Happy New Year!

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[6.88]

Natasha Genet Avery: Dacus deftly articulates the ambience of New Year’s — wistful yet hopeful, uneasy but expectant.
[7]

Alex Clifton: New Year’s is such a weird holiday, full of promise but with the knowledge that the world doesn’t change radically once the clock strikes midnight; you only get older. Taylor Swift has given us a perfect song about the day that follows, cleaning up and being quiet with someone you love, but here Lucy Dacus captures the quiet, quivering anxiety that lies beneath the surface of every New Year’s party. We all want this year to be better, or maybe worry that it can only get worse; fear and hope tumble together, both causing butterflies in your stomach. It’s an odd energy that Dacus makes beautiful through a simple song.
[8]

Ian Mathers: Potentially devastating, but in such a low-key way that if I’m not paying sufficient attention it just slides past me. There are worse fates.
[7]

Ashley Bardhan: “I drank the dregs of the champagne alone / Warm, flat, coppery coins down my throat” is a very pretty, delicate way to open a song. This sounds like everything else. 
[5]

Kylo Nocom: By all means, a Lucy Dacus song about New Year’s should make me burst into tears. I first listened to her album Historian on the last day of 2018 by a friend’s recommendation, an hour before I would have to go to a little church party. All I really wanted to do when I got home was listen to that album again, a bit of solace from my struggles with anxiety. Now at the end of 2019, Dacus details her experiences of post-celebration distress that match my own. I should love this out of pure coincidence, but it falls flat, more obsessed with mood than songwriting. In lieu of electric guitars, we have folk balladry. Her vulnerability is present, but only in vague, “Mr. Brightside” he-said-she-said form. For all the despair here, I still have no idea what she’s trying to say. “Fool’s Gold” is an apt title, the most gorgeous nothing I’ve heard in a while.
[6]

Alfred Soto: “I threw the party so I could stay put” — boom. The song has other lines as precise. The arpeggio isn’t enough to enliven the list, among my least favorite of structural choices. 
[6]

Julian Axelrod: “I threw the party so I could stay put” is the ultimate extroverted introvert mission statement, a cry for companionship when you can barely leave the house. Holiday songs are broad by design, but I like how this zeroes in on the lonely moments within the camaraderie: solo drinking, sighs of relief, and the slow realization this year will be just like the one before.
[7]

Michael Hong: A sad confession: I’ve never been to a New Year’s party. Instead, like clockwork, I end up watching some performance by whatever artist had the great (mis)fortune of being the guest on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and I’ve learned one thing: nothing magical ever happens. Your life doesn’t suddenly improve with the start of the new year despite whatever wish or dream you send out into the universe and anyone expecting otherwise is doomed to be met with frustrating disappointment on the other side of the ball drop. Dacus’ 2019 EP focuses not on the party, but the comedown, the disappointing aftermath of high expectations. This isn’t Taylor Swift’s version of the holiday spent dancing barefoot with a lover within the safe confines of a snowglobe, no, it’s a crushing return to reality, watching a friend stumble out the door in a drunken stupor or leaving another to sleep it off in the bathtub. It’s a final piece of indulgence after the final guest leaves that quickly grows sour. It’s the realization that the holiday will never be everything you imagined it to be. But for all her keen observations on the disappointment of the day, Dacus is never bitter or cruel, merely another disappointed partygoer. She spends her time introducing you to the new year as gently as she can, her sonorous voice guiding you like a faint glow over the track’s charmingly delicate piano line. Dacus embraces you for the duration of the comedown and never lets you blame yourself, like a friend that holds your hand as you drunkenly sob in the bathroom. It’s bleak, it’s despondent, and it’s crushing, but “Fool’s Gold” attempts to find the beauty of the night, glimmering like the gold streamers you rushed to put up in your attempt to put together the perfect party.
[9]

We’re taking US Thanksgiving off, but here’s an early holiday gift for the sidebar…

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[7.44]

Kylo Nocom: Brittney Parks’ stage name, Sudan Archives, suggests ethnomusicological compilations and, in turn, the complications of consuming folk music without entertaining the imperial gaze. Her musical trajectory appears to be a conscious transition away from her earlier projects’ pan-African aesthetic, relying less upon the abstract othering of world music and instead indulging in a more fine-tuned otherworldliness. What remains is the tension of alienation. On “Glorious,” Parks artfully relays her familial economic anxieties, spitting out each syllable over hypnotic gurgles that sound like an Afrodisiac cut sampling “Jig of Life,” and the toil of her work is audible in the panting of “feels so close yet so far away.” A quick verse by Cincinnati rapper D-Eight proves a necessary disturbance: first, to dislodge any notion that Parks is “a strange alien from Africa” and to provide a sincere celebration of her hometown roots; second, to provide an unexpected, more conventional lyrical contrast to Parks’ work-song verses; third, to be a really badass Fatman Scoop-type hypeman once “Glorious” veers off into freewheeling glee. Accessibility may have sacrificed some of the interestingly arcane aspects of Parks’ music, but “Glorious” shows how pop structure can be used for more complex and yet more human ends.
[8]

Ian Mathers: A swirling, heady combination of slinky R&B, traditional Sudanese songs praying for good fortune, and what the singer/violinist herself calls “literally some Irish jig shit.” But “Glorious” works so phenomenally well that it doesn’t feel at all like a hybrid, especially on the dark grind of the chorus.
[8]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: The clear predominance of North African sonic sensibilities and musical phrasings in the song’s fiddle melody is a brilliant way to represent the overarching concept in Sudan Archives’ Athena — the influence of African and Egyptian cultures on the imagery and expression of Greek, and, by extension, all Western mythologies. But D-Eight’s guest verse, while it’s technically efficient and establishes the ancient-modern element, undersells the track’s purpose. It works as a piece of Afrofuturist R&B, not so much as an introductory single.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The exact sort of R&B/traditional fusion that seemingly everyone in 2003 was attempting a half-assed, appropriative version of, not knowing the ceiling for it was this high. Between this, Kelsey Lu, and other artists I’m sure I’m forgetting, I can’t wait for alt-R&B to get expansive and sumptuous, rather than minimalist and chill.
[9]

Tim de Reuse: A sparse, breathy collection of sounds loosely clustered around the beat; as elements of a whole, they only make sense right near the end, when everything clicks together under a ticklish shaker loop. Until then, there just aren’t enough opportunities for things to bounce off each other.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The beat’s steady clip-clop and the rush of the rap and violin melody create an aural tension: not quite glorious, but excellent enough.
[7]

Julian Axelrod: Sudan Archives is an astounding talent, so it’s no surprise she can blend Irish jigs and traditional Ghanaian hymns into a beat that actually knocks. I hope this becomes a hit so she can afford to work with rappers who don’t sound like her next door neighbor’s nephew.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Mixing a violin — Parks’ playing is rooted in Sudanese fiddle music — with contemporary R&B is on some next-level shit, and “Glorious” is just one example, dragged down a bit by an unnecessary guest rap. But you can hear how she thinks about sound differently than most in R&B these days.
[7]

Michael Hong: “Glorious” showcases Brittney Parks’ violin as the vibrant heart of her music. Listening to her violin dance the jig as gracefully as it does is hypnotic, drawing focus away from everything else: the programmed drums, the guest verse, and Parks herself. The violin is spry enough to bounce across her murmured hymn, yet sharp enough to pierce the blown-out instrumental and present itself in the foreground. Any other string instrument would weigh the piece down, but her violin dances with elegance and grace. It loops in mesmerizing circle, then switches to a lethal strike at a moment’s notice. On D-Eight’s guest verse, it slices through like a warning, and he’s wise enough to take heed, cutting himself short before the violin slashes back into focus: a statement that Parks will not be upstaged. “Focus on the bottom line,” she sings, but if you’re listening to her voice instead of her instrument, you’re not really paying attention.
[9]

…to take back everything the boomers stole…

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[3.56]

Iain Mew: Taking on the olds with a combination of youthful energy and possibility and an undercurrent of menace isn’t a bad idea, and there’s plenty of material Tones and I could draw on for the conflict. Her old fogey strawman starting with kids these days and their “millennium items” gestures towards that. However, for a song which moves on to kidnapping as an alternative to marching, it’s remarkably toothless, chiefly thanks to a cowardly lack of specificity. “We don’t just protest for fun” — so why do you then? The song offers no answer. The cover art with its rainbow flag and anti-gun symbol and even its vegan sign offers some possibilities which would have all seemed less cynically empty. As it is, the beat is toned down Billie Eilish and the message is toned down Billie Piper.
[2]

Alfred Soto: The feyly articulated repetitions, theatrical harmonies, and finger snaps suggest a record company’s attempt to repeat The Billie Eilish Experience. This Australian act projects adult fear of a generation it can’t resist branding with a letter or a polite response by a member of this generation. Who can tell? Does it matter?
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: kidz bop black skinhead type beat
[2]

Kayla Beardslee: Cool, sure, make young activists sound like cartoonish movie villains, that’s great and not counterproductive at all. On a musical level, I have the exact same problems with this as I did “Dance Monkey”: three minutes long, yet nothing important actually happens. There’s the same blue-balling for a potential drop, the same hellishly affected indie-girl voice, the same sparse production that suggests a rush job more than any intentional playing with empty space — the horns are nice, I guess, but the song as a whole is just so thin and unconvincing. At a bare minimum, “The Kids Are Coming” earns a couple points for good intent, but loses so many more for frustratingly uninspiring execution.
[2]

Ian Mathers: I suspect the political (or quasi-political) content here is well meaning yet dumb as hell, but I can’t be 100% sure because I still hate her goddamn voice so, so much and being subjected to it in an even more leaden, plodding environment than her last song isn’t helping.
[1]

Kylo Nocom: It was only a matter of time before the Build-a-Billie committee threw “Triumph of a Heart” and “Thumbs” into a blender to see what would be spit out.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The kids have abdicated good taste, which in 2019 means abdicating chill and shiny for that one Gary Glitter song via “Personal Jesus” via “Black Skinhead” via “Thumbs.” So obviously “The Kids are Coming” sounds great, and is if anything more relentless, more thwacking than it had to be. Of course, the thing has words. “We won’t be bought” is predictably rich from the follow-up to a major-label breakout single. The spoken-word elder brought in for Tones to schaffel all over has an olde-radio affect that sounds more Silent Generation than the boomers this is OK-ing. And the outcome of all the running and gunning — perhaps self-censoring, aware of where kids these days fall on the topic of gunning — is the Olds meeting the terrifying end of being locked in the basement. When Billie Eilish buried a friend, she didn’t mean in a box of old winter coats. Nevertheless, this makes a good three-quarters of the Hot 100 sound blase and sleep-deprived; I will seldom be upset with pop for going huge.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Trusty genius.com relates that Tones and I has provided them with “verified commentary” for this song, but it’s a shame that she couldn’t do the same for its listeners. That her takes are glib isn’t a crime, and nor is that they are presented with undue gravity — bottomlessly depthless and emptily weighty are two of the paradoxes of perfect pop — but what jars is that they don’t sound like they come from someone with much of an affinity for their sentiment. It is very hard to believe that Tones and I genuinely feels that something as vague as “no-one seems to understand… why we live this way” gets to the heart of any particular truth, or is anything but a semantic mystery. Perhaps part of the problem is that she seems intent on making all of her songs so messy, forgoing tight lyricism for an over-reliance on surprising noises. Unfortunately, the loudest noise lands with a thud: a person falling off a bandwagon without ever making it on board.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: When I was fifteen, Silverchair released its inspiring and rebellious generational call-to-arms “Anthem for the Year 2000,” and I really tried to get into the spirit. Like, yeah, us kids are gonna make it up to you in the year 2000 or something! Tones and I has drab dance beats instead of drab post-grunge riffing, but two decades have passed and Australia’s kids are as corny as ever. There’s also a bit about guns, which is weird, because Port Arthur and the ensuing gun control legislation took place in the decade before this singer was born. (It’s not as if we don’t still have too many guns in this country or there are not far-right forces aiming to weaken prohibitions on firearms, but youth here over the past couple decades has not been intertwined with random irruptions of gun violence the way it has in other parts of the world.) It’s another way “The Kids are Coming” hopes to speak boldly without saying anything bold.
[4]

MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW

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[6.64]

Edward Okulicz: Compelling, but also terrifying. If I ever begin to sleep through the atonal screech of my alarm clock, deploying this will make for a fine replacement. Catchy, but also so sinister that I’m scared to watch the video in case it matches the song and as a result causes nightmares.
[6]

Iain Mew: Nyam nyam NYAM NYAM NYAM NYAM. The weight of that huge and catchy an earworm would unbalance most songs. “Yum Yum Yum”, with its competing “hamburger” hook, screeches of synth and relentless pace, has no such problem. If anything, it needs all of that just to keep up with the personality of the vocals, from the cartoon sobbing to the breathless speed rapping. The combination is joyfully energising.
[9]

Anthony Easton: This sounds either like meow meow meow, or pow pow pow. It also sounds like Bardot’s Comic Strip, but sped up and falling apart. I am not sure if either are excellent or terrible things. Maybe it just sounds like Bardot for its performative high femme self-conscious, post-glamour. 
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: A great instance where the clanging sounds of EDM actually work perfectly in context. “Yum Yum Yum” is half an appreciation of delicious food (chicken wings, pork cutlets and, as the chorus drills home, hamburgers) and half calorie-counting terror. The pounding sound here serves as the madness our protagonist faces in wanting to be on a diet and also wanting to “live life like a festival” (if this karaoke-ready translation can be trusted, the central character gets so flustered she starts threatening to bowl people over). Things that should be part of good times – sweet, sweet junk food – turn menacing thanks to the pounding music. 
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The perfect follow-up to Pentatonix’s solemn gorgeousness, in the sense that it is a happy blast of pure nonsense. Joyously, voraciously in search of a good time all the time. If all pop sounded like this, we’d never get anything done from dizzyingly barking all the time.
[6]

Megan Harrington: The diet as power metaphor is fertile ground for growing eating disorders, but that same unstable plain is also a pretty genius conceit for a pop song. I won’t generalize for all of womankind, but instead offer two basic facts: 1) According to ABC News, the 2012 annual revenue of the diet industry in America was $20 billion and 2) I have been on a diet since middle school. I don’t offer these details as shocking eye openers, but instead to demonstrate how dieting is both common and powerful. Another common and powerful experience? Sex. But per CNBC the porn industry only brings in $14 billion annually! How many love/break-up/hook-up songs do we have? And finally, a single tally for every person who has ever thought “I better not eat this french fry” and frowned. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: This assertive cocktease doesn’t stop waving its collective hips in our faces, its harmonies more batshit with each hearing, capped with a fabulous hook.
[7]

Brad Shoup: So this is what the elephant uprising will sound like. They offer catchy fragments to make Missy Elliott green. She’d rap circles around them, but they’ve got the energy and a plethora of voices to channel it through. The screams and alarms just might be the real star, though.
[8]

Crystal Leww: This bleets and chatters so much that it’s almost pure payoff. This sounds like what a slew of memes being thrown at your face sounds like as a song.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Less queasy than “Carry Out” (or the artist-title combination “Lip Service” and “Yum Yum Yum”), but this is less food horror than a combo of fast food and vague sexualization, which is always going to turn my stomach.
[4]

Sonya Nicholson: Continuing the ridiculization of hip-pop, there’s this song about yo-yo dieting. The lyrics border on, and in some places brazenly charge into, ED territory — so in that sense it’s not so funny after all — instead it’s timely, like the great trap beat in the chorus. Hamburger, Hamburger, Hamburger, Hamburgers are Delicious. American, American, American, Americans are Delicious. See, there’s even a Hannibal reference! Ultra-trendy. I’m going to chose to believe that Lip Service are named after the “Scottish L Word” television show Lip Service, and hope they won’t be abruptly canceled. 
[8]

Note: Oscar the Grouch does not contribute.

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[5.11]David Sheffieck: More complicated than the average lullaby, “Run to You” is otherwise a solid entry into a genre that doesn’t get much attention in our technology-centered world. Your smartphone may be an essential aspect of your daily routine, but it’s not going to put your toddler down for the night, you know? Thankfully, Pentatonix will.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: I’ve got two beefs with this song. Beef One: Pentatonix are A Thing because they won The Sing-Off. The first year’s winners were Nota, a Puerto Rican group pals with Daddy Yankee. They did not become A Thing. Second year’s winners: Committed, a group indebted to Boyz II Men. They also did not become A Thing. Third year: These chucklefucks (including The Guy Who Looks Like Roger Klotz Macklemore and The Dude Being Devoured By An Infinity Scarf) — Thingness achieved! The machine may love promoting WGWGs and OneRepublics at the expense of others, but make no mistake: the public loves it more. Beef Two: I did a cappella in high school and choir in college, where I learned things like: the alto part in “How to Save a Life” is literally just “DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT” off the beat; there is nothing ironic about that because there is nothing ironic about show choir; there are many strains of show-choir friendly music, like madrigal strains, beatboxing strains and stock Hal Leonard inventory strains, which include strains based off Amy Grant’s “Breath of Heaven.” “Run to You” is one of those: vaguely devotional and vaguely bluegrass (as two more strains are hymnals and “Down to the River to Pray”), showcases its choir’s pianissimo and fortissimo with the subtlety of a Zedd song and the fudging of a major-label studio, sounds profound after last period, is deeply, annoyingly affecting if you’ve imprinted on it. Everything is terrible, especially the fact that this isn’t.
[5]

Anthony Easton: I define camp as a place where the ambitions of a work exceed what a work delivers or what an artist wants to show us, and what an artist actually does. This kind of work must be organic. The attempt to create a camp classic is a lot like trying to create a viral sensation. If it is pushed, it collapses. When Pentatonix was working through a second-rate reality television show like The Sing-Off, it occasionally reached precise kitsch (an a cappella cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star”) but kept trying to create that perfect infection vector, one heavily reliant on camp, and never quite succeeded. It got really close sometimes. The inclusion of Nick Lachey helped. But Lachey — from his curating of a tabloid presence, his artless/artful selfies, his genius MTV reality shows, and his creation of the Nick and Jess Variety Hour, one of the great, accidental camp creations of the last 25 years — could not redeem the work entirely. So they move toward seriousness. This should be a complete failure. The fact that they are so serious should bring us back to that original definition of camp. This works, though. It might be that it manages to be almost liturgical (but liturgy is often seen as camp.) It might be that I am bored of nostalgia. Blame lowered expectations. But somehow it reverses what should be a failure into a work of surprising felt reality.
[8]

Crystal Leww: I can’t decide if I hate this more or less than I hate the fake instrument imitations?
[1]

Alfred Soto: In its demands and formal severity, “Run to You” is the most difficult music I’ve heard this year. With harmonic invention (must they sing in unison?) and, yes, a better song I would’ve surrendered.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Um, wow.
[9]

Patrick St. Michel: One of my strongest personal beliefs since freshman orientation is that I have no time for a cappella covers of popular songs. I’ve sat through enough middling indie-rock-turned-a-cappella and lol-it’s-a-rap-song-but-it’s-funny-because-we-are-nerds bullshit in one life. Allow me this asshole indulgence. Pentatonix fall under this rule and zap all the life out of whatever they touch and turn it into some gee-golly garbage…their Daft Punk medley being a prime suspect. “Run to You,” though, is an original, and the group doesn’t indulge in the usual trademarks of university groups doing this. It’s sluggish as background music, but it’s prettier than anything I’ve heard from them. And I’ll try to keep it that way for the rest of my life.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Surprise! Their original arrangements aren’t particularly thoughtful! And they’re super Christian! Apparently! Picking out the threads sewn by industry pros is one thing. Piecing together your own is something else. So we get massed vocals with members peeling away in the standard steps and a ponderous tempo. And that’s setting aside the bonkers I-have-failed-you-my-liege lyric. It’s dorky and meditative and bizarrely unshowy. I wouldn’t make a staple of this, but I’d steal downstairs for a bite.
[7]

Will Adams: The biggest challenge of recording acapella music is deciding whether to retain its humanity or go totally synthetic. Where many recordings fail is when they’re presented as authentic though they’re polished into sleek, metallic pieces without a shred of emotion. There are many reasons this happens. First, the desire to create full-bodied mixes results in a mess of EQ’ing that distorts the the frequency range one would hear live. Second, some producers may record each voice separately for easier mixing — though this can result in the voices sounding miles away from each other. Third, and perhaps most egregiously discounted by Glee, arrangements that call for repeated lines (doot-do; bop-bop) may be looped and Autotuned for simplicity, creating an impossibly pitch perfect recording. Pentatonix, while they’ve fallen prey to all of these traps, mostly sidestep the issues (except for the bass, who is pushed far too much to the front). But there is just enough of a lack of blend to their voices for me to fully embrace the gorgeous vocal arrangement.
[5]

Look At This String!!

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[3.00]

Katherine St Asaph: God, it’s like being trapped in a recession-era propaganda poster drawn by Randall Munroe. I originally wrote “it’s like Devo trying to be subversive” until I Googled it and found that it was, in fact, a guy from Devo trying to be subversive. Awesome.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: The Lego Movie does not come out in Japan until next month, but based on the trailer I gather that “Everything is Awesome!!!” is supposed to be a Huxley-esque pop number that’s numbing our minds while all sorts of diabolical stuff goes on in the shadows. Which could work…but I can’t shake the feeling this song can’t even do cynicism right. I mean…this would be great if all the awesome stuff were needless materials, making this some sort of capitalist critique. But frogs and dancing and teamwork are actually pretty cool things that just seem randomly thrown in (oh, right, Lonely Island). This doesn’t seem like parody, just way dumber than what it sets out to mock. Tegan And Sara should stick to licensing songs to commercials.
[1]

Anthony Easton: I can’t quite figure out the message of the film, and the last twenty minutes were sentimental as hell.  This song, which might be either deeply ironic/parodic of commercial pop, or an example of the excellence of sharing and team working, or those other Sesame Street values, is also meta-contextually interesting in terms of both bands careers. I find the idea of the Lonely Island going straight or trying to make “real” pop music out of their comedy roots an interesting problem, at least formally. They haven’t quite figured out what post-comedy looks like–just as the Lego movie did not have full commitment to its mixed messages. In the same neighborhood, I wonder about the career of Tegan and Sara. In a world where selling out does not have any real currency, they have made the strongest move towards a pure commercialism from a noncommercial space. That they are taking the piss out of this move, while having that song chart, has a delicious irony. There is so little of their voice here, while the Lonely Island do not change their position at all. Which might be part of the point, but also mirrors some of the gender problems of Wildstyle in the movie. I am not sure that this brilliant earworm is a good song, but I can’t imagine a film that better captures the zeitgeist. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: It wasn’t funny in rehearsal either.
[2]

Brad Shoup: The movie couldn’t figure out whether this song was poignant or satirical or just a plot point, and now I get why. The chorus worked as a fragment flanked by suggestions: what could possibly lead into — or issue from — that cheery title, steamed off of the back of a Bomb the Music Industry! record? The answer, according to the credits, was the Lonely fucking Island, who are never funnier than their delivery. But they’re a good reminder that this is a song for kids, and a few of ’em are going to blow their little minds on that gassy choral bit woven into one of the choruses.
[3]

Will Adams: I imagine this is what Heartthrob sounded like to everyone who got mad that Tegan and Sara were making synthpop: cloying, garish, and only interested in a catchphrase and a check.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: Parallel universe Lorde. It’ll be annoying in approximately five minutes time, but the sheer breadth of sounds here – chiptune, banjo, gloomwobble, rap, choir, organ – make indoctrination the most fun it’s been since yvan eht nioj.
[6]

Jer Fairall: Using an animated soundtrack entry as an excuse to sound literally cartoonish represents no great challenge to the already puerile Lonely Island, but Tegan and Sara would do better to consult Wendy & Lisa’s twenty-two year old example of how to soundtrack something called Toys without sounding like one.
[2]

Pairs well with Sara Lee’s Texas toast…

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[5.50]

Alex Clifton: “‘Kiwi’ walked so ‘Watermelon Sugar’ could run,” Harry tweeted as a teaser, but I don’t think that’s the best comparison. “Kiwi” is sexy with a harder-rock edge, thrumming with energy that makes me more alive. “Watermelon Sugar” is softer in comparison, a languid summer haze. Which is good! The horns sound great, and if everything Harry releases sounds this easy and good, he’s going to put out one of my favourite albums of the year. But the “Kiwi” comparison is unfounded and set me up for wildly different expectations.
[6]

Ashley Bardhan: At times, the tidiness of the production detracts from the raspy scratching of Harry’s hungry berry talk, but the juice of lines like “Tastes like strawberries on a summer evening / …I want your belly” muddies it up again and throws me in. There is wanting in the voice, there are subtle piano underlays, and the “watermelon sugar high / watermelon sugar high” hook is so gummy it will hover under you all day. Anyway, is this about oral sex? 
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: And here I thought Justin Timberlake’s “Strawberry Bubblegum” would be the nadir of multisyllabic fruit + sweet confection + unctuous retro showmanship + barely concealed leer + whew, oral!: a subgenre that with few exceptions makes me raspberry hurl. Can’t wait for 2022 and the critically acclaimed yacht-rock hit “Carambola Cronut Frosting” by Jake Paul.
[2]

Will Adams: The funk guitar is fine, the bassline is fine, the summery aspirations are fine, the sugary-sweet analogy is… uh, okay. And yet I can’t shake the feeling that this is all just boneless Miguel.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Well, good, because fruit is good for you.
[5]

Ian Mathers: So, much like the actual fruit, more appealing in the imagination than in the often slightly watery, underwhelming slice you get handed. (In this metaphor, the SNL performance is that rarer, actually satisfying piece that tricks you into thinking you’re a bigger fan of watermelon than most of your experiences would actually suggest.)
[6]

Kayla Beardslee: This is much more compelling than “Lights Up.” I’m sure Styles is, in fact, capable of pulling off songs with deeper lyrical substance than “Watermelon Sugar,” but it’s so much easier to sink into his bright instrumentals and raspy voice when his tracks have a simple goal — in this case, summery, euphemistic fun.
[7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Overripe, sweet, and sensual, “watermelon sugar” and “tastes like strawberries on a summer evening” are about as effective as summer loving imagery gets — making it all the more a disappointment that this single is only seeing the light of day as December quickly approaches. 
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: More convincingly horny/yearning when he’s endlessly repeating the fruit metaphor than on the verses, which are rough. But the arrangement is fun enough to push that wrinkle out of your mind — if you don’t pay much attention, this is a pleasant summer jam stranded in November.
[6]

Kylo Nocom: “I want your belly” is odd, but given a similar line in Rhye’s “Open,” it isn’t too incriminating. “Sounds just like a song,” on the other hand, is a simile I’m forcing myself to not think about too much in the context of Harry’s oral fixation. Extra points for the Go! Team horns near the end, but I’m still wondering if he can pull off something that sounds less laborious.
[5]

Jackie Powell: This track commences in increments, but it doesn’t accomplish that mission aggressively. It builds while adding new musical elements in transitions between parts of the song’s structure. How brilliant is it to listen to electric and acoustic guitar riffs bounce off and overlap each other? It’s an accomplishment when I can hear each instrument in isolation. Each piece arrives gracefully, and even the manufactured percussion introduced on the pre-chorus is soft enough to make sure this longing-for-summer jam doesn’t turn into a sleeper. It’s ironic that Harry Styles clammed up when he was asked to clarify “Watermelon Sugar.” I understand that he’s still settling into his own skin as a modern-day sex symbol and a prince of sexual fluidity, but his promotional playbook for first single “Lights On” was direct. Styles told Capital FM that “freedom,” “self-reflection” and “self-discovery” were his muse on a track that was released on National Coming Out Day. He wasn’t very discreet. And I point to the irony because the reverse happened on Saturday Night Live when Styles performed both songs. While there’s an argument that “Lights On” is a more difficult song to sing, Styles was much more comfortable singing “Watermelon Sugar” live. His body language and fashion choices were all telling. The songs symbolize the difference between expressing feelings versus thoughts. “Watermelon Sugar” is felt physically and emotionally while “Lights On” is equally cerebral as it is heavy. Both singles successfully seduce as Styles leans into vowels on both tracks. An artist that sings open vowels?? Gasp. Now that gives me a “Watermelon Sugar High.”
[8]

Oliver Maier: I like the idea of pop rock revivalist Harry Styles so much that it only disappoints me more when his songs aren’t very good. “Watermelon Sugar” is too starchy to be funky, too nondescript to be glammy, and too generically imagined to be authentically sexy. Also in dire need of melodies worth singing along to. Songs cannot thrive on gusto alone.
[3]

Not a promotional tie-in for the Boring Company…

[Video]
[5.57]

Katherine St Asaph: I really wasn’t expecting any new music in the actual hype cycle to remind me of Fox Lima, she of the crowdsourced Enigma “Social Song,” or chillout artist Schiller circa “I’ve Seen It All” — although if it happened with anyone I suppose it’d have to be with Grimes. This leads me to one of two equally horrifying conclusions: Either Grimes and I have the exact same musical taste, or Elon Musk is an Enigma stan.
[7]

Ashley Bardhan: So Heavy I watched this video of Grimes as a hologram introducing Elon Musk as her “creator” at the cybertruck unveiling three times and thought about removing my tonsils in a separate train of thought, but I like this song for surfing the web. 
[7]

Oliver Maier: Even before her heel-turn I felt as though Grimes went somewhat underappreciated as a vocalist. It’s the production that provides the weight on “So Heavy,” echoing everything from Darkside to Massive Attack, but her fey soprano is what lends the whole affair some sense of devotional purpose and helps it mostly avoid being self-indulgent molasses.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: Very clever, calling the shorter version of this — the one that’s going on the album, apparently — the “Algorithm Mix.” Very Grimes. But doing so implies that that the six-minute-long “Art Mix” adds something uniquely potent to the experience, that there is some hidden wisdom granted only to those who more thoroughly surrender themselves to the artist’s will. There is not. “So Heavy” is an expertly constructed stage without actors or action, a New Age fusion that’s too wound up in itself to soothe, a Purity Ring song someone stuck in the microwave on the baked potato setting. It’s almost, but not quite pretty enough to make me forget that it’s wasting my time.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The harmonic swirls and tropospheric arrangement evoke the title, but at six minutes “So Heavy…” is a rather long introduction to a better song. No?
[4]

Tobi Tella: A sprawling, downtempo song where the very sparse lyrics aren’t necessarily optimistic , that releases a wave of melancholy, and yet in some ways, feels like a big warm hug on a winter day.
[7]

Jackie Powell: This cut should only function as the backing track to the phantasmagoria that exists in fantasy video games. I turned off the volume on YouTube videos of World of Warcraft and played “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth” while watching warriors and magical creatures haul weapons and magic in order to hand its adversary defeat. It worked. I gather Grimes wouldn’t be insulted by this, as she did draw concept art for this track that read: “Massive Battle Scene.”
[3]

(Pictured: Not a one-man band.)

[Video]
[4.00]

Tobi Tella: I’m just not sure that Old Dominion is essential in any way. Doesn’t current country already have enough guys with punchable faces, much less a whole band of them? They’ve always been smug and refused to scratch beneath the surface, and this song does the same. The production and melody are fine, but there’s no passion or heft behind any of these lyrics or Matthew Ramsey’s vocal performance. Nice metaphor if you hear it once, tired and labored song.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: There seems to be a market right now for really thin, twinkly songs that are a bit wistful and a lot boring. Without wanting to be horrible about Old Dominion, I think this song is filling a similar spot on the country charts to which “Memories” is on the Hot 100. 
[4]

Alfred Soto: The guitars sparkle — when don’t they? Sparkles come by the yard in Nashville. All it sells is sincerity, and at least the first minutes I bought it. Then the “old jeans” reminded me Old Dominion used “rolling stone” in that first minute and I died of bored.
[3]

Julian Axelrod: On paper, a song that perfectly splices “In My Blood” and “What’s My Age Again?” with a direct quote from Mason Ramsey’s “Famous” (three of the best songs of the past, I don’t know, century?) should be extremely my shit. This never reaches the explosive heights of those songs, but part of its modest charm is that it never tries.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: I like the lyrical conceit here, comparing being a one man band (which the protagonist doesn’t want to be) to being single. I wish, however, that the production wasn’t so light, the song so simple. There’s nothing here to grab on to.
[4]

Katie Gill: Baby take my hand, cause I don’t wanna be an overwrought metaphor stretched way too thin. My pedantic heart can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe don’t have your one man band metaphor be accompanied by harmonies and an actual honest-to-god band.
[4]

In which we discuss the merits of time travel.

[Video][Website]
[4.88]

Anthony Easton: There has been a habit, as in Taylor Swift’s “Tim McGraw,” where the name of a country musician is inserted into a song that might not be country enough as a kind of shibboleth. It suggests an interesting kind of status anxiety where the genre is profoundly unstable. I would have never expected Flatts to do it this obviously with a joyless obligation, mostly because they are the closest in musical sound to an MOR blandness that was ubiquitous twenty years ago, and people that bland do not really care if they are identified as country. The sales on Flatts seem fairly steady, they are making the same kind of music, and there is nothing here that stands out, so the random George Strait reference causes the rest of the song to choke.
[2]

Brad Shoup: It’s actually kind of weird to hear the Flatts bring George Strait into this; it’s like I did it or something. Alas, their affinity doesn’t extend to Auto Tune, just cred. The real touchstone is late ’90s U2 or something, at least when they’re not gorging on the syllable-crammed, R&B-inflected refrain country can’t get enough of. I wanted more guitar, myself. The way he sings “one more time,” though? Vintage RF-style nerd ecstasy.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Way too close to Pablo Cruise. Its only grace notes? The organ and guitar riff.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Sorry dude, you can’t go back to that kiss, but you did find a way to time travel back to the early 2000s to nab a guitar line that sounds like it came from “Complicated.” Except surrounded by some guy talking about his date.
[3]

Megan Harrington: It’s not cool, glamorous, or on trend, but someone had to make music for the a-dolts and here it is. While “the kids” rappel from ever higher heights, their folks are left to rewind filmy memories. This is one for slow dancing to after the kids have gone, not just to bed but to college, and your house belongs to you, finally. Curiously, the slide guitar is so undeniably pretty that I’m willing to ignore these high-waisted denim lyrics — is this a symptom of arena goes country or the Boomers’ forever fascination with non-synthesized string instruments? 
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I like how the idea of going backwards is referring not to undoing a mistake or a decision (like say, “Un-break My Heart” or “Erase/Rewind“) but the wish to experience something great for the first time. It’s a trope that could do with a bit more use, though Rascal Flatts certainly stretch it to breaking point after two verses. The 90s alt-rock guitar line and the cheesy mixing of the backing vocals (Mutt Lange would be proud) are corny pleasures, though in a fairly short song I’m craving a lot more of the latter and a lot less of the former.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The scenario, charitably, is Lydia Davis; uncharitably, About Time. The guitar riff, charitably, is “Lost Boys and Girls Club”; uncharitably, gone too soon. The execution, charitably, is a template country-radio hit with fresher metaphors (she even gets to have dark hair!); uncharitably, a template country-radio hit, damn the metaphors. Today I feel sorta charitable.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Now, yes, this is the expected namby-bamby piece of Nashville gloss from Rascal Flatts with all the pros and cons you’d expect. It’s tuneful and utterly anodyne at the same time. Yet its confusing do-it-again romance narrative hits the conceit of replayed memories right on the head, the imagery of “midnight hair” dropping to a lady’s shoulders ONE! MORE! TIME! to the ladies with bouncy hair falling to the shoulders, Rascal Flatts want to speak on the behalf of men everywhere (this writer included): y’all don’t know what you’re doing to us.
[5]