.” That is how you present internal conflict. There are so many possibilities in this song, some suggested intentionally, some perhaps not, but that’s what it’s all about: confliction, expressed as confused and irrational as it gets.
[8]
Juana Giaimo: Now that we’re used to the new Tegan and Sara, “Goodbye Goodbye” still sounds surprisingly fresh. Sara’s acknowledged highlight on the album was the incredibly emotional “How Come You Don’t Want Me” while Tegan was in charge of writing the big hit single “Closer“, but “Goodbye Goodbye” has the awkwardness that characterized Sara’s previous successful singles — think of “Alligator” and “Walking With a Ghost.” Her straightforwardness is shocking but still unforced, especially in the silly, catchy word-game in the chorus. “Goodbye Goodbye” probably won’t be as popular as “Closer,” but old fans who listen closely will find that familiar sound that many of us missed in Heartthrob.
[8]
Josh Langhoff: SPOILER ALERT: At the beginning of Mockingjay — which, OK, it’s not as good as the first two but Katniss’s character keeps getting better and better — Katniss is recovering from near death, she’s on drugs, she doesn’t know who she can trust or what she’s even supposed to be doing. As she drifts from moments of rock hard punkitude to noble tenderness to just hiding in the laundry, the doctors prescribe her a litany to help get a grip on reality: “start with the simplest things I know to be true” — name, age, home District, life events — “and work toward the more complicated.” Shellshocked by love, Tegan & Sara appear to have the same doctor. In “Goodbye, Goodbye” they repeat words and phrases until they become incantations. I don’t wanna, I might wanna, I can’t live with, you never really loved me never ever never really loved me loved me like they did… These are things they know to be true. These truths are their rope through the snowstorm or their weirdly tuned synth descant leading through the steely pop corridors. If they see the face of the beloved they gotta start all over again.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Congrats to Greg Kurstin, who Wikipedia says is responsible for those tasty guitar licks in one channel. Any louder and someone would probably call this disco, but on a record ravenous for hooks, what’s one more? Otherwise, it’s clipped, brittle synthpop: a fragile snowglobe of a breakup song.
[5]
Will Adams: An inauspicious choice of single, “Goodbye, Goodbye” delivers the ethos of Heartthrob neatly: glossy pop rock made even shinier with synth flourishes. There are emotions to be felt and hooks to be sunk, but it lacks the drive of its neighbors “Closer” and “I’m Not Your Hero.” In other words, it wears its third single status on its sleeve a bit too much.
[7]
Disclosure’s power is putting a face outline onto other people’s faces, which doesn’t do much, but it’s pretty cool, I guess…
Anthony Easton: This does sound a lot like “Suit and Tie” — if that is the case, it disappoints, because it leaves this space where a Nile Rodgers remix might make use of JT’s vocals. As the text is, it’s a bit anemic, which is disappointing for such a murderer’s row of musicians/producers.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Of course the licks are hot — what’d you expect? Doesn’t waste a second. As on last year’s Disclosure collaboration Smith sounds better when the mixing board fucks with his falsetto.
[6]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Together” is a change of pace, a victory lap for a successful year. Settle sounded so tense for much of its running time that it’s pleasant to hear the Brothers Laurence avoid turning romance into mini-epics of misery or obsession. The levity suits them – it may be one of their chuckles that kicks off the track. It may be Rodgers, peeking through flickers of guitar glitterbombs. It could be Smith, the duo’s A N Other singer of choice. Anyway, it sure sounds like they’re having fun in there.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Nile Rodgers is clearly a very busy man, because 143 seconds is AATW levels of curtness. In truth it’s pitched just right; there aren’t too many ideas in here, and the ones that are needn’t go on any longer – what makes a short song feel average sized makes an average sized one seem to go on forever. With Disclosure bringing their globular glitches, Nile his guitar, and Sam Smith further proving his versatility, two minutes are quite enough to see where this is going.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: Daft Punk did two great things in 2013. First, they helped out a lot on “On Sight.” Second, they brought Nile Rodgers back into the spotlight (and I mean the mainstream, the Tower Records near me proudly displays the best-of-Chic CDs near the front of the store now). The best part of “Get Lucky” is it finds Daft Punk acting more as curators, letting Rodgers (and a wisely picked Pharrell) do his thing without getting too much in the way. Rodgers barely stands out at all on “Together,” as does everyone else featured on the track…unless Jimmy Napes’ thing is sounding like one laid-back blur. Even Sam Smith’s voice gets glazed in effects, making him not sound like Sam Smith. Here’s four artists hoping to gain some cool points by piggybacking on one another.
[4]
Crystal Leww: Everyone involved in this has done a lot better. Sam Smith’s voice is ill-suited to this kind of groove, his voice so pitched and warped and lacking in its usual warmth. Disclosure’s synths sound so devoid of humanity, the exact opposite of what got them to their current state of popularity. How disappointing.
[4]
Will Adams: What made Settle so engaging is that Disclosure avoided doing what that album’s title suggested. “Together” promises thrills — Sam Smith’s luscious voice; Nile Rodgers being wielded with care for once — but ends up sounding rushed; there’s a noticeable lack of dynamics in the production, and the song checks out after its second verse. It ticks the boxes adequately, but nothing more.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Summons a party just as easily — and much more quickly — than “Blurred Lines,” and without all those pesky attendant lawsuits and thinkpieces. I’m rewarding its brevity; I imagine another tilt at the chorus would have reached Zapp-ian levels of milking. Plus, I love it when the beat limps.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: There comes a point when ’70s revivalism becomes Leisure Suit Larry schtick. Are these kids even old enough to get that?
[4]
Inna fends off critique through the power of cloning…
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Inna, global-minded international advocate of Romanian pop, is depressingly desireless, all want want want and no give give give, sex and lust turned transactional. You want to ask, what drives Inna? “All I want is you.” What defines her from decades of Eurobosh? “All I want is you.” Why a handy co-opting of reggaeton stars and not their genre? “All I want is you.” Whatever does Inna want to inspire with her music? “Ringaringaringaringaring!” Okay, she literally just started making sense. Meanwhile: Yandel, lost on the vastness of the dancefloor, caws for Wisin like Mother Crow locating its nestling.
[5]
Iain Mew: “In Your Eyes” provides pleasingly chunky electropop, but it never comes close to living up to its opening lines. In just eight words, “I want your body/Won’t leave without it”, Inna switches from lust to sounding like she intends to drag away a corpse, in a way that’s all the more striking for how straightforwardly she sings it. I would love to hear an “In Your Eyes” that went somewhere with that idea rather than into fire/desire.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I am not convinced that she wants my body, or that it is getting hotter, or — with the lack of modulation — the beat is getting louder, or that she wants much of anything. The pop song is supposed to convince; this fails at its essential task. Minus one point for the “ooh la la”s.
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: Sorry for the image, but remember when J.Lo was “sick on the floor”? Inna and Yandel have put some grit down on it. She’s had some brilliant moments as the international face of Romanian pop, but most of those were aided by Play & Win; their replacements here, Ina Wroldsen and Steve Mac, have an unfortunate knack for the beige. Looking at their previous co-credits it’s not unfeasible that this was originally written for the Saturdays in 2011, soon after “On The Floor”. Even if it wasn’t, “Saturdays album track” rings true.
[5]
Brad Shoup: In which Ylvis proves startlingly complementary. This is without sex, but the “thousand shades of blue” bit is fantastically high-flown, and the synth programming even ends up becoming a hooky gulp. I’m betting on the chorus staying close awhile.
[6]
Crystal Leww: This is so devoid of identifiable markers that tell us who Inna is, what she’s trying to project. That’s fine! Not all pop stars have to rely on personality. This is so slick how it pulls off an endless array of pop music tropes, how it’s so fun that I’m willing to just have fun with it. It’s not the track to change your life, but ain’t nothing wrong with shininess.
[5]
Will Adams: There’s an intriguing assertiveness behind the “I want your body” hook, but it’s sacrificed for the central conceit of Inna “dancing in your eyes.” Meanwhile, Yandel is completely unintelligible. Overall, it’s a lyrical mess, which would be par for the course for a standard Europop number like this, but the vanilla production can’t elevate it.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Eurotrash arrangement — dig the fourth-rate Kylie mimicry — anchored to an onomatopoetic hook of unrepentant grossness.
[3]
Mariah lets go of the negative reviews through the power of the side-eye…
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “I’m making a statement,” Carey begins, supported by the sound of crackling old-timey vinyl, and she’s not lying. The dip into digetic sound forcefully communicates exactly what it did on “Wrecking Ball” – forcing your way into the balladry canon via classicist signifiers like gramophone noises or opulent string sections. The big difference is that Cyrus had never been part of the canon before and Carey has been in countless times. And she wants back in, no matter the quality of the song, hence this precisely unleashed set of aural fireworks and Mimi Noises. “The Art of Letting Go” is a particularly ironic title because it sounds like Carey denying her grip on the torch song. It’s aggression disguised as grace, and it’s more boring than that sounds.
[5]
Alfred Soto: She wants to make a statement, alright. Opening with scratchy keys, metronome, and “I’m making a statement of my own opinion” as if translated from Portuguese, she revels in yet more polysyllabics (“dominion,” “exceedingly” “liability”) with a no-sweat virtuosity to which Rodney Jerkins’ programmed tick-tocks and stacked harmonies is suited. To hear Carey sing a ballad without rasp is relief enough.
[7]
Anthony Easton: This is not a “brief little reminder”, and this is not intended for just her. This is an epic, historically minded (that vinyl scratch, those strings, that piano), perfectly crafted, studio confection of pure drama and refused modesty. It is beautiful, diva ridden batshittery. I love it.
[9]
Patrick St. Michel: Great backdrop for a vocal display…and that’s it.
[4]
Brad Shoup: I know Carey said this is — and why fight it — a nostalgic effort. But give her… credit, I guess, for asking what Miguel would do. She and Rodney Jerkins referee a bunch of discrete elements: that damn vinyl crackle, a graceful string arrangement, Casio hi-hat, and a blowout ending. It’s part old-school soul ballad and part live showstopper, and Carey sing-talks her way through it like she has to entertain us. I suspect this song would be better with the ending presaged. Better drums would work too.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: Meandering, tuneless and ludicrously self-serious, this brings to mind “If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time” in how despite all of that, it works. It’s a song that can only get by on the sheer force of its performer’s will; ideal, given familiarity, for Got Talent variations worldwide, and it should be boring, but it’s not.
[7]
Will Adams: The rub lies in how the song doesn’t totally let go; when the drums pick up, it’s only for a brief moment before they fall out and Mariah concludes with, “It ain’t easy, baby.” So many uplifting anthems ignore the fortitude required to let go of someone, to push a problem out of mind — especially when somebody is flinging your world around, watching as you fall. Contrivances like the vinyl noise and the maudlin string section let it down, but “The Art of Letting Go” has an emotional resonance that makes it a cut above most ballads.
[7]
Crystal Leww: This is not the Mariah Carey song that causes you to do a combo smile sigh, not the Mariah Carey song that causes you to clutch your heart from exhaustion, not the Mariah Carey song that leaves you breathless thinking about even as you’re falling asleep. This is not the Mariah Carey song that changes your life, but it’s still a god damn Mariah Carey song, and still a good Mariah Carey song. There is still no one who quite does the highs and lows like Mariah, even if there’s someone who embodies her former youth and joy better these days, someone who idolizes her, there is still only one Mariah Carey. For all (admittedly valid) complaints about how old fashioned this production and style might sound, there is no one who can pull off the deadening echo of “press delete” and that high note, that final “down” all the way up and then down in the same damn breath. God bless you, Mariah.
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