The Singles Jukebox

Pop, to two decimal places.

Month: April 2015

  • Fifth Harmony ft. Kid Ink – Worth It

    Not a L’Oréal tie-in… yet…


    [Video][Website]
    [5.43]

    Katherine St Asaph: All gimme-gimme, no give.
    [4]

    Micha Cavaseno: It’s a bit of a sting that a song which so obviously depends on having jacked its idea from Jason Derulo’s sneak Balkan Beat-Bangeur instead has an equally soul-stunted stunner, Mr. Kid “Invisible (like his damn personality)” Ink. Stargate, however, are in actually prime form, with a Mustardese verse groove that sounds like four fluids crashing into each other at once, while the girls all sound pretty cocky and confident. It’s just… Kid Ink really had nothing else to contribute than to just sound horny? And he got cut that check why? *shrug*
    [6]

    Ramzi Awn: Kid Ink is the best guilty pleasure since Fabolous. The cascade of synths and handclaps on the “Worth It” chorus makes a point of aggregating all the reference points in popular music today, and the hook is like an old-school Pussycat Dolls jingle resurrected. Trendy though it may be, it’s all good.
    [8]

    Mo Kim: Just about all of this works: the post-Derulo saxophone hook fills time amiably, Fifth Harmony continue to hone their delivery skills (the best moment here when Camila raises her inflection on “So what you wanna do?”, hinting at the uncertainty beneath her cool), and Kid Ink gets a nice percussive rap bit. This plays its cards a touch safe, but for a song about asserting one’s worth it already sounds pretty damn worthy.
    [7]

    Megan Harrington: There are already five women singing on “Worth It,” so Kid Ink’s stray thoughts are unnecessary at best and useless at worst. To no one’s credit, even with all those voices in the mix there are only about 30 memorable seconds in the whole song. But I doubt that will be any hinderance to the song’s financial and/or promotional success — my brain buzzed with “I’m worth it. I’m worth it. I’m worth it.” like some kind of sick robot for hours afterward.  
    [5]

    Cédric Le Merrer: This beat is so sick it sounds like it has serious protein deficiency.
    [3]

    Alfred Soto: With a beat alluding to Missy Elliott’s “I’m Really Hot” and a nagging sax hook, “Worth It” works hard to fulfill its title promise. You can’t force effortlessness though.
    [5]

  • Miss A – Only You

    There is no you, there is only me…


    [Video][Website]
    [6.75]

    Alfred Soto: The verses suggest a Korean-Chinese “Love is a Battlefield,” but the best filigree is the snatch of woodwind that sounds lifted from a Benny Goodman song or something.
    [5]

    Madeleine Lee: The individual parts are excellent, but they would be even better as two different songs. The speedy, Kara-ish chorus feels like it’s been shoehorned into what would otherwise be a solid midtempo power girl group song.
    [6]

    Cédric Le Merrer: Coming from the band who not so long ago did “I Don’t Need a Man” (one of my favorite pop songs of the past few years), the creepy voyeuristic imagery of the video was particularly off putting. Take away the pictures, though (or the lyrics which I’ve chosen not to look any translation for following this incident), and you still have great performers who elevate a boilerplate K-pop song above its condition with the same joyful interplay as on previous singles.
    [8]

    Micha Cavaseno: At first my recognition of what’s supposed to be a sax, but sounds more like the sounds of a clown car’s horn delivering plaintive cries after being driven into a wall (RIP Bozo & Clarabell, we barely knew ye), had me worried. Are Miss A really going to incorporate “the sax thing” into their DNA so readily? Would I have to wake up one morning to see a pic of the four girls “trying” to play baritone saxes, only to shut my laptop and climb back into bed from exhaustion? But the big revelation is the sudden transfers that form as stylistic shifts: the power-pop quality of the hook, and the dips into “Putting On The Ritz” style-syncopation of the pre-chorus, that trancey bridge. None of these sections are as stand-out as the meat and potatoes of “Only You,” but they all place a sense of restlessness beneath the song that can leave one impressed with Miss A’s eagerness to please, but a bit hesitant to describe it as ambition.
    [6]

    Patrick St. Michel: It’s all about the chorus, which replaces the bluster of the verses with a rush of excitement, excited and nervous all at once. Plus, they lighten the mood a bit late in the song with self awareness, which is a nice breather.
    [8]

    Mo Kim: The chorus doubles the tempo, but the verses keep circling back around to that lazy half-time while the women of Miss A try to convince a guy who just won’t commit that they’re meant for each other. In real life, these you-belong-with-me conversations have a tendency to eat their own tail: small wonder that the saxophone has the tenor of a well-played practical joke.
    [8]

    Megan Harrington: Though my personal preference is always for the sophisti-pop payoff after the sax intro, the tension between that smoky, mature mood and the bright pop that follows suits a song that’s negotiating modes of romance (boring vs. heart-racing, friendship vs. sex) in post-adolescence (but not quite adulthood). At the end of the music video, all the girls wind up at a club or house party, red solo cups in their hands, winking and dancing. This seems the ideal state, the middle ground between brass and synths. They’re happy and the song’s subject is nowhere to be found. 
    [6]

    Iain Mew: A line translates as “I don’t like banal love” and for the heroic emotional chorus it is like they’re leaving the banal behind them completely, the world rebuilt for dancing and magic. The rest of the song, glowering sax especially, is a series of odd staging decisions that never fit together, but they still have that shining moment of transcending everything.
    [7]

  • Girls’ Generation – Catch Me If You Can

    All eight of you?


    [Video][Website]
    [5.67]

    Madeleine Lee: I was fine in the world where this was a gorgeous vworping DBSK song and not a boring and disjointed late-period Super Junior.
    [3]

    Alfred Soto: As the synths saw away Girls keep up and then some, but the track sounds like midtempo mid-’00s Ciara given a jump; it struggles to build momentum.
    [4]

    Micha Cavaseno: Is “You can physically hear that they want to give up the ghost” a plausible characteristic? The verse bit has almost absolutely no cohesion to the rest of the song, and the vocal sections are just sort of there with none of the former charge. I know with recent events, it’s pretty cheap to say “break it up,” but honestly I can’t find any of the joy that used to characterize a lot of the SNSD discog.
    [3]

    Katherine St Asaph: Not as scattershot as some of their previous singles, though I still want to judge its individual parts: sliced-thin harmonies on the chromatic scale > tinny EDM buildup < surprisingly solid drop. Which all works out to a:
    [7]

    Megan Harrington: I’ve always enjoyed the way Girls’ Generation speed through plot in their songs. It’s not enough to have one good idea (a strong melody or a great hook to precede the drop), every song is stuffed with little suites, each of them dense enough to work on its own if given the space to unfurl. On “Catch Me If You Can” I have a new sensation, a song with the same sensation as a fancy plate of deconstructed food. The idea behind these entrees is that you combine the flavors in your mouth, reproducing the taste of a BLT by eating a little bacon, a little lettuce, and a little tomato. When “Catch Me If You Can” ends, each little piece of the song collapses on itself and I hear them all at once, a monster megamix. 
    [9]

    Iain Mew: Congratulations to Erik Lidbom, for whom co-producing this with Jin Choi is the career boost I was speculating about when we met him producing Alexandra Stan. Unfortunately, while its antecedents are a bit less obvious, “Catch Me if You Can” is no more inspired and its dubstep-belch thrills wear out fast. There’s barely enough there for one singer to do much with, never mind eight.
    [4]

    Patrick St. Michel: It’s somewhat surprising that the Hallyu higher-ups thought generic EDM that vaguely recalls what Yasutaka Nakata was doing ten years ago (in much better ways) is what the Japanese market was hankering for. Anyone with a passing interest in K-Pop in Japan has already heard the basic EDM sounds incorporated into much better Korean songs, while the most popular and meme-able song of the year saw Nicky Romero directing the Country Bear Jamboree. So this is boring and out of step with the market it aims to impress. Still, the build before the drop is especially pretty and begs to be sent to a much more interesting single.
    [5]

    Will Adams: Love the accelerated tempo; while most other dance genres have found a home on pop radio, trance has yet to crack into the mainstream. The breakdown shows promise for the euphoric — and what a classic trance line: “I’m going to find my heart” — to be just as effective as the robust electro drop that follows it.
    [7]

    Mo Kim: There are two layers of defense built into “Catch Me If You Can.” The first is a direct challenge to the listeners: think back to “Work Bitch” and how that song’s hook was pure propulsion, Britney wordlessly daring her fans to keep the work up, bitch. We get a similar eight-measure bit here, a glittery blast of runway pop that Taeyeon and friends dance over. The second layer is harder to catch amidst the high energy because it’s a more internal dialogue, a recognition of the sweat that goes into becoming one of the biggest girl groups in the world and a resolute determination to keep going, even seven years later. “We can’t stop,” goes the first line of the chorus, and I only caught it in the one moment that “Catch Me If You Can” allows itself some quiet space — then the snares snap back into place, the vocals climb towards their peaks, and the synth machinery come whirring back louder than ever before. Keep up if you can.
    [9]

  • Tungevaag & Raaban – Samsara

    NOPE NEVER MIND: “‘Samsara 2015’ is a 2014 song.


    [Video][Website]
    [3.71]

    Josh Langhoff: I so didn’t expect my endless cycle of death and rebirth would have a Fatboy Slim soundtrack.
    [5]

    Thomas Inskeep: Weird dance-pop that would’ve topped every European singles chart in the summer of ’96, followed by a post-holiday (i.e. September) spell at #1 in the UK. And it might yet in 2015. It’s got a kind of Chicane-esque build, and then goes completely off the rails with this weird glitchy faux-dubstep bridge. Also, “follow the rave/let’s get it on,” yesssss.
    [6]

    Patrick St. Michel: Is… is this supposed to be a joke? The verse vocals are overly serious and just bad, then it all builds up to a drop so gloriously stupid and so proud of its dingbattedness. I don’t know if this is self-aware, so this score seems safe — though I might love this more than it reflects.
    [5]

    Megan Harrington: You know how sometimes you’ll find a perfume called something like Arabian Nights and then you smell it and it’s kind of like sunlight on horse hair or something? Dust mixed with musk? Well, “Samsara” has about as much to do with Samsara as a perfume called Arabian Nights has to do with dusk in Kuwait. 
    [3]

    Madeleine Lee: The use of the title conceit is so brainless that the average-sounding beat can’t do anything for it, and vice versa. That said, I do feel relieved that their conception of Samsara is some kind of honky-tonk Gangnam rather than attempting sitar scales or something.
    [3]

    Katherine St Asaph: One of the rare cases where it’d probably help a singer’s career to go uncredited. If she needs an Alan Smithee name, I suggest Haley Bennett.
    [3]

    Micha Cavaseno: I’ve only read about Samsara about three or four times, recognizing that any attraction to Buddhism is going to be negated by my own desire to be combative and quarrelsome as much as possible (*the collective other voices of the site sigh and nod in frustrated agreement*). I think such a philosophical concept could deserve a greater gesture of comprehension than electro-swing and autotune that skids the voice into territory even Ke$ha would describe as a bit too nasty, but again, I’m not the one for that. I just have to note that if Tungevaag & Raaban believed in karma, they’d know they were going to get reincarnated into a mule for this shit. Because this tune is ass.
    [1]

  • Dr. Kucho! & Gregor Salto ft. Ane Brun – Can’t Stop Playing (Makes Me High) (Oliver Heldens remix)

    Perhaps the most cumbersome title we’ll cover all year…


    [Video][Website]
    [5.44]

    Thomas Inskeep: Retro ’90s house that, for once, doesn’t sound like Disclosure — probably because it’s originally from 2005, and has only re-emerged this year thanks to an Oliver Heldens remix and a new vocal from Ane Brun. Festival house: four-on-the-floor, easy-to-sing-along vocals, simple as that. 
    [5]

    Scott Mildenhall: Credits ahoy: the brackets and the ampersand are in the bag, let’s go. Oliver Heldens gives the original the harder edge of his wont, and Ane Brun delivers a functional if fairly featureless feature to wrap it all together. It’s an in-and-out job, a hitchless heist with the most made of a short stay.
    [7]

    Megan Harrington: I appreciate the sense of economy — a minor and a bit rocky build-up to the main idea, then the blenderized execution. I get the feel of DJs, drugs, lust, strobe lights, sweat, overhead fans and sticky floors all in about two and half minutes, the ideal length for someone who’s not interested in the firsthand experience. 
    [6]

    Madeleine Lee: As long as the song she’s talking about isn’t this song.
    [5]

    Alfred Soto:  A trashier Roisin Murphy, ready to hit the European summer festival circuit, bereft of personality and will.
    [4]

    Katherine St Asaph: Works itself into a kinetic froth, but only eventually; the pitch-shifting sort of reminds me of, again with Brun, Katharina Nuttall, which just makes me wonder what dark dance she’d make of this and whether she’d keep the cliches.
    [6]

    Brad Shoup: Hey, did you go to Hollywood Upstairs DJ School too?
    [4]

    Micha Cavaseno: It’s got a decent electro shuffle, and the briefest of slips into New Jack Swing shuffle provide a bit of added eyebrow wag to what would’ve been a pretty generic roller. Cheeky, but not all that.
    [5]

    Juana Giaimo: There is an unconcluded feeling in this remix that makes it work; it keeps going round and round the same idea, aiming to get out of these circles but never able to do so. And when it finishes, you’re satisfied, it was enough — and you know it’ll be there when you need another shot of energy.
    [7]

  • Natsume Mito – Maegami Kiri Sugita

    Fair to say we miss Kyary…


    [Video][Website]
    [5.75]

    Patrick St. Michel: When it was announced Natsume Mito would become a singer as well as model, I was worried this would end up being too similar to a certain other fashion-oriented person gone pop star, as they also had the same management company and producer. It’s nice, then, that “Maegami Kiri Sugita” establishes a unique image for her and works as a nice bit of fluffy pop too. It has the same playroom vibe as a lot of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s early music, but whereas even Kyary’s early music could be subtly focused, Mito just goofs around. She’s been described as representing producer Yasutaka Nakata’s sound, “but from Kansai,” the region to the west of Tokyo, considered far more laid-back than the stiff, unwelcoming capital. Kyary has always eyed national attention, and her songs often revolve around the fear of growing up, but Mito just lets it lay out, and “Maegami Kiri Sugita” is just about getting a sorta shitty haircut and dealing with it.
    [8]

    Megan Harrington: I did this right before my college graduation and I wound up having to put about a half cup of L.A. Looks hair gel in my hair to turn my combed back baby bangs to rock cement and then carefully crowning the sculpture with a Blair Waldorf headband. I was not half so pleasant as Natsume Mito that day.  
    [7]

    Iain Mew: I’m not sure this is sonically distinct enough from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu for Natsume Mito’s career. She brings a heavier kind of presence that cuts against the playroom keyboard squelches well, though, and “choki choki” is a better and happier hook than Kyary’s had for a while.
    [7]

    Alfred Soto: The keyboard solo and “choki choki” hook are stick-like-glue good, but it’s a minute too long. Not much different from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu either.
    [5]

    Katherine St Asaph: I appear to be trapped inside the Tiny Toons Anvil Chorus, except they’re all pink and pound twice as hard.
    [2]

    Brad Shoup: This is one of those few times I’ll recommend you listen to something on laptop speakers, so that Mito is trying that much harder to connect to you, and the torturous choki chokis lose focus, becoming more of a rhythm element instead. 
    [5]

    Micha Cavaseno: I don’t know if it’s the fact that I have a fever or if it’s because this is typical of songs affiliated with the Yasutaka Nakata brand of “Breh, this sounds like I’m entering a pharmacy on the Game Boy.” But I am pleasantly bemused while possibly quite deliberately isolated and unsure of myself. Just… where is aisle five, so I can get rid of this cold?
    [6]

    Cédric Le Merrer: Yasutaka Nakata phoning it in is still enjoyable, but ever less so.
    [6]

  • Kehlani ft. BJ the Chicago Kid – Down For You

    And for the length of this track, it’s date night at the Jukebox.


    [Video][Website]
    [5.38]

    Anthony Easton: There are bits of this that are didactic, and there are bits that are rhetorical, and the bit where the direct question replaced with a kind of cotton candy vocalizings seems light enough, but the sound floats away with my interest. It also has the trick of being too long and not earning cutting off so suddenly. Extra point for the handclaps. 
    [4]

    Micha Cavaseno: OK, OK, where is Kehlani’s manager, so I can slap this individual? Look, this girl is an excellent total package artist who I could see either being an excellent B-List or A-List artist, depending on marketing, luck, radio, or all those other factors that have nothing to do with talent. What can impede her, are albatrosses. She’s already affiliated with the team of empty brown paper bag brains that are the HBK Gang, and now she’s gotten the moldy ‘grown man suspenders swag’ of BJ the Chicago Kid and his nagging tone he dug out of his grand-uncles attic, mothballs and all cluttering her way. “Down For You” contains great songwriting and singing from its star, and Kehlani is ready. Let her shine.
    [5]

    Megan Harrington: Kehlani sounds fresh, in ways both good and bad. There’s an unfinished greeness to “Down For You” that isn’t exactly remedied by the unusally slack BJ the Chicago Kid. Though he can usually be counted on to add deeply spiritual emotional theatrics, he’s subsumed here by an airy aimlessness. That’s the bad. To her great credit, Kehlani sounds youthful without resorting to the ever popular breathy baby voice. Much more than certain over-praised histrionic vocalists, Kehlani reminds me of early Mariah Carey. She’s sun-kissed and romantic, ready for her Boyz II Men. 
    [6]

    Will Adams: “I’m down” quickly became one of my least favorite expressions after too many spring breaks with friends spent sitting around suggesting things to do only to be met with a flat utterance of those dreaded two words. “Down For You” is candy-sweet R&B that’s easy enough to like, but hearing the artists’ ambivalent proposals to go see a movie in the wrong setting quickly turns the song into an endless loop of this.
    [5]

    Brad Shoup: So much lushness in service of such little return.
    [3]

    Katherine St Asaph: The exact musical correlative for that clumsy, blissed-out mutual blush that happens during all dates that are going somewhere, that single ungainly moment of relief and rush and returned crush, with a low thrum of frisson beneath to keep the stakes at (so to speak) hand.
    [8]

    Thomas Inskeep: Sublime slow-burning R&B of the Jhene Aiko school, with Kehlani talk-singing and BJ the Chicago Kid doing the same, making for a frankly tidy love duet. They sell it so well, I believe every word.
    [7]

    Edward Okulicz: The song makes all the right noises (especially that twinkling piano that punctuates the track), but these two have zero chemistry. “What’s love that doesn’t keep you up all night?” they both ask, as if neither comprehend the question let alone the answer..
    [5]

  • Will Young – Love Revolution

    My heart breaks to see poor Will in such a horrible ensemble.


    [Video][Website]
    [5.00]

    Scott Mildenhall: With the people involved in Will Young’s last, halfway-masterpiece album on board for his next, anything seemed possible with this, and it is accordingly unpredictable; another new direction, but one not as profitable. Almost without exception, his upbeat songs have not been among his best — he might as well have stopped at “Your Game” — and that also continues to be true. Muggy, clumpy vocals are not a Will Young speciality; the words get lost amid the uptight funk, as much as their recontextualised familiarity holds the song upright. Hopefully the next single is just “Jealousy” again.
    [6]

    Alfred Soto: Using an O’Jays foundation and strings arranged to sound as yummy as possible, Will Young stages his own block party. I don’t like his pinched voice, and often the music conspires to treat his pallid scenario the depth he thinks it needs. Occasionally it even reminds me of such touchstones of British pseudo soul as Feargal Sharkey’s “A Good Heart.”
    [5]

    Anthony Easton: A tasty nugget of Euro-cheese disco, Young’s ballads have always been a strength, but this has convinced me of the pop-genius of his more upbeat numbers. I look forward to the comeback. 
    [10]

    Megan Harrington: Whenever you’re tempted to wonder aloud why no one writes songs like Holland Dozier Holland anymore, play this instead.
    [3]

    Micha Cavaseno: Fitz is throwing a tantrum somewhere, wondering how he missed his mark on this shit by writing this exact sort of song years ago.
    [3]

    Brad Shoup: Taste the poor timing, as people mass against systematic racist violence an ocean away from Will Young’s claustrophobic appropriation of that classic floorfilling Motown sound. The fidelity’s pretty astounding, except for the rhythm guitarist, who’s just getting that check. Other than that, it’s like being visited by a ghost you thought you’d abandoned at some long-forgotten address.
    [7]

    Thomas Inskeep: I think Will Young is pretty great, but this is a tired pseudo-’60s retread à la Cee-Lo Green’s “Fuck You.” Everything about it screams 1966, and not in any good way, ugh. 
    [2]

    Edward Okulicz: If you’re going to pilfer the past in a song about loneliness, might I suggest going the full Tomcraft instead?
    [4]

    Katherine St Asaph: Happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. Sometimes the revolution is boring. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness. And happiness. And loneliness.
    [5]

  • Ariana Grande – One Last Time

    Not while she’s still clearing [6], it’s not.


    [Video][Website]
    [6.09]
    Mo Kim: One of Ariana Grande’s defining features as a performer is her tendency to add detailed flourishes to any song she’s on; at its best it feels lush, at worst superfluous. “One Last Time” uses Grande’s powerhouse vocals with uncharacteristic restraint as she wavers between recounting her guilt in a past relationship and insisting her former flame stay the night anyway. She holds it together for most of the song (while David Guetta’s instrumental shoulders increasing tension), and when she finally breaks, the effect is nothing short of apocalyptic.
    [8]

    Megan Harrington: I realize that this is an Ariana Grande song and not her feature on an EDM single, but since she’s dealing heavily in the genre’s tropes and signatures, I feel fair pointing out that fully a third of any given EDM song’s success hinges on the listener’s ability to clearly hear and understand its simple lyric. Ariana Grande can’t sing more than three words in a row without slurping up enough syllables to make a chorus unintelligible. I’m not even drawn to lyrics, but I like knowing they’re there if I ever want to listen to them. From “One Last Time” I got a marimba doodle and “one moh time/i pomise le te le yuh go.” I want to sputter “E-NUN-CI-ATE” in her face like I’m Foghorn Leghorn.
    [5]

    Micha Cavaseno: I really don’t see the point of her need to continuously try to write songs for an EDM Market when that’s not her lane, and it just never will be, but…
    [5]

    Alfred Soto: Facts are facts: Grande knows she’s got an indelible hook, a melody processed to sound like it’s played on a marimba and recalling what I’d hear coming out of Ultra Festival deejay tents. And I’ll like it on the radio. If she can make The Weeknd vulnerable and this piece of Velveeta compelling, maybe she’s cool after all.
    [6]

    Daisy Le Merrer: Big retail chains in some countries sometime use music bought wholesale from music banks to avoid paying local dues for “real artists.” Producers of this type of music often use real popular artists or tracks as a template, both for expediency and marketing reasons. If you don’t want to pay for the real 20/20 experience in your Zara stores (it IS a ripoff after all), maybe you can get more bang for you buck in Shuttershock’s R&B/Soul directory. When I end up in one of these places, I like to try and identify what’s being imitated by these tracks. Some are easy one to one matches, but some are too nondescript to really register as anything but “2015 pop.” All this to say that beside star power, this song really doesn’t offer anything for whoever’s in charge of music at big retail stores to pay for the genuine article, and the sandpapering of all of Yours Truly‘s quirks out of My Everything has been a real tragedy.
    [4]

    Katherine St Asaph: David Guetta and the Kotecha/Yacoub/Falk collective attempt their best Zedd — one topline-hero melody pealing endlessly through an EDM stompscape — and succeed well enough at this boring task. But such a bell-clear hook calls for an equally clear voice, one that pierces, like Foxes on the apropos-named “Clarity”; Grande’s voice is too smoky and mushmouthed for the job. It’s an affectation that worked better on Yours Truly, and Grande would be advised to drop it now that she doesn’t have to be Baby Mariah anymore.
    [4]

    Luisa Lopez: The fact that this comes straight after “Problem” on the album gives it an almost unearned sweetness. Framed as a comedown from that high, a sad and thoughtful pause, it manages to transcend the treacly silliness of lines like “I don’t care if you got her in your heart/All I really care is you wake up in my arms” and puts Ariana in a role usually occupied by male crooners. She’s done wrong and she owns it with a sureness reflected in the absence of vocal histrionics, the whole song solemn and sober and rising to little more than the pitch of a phone call where your voice is tight with love. Even with all this, it still probably wouldn’t work without that gorgeous rise in the chorus, one — last — time never quite reaching anything, building on itself over and over.
    [6]

    Scott Mildenhall: It does help, but it’s not just the video that gives this an air of the apocalypse. Grande sounds unusually crestfallen in the verses, and when she moves to the title it feels like an all-or-nothing situation. Without overexertion, the production lends weight, and in the face of such devastation, she does similar.
    [7]

    Brad Shoup: I didn’t mention it at the time, but you’ll generally get me with a song where someone sings “andIknowandIknowandIknow”. It’s the throbbing need evinced by someone who needs to be overstood when it’s probably too late, who can’t, in this pivotal moment, take any risk that the thought isn’t coming out completely clear. Which, by the way: tune out everyone who holds an ear trumpet to Grande’s lyric sheet, as if feel holds less truth than argument. She coasts the tender melody with worried care: holding forth like Mariah on her sterling new-century singles, never pausing, because rests are the cousin of death.
    [9]

    Thomas Inskeep: Is there such a thing as minimalist pop-EDM? Because that’s what this feels like, with a real attention to details and an overall muted tone which suits Grande well. She sings the hell out of it without having to resort to Mariah-style belting, her vocal conveying warmth and sincerity.
    [6]

    Will Adams: “How are you feeling about it?” is a question I’ve fielded since late August in regards to my upcoming graduation from college. I’d always answered it the same, saying that I was dreading it, but by the time May came around, I would be ready to leave. Now, I’m less than three weeks away, and my experience has been the opposite. The sharp twinge of finality deep in my stomach has only just started; before then, there was no need for nostalgia, not with essays and readings and compositions to take care of. But now, I feel it. Every event is defined in terms of its last-ness: my last class ever, my last weekend to party ever, my last round of drinks with my freshman year roommates ever. It hurts the most when I think about my friends, especially the ones I’ve only just made. Where had they been before, I would think. Why couldn’t I let them into my life until now when I’m about to leave them, I would think. And now, with such little time left, I’ve begun making lists in my head of all the people I need to see before that day. There’s probably only time to meet with them once, over lunch or drinks or just texting. But I need those last moments, at least for the temporary illusion that I can keep holding on. I need them to refresh that memory, to make it clear enough so when I’m holed up in a new city I’ve just moved to, I can remember what it was like before the end.
    [7]

  • Jarryd James – Do You Remember

    Um… what were we talking about?


    [Video][Website]
    [5.14]

    Alfred Soto: This Australian plugs his laptop into the digital displays of Luke James and Jason Derulo but adds two megabytes of menace.
    [5]

    Jonathan Bradley: Jarryd James’s drowsy, R&B-inflected vocal is pretty, but soul is supposed to make us feel something, and all I feel when listening to “Do You Remember” is that maybe James heard a Miguel record once. The arrangement is tense but the groove non-apparent, leaving the tune caught in a limbo between creepy and sultry, without resolving as either. If I judge it leniently, it is because it stands upon the shoulders of stunted giants.
    [5]

    Megan Harrington: At heart, I think this is an average song and that time will prove it forgettable. But in the mellow sunniness of an early spring mid-morning, it works too well to punish it for its weaknesses. The creeping production, the amateur breathiness of James’s vocal — they’re familiar but not redundant, like a dusty attic with light streaming through the ceiling’s wooden beams. “Do You Remember” has an almost vertiginous quality, like déjà vu. Do you remember or is it happening for the first time? 
    [7]

    Ramzi Awn: The refrain is packed to the brim, and the verses, clean as a whistle. It’s hard out there in a man’s world, but Jarryd James makes it sound good.   
    [7]

    Patrick St. Michel: Handclaps and whiny vocals, my favorite!
    [3]

    Micha Cavaseno: Self-serious TV trailer music, which is cluttered with a dozen gimmicks (Lets get some pizzicato! Oooh, lets place his falsetto and his normal voice together for the whole song! How about we get some BIIIG DRUMS on the chorus, to let you know it’s BIIIIIG!) to provide a lot of distractions from the fact that we’re listening to fuck all.
    [3]

    Scott Mildenhall: Remember? Of course! You released a few passable singles 10 years ago that did passably, then went on The Voice and released some more passable singles that did passably. It was this sort of lightweight soul, mostly, if a bit less watery. In a way you were… hang on a minute. You’re not Tyler James, are you. Could you maybe be his brother?
    [6]