Video game sounds perfect for the beach?

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[4.25]

Josh Langhoff: “Now that Owl City’s on tour, the market for closing credits songs in animated movies WILL BE OURS!!!!”
[3]

Nina Lea Oishi: Evan Gartner’s delivery is too mild and snoozy to suggest any real yearning for adventure; even the yelp at the end of the word “pretending” loses its novelty the second time around. But the rest of the production is a decent dose of Super Mario-fun, each weird-cute beep and boink conjuring up pixelated gold coins and romps around a cotton-candy digital world.
[4]

Iain Mew: The elongated bloops sound more obviously like Anamanaguchi than actual video games. Either way, they’re easily the freshest element enlivening some indie-pop that’s harmless, but wimpy enough to conjure thoughts of Owl City.
[5]

Alfred Soto: “All I want is an adventure,” he sings, defined as distorted chipmunk voices and knob twiddling.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Yeah, this was an adventure like a trip to a mall is an exciting change for a family.
[2]

Brad Shoup: Like bobbing in a wave pool in the thirty seconds before the solenoid’s activated. Only it’s a poorly calibrated solenoid, and you’re jammed with rays in calm waters, as children babble around you and some high-school sophomore murmurs sweet asininity to his summer crush.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: >KILL IT What?! With this song? >YES Your idea of “adventure” is climbing a hill and you sound like American Authors. Come now.
[4]

Jessica Doyle: Who is this for? Because from the first note I cast it in that line of songs that play in the background in that life I wanted to have and felt too cowardly to have, something far more urban and artificial, dramatic and discomfiting, taxing and beautiful. Like when I was thirteen, hugging myself in an upstairs bedroom watching Stephen Spinella win a Tony and thank “the husband of my heart”; or a few years later, wanting desperately to fit in with the English majors who played Future Bible Heroes on our college radio and comforted each other during midnight milkshake runs at a diner down the Blue Route; and then actually in New York, only somehow whatever it was remained just out of reach, and I was too conventional and too depressed to actually find it. But surely that particular reaction has more to do with me (and with how the intersection of “queerness” and music got filtered to 1980s Top-40 radio and suburban-safe girl ears) than with anything actually going on. So: who is this for? Who is this for? I’m too stuck in my own story; I need to hear someone else’s.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: If Unicorn Kid had received the success this cruel, unready world neglectfully failed to bestow upon him, then a) he might still be Unicorn Kid, who knows, and b) this song would have been created to piggyback on his success, probably by Owl City. Evidently it has been made anyway, and not by Owl City, but like his best songs it is almost unnervingly sincere in its simplicity of sentiment, and most readily describable as “pleasant”.
[6]

Mo Kim: The midway point between Owl City and Madeon, with warm, sweeping sounds filtered through glitchy electro-house textures. Evan Gartner’s an amiable if slight presence: his cry for adventure is less a demand than a coax, a proposal to leave the house to make an ice cream run. 
[6]

Will Adams: A bit of poor timing to release a harmless song that shares a title with an album that achieves this type of bright dancepop so much better. I wouldn’t mind hearing it at a beach party.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Synth-pop with electro touches that you’ve heard hundreds of times before.
[3]

Just for one weekend.

[Video][Website]
[4.70]

Edward Okulicz: I’m not sure if rating this without the incredible visuals or a bunch of sweaty Europeans all around me makes sense, but “Heroes” works in any context. Calculated and cynical it is, but with a subtle lyric about self-acceptance wedded to an extremely unsubtle EDM monster, it can’t miss on headphones, kills in a schlager club setting and it felt near-spiritual on Saturday. Not my favorite, and not the one I wish were blowing up radios, but a primer of what a good amount of European pop and Eurovision anthems sounds like.
[8]

Abby Waysdorf: The thing about Eurovision is, it hasn’t lingered for sixty years  because it’s a Big Event full of bizarre camp (although it often is that). It’s stayed because, compared to competitor pop talent shows, it’s the most complete contest of its kind. Whether you like the songs or agree with the results, winning requires success in pretty much the entire range of contemporary pop: it has to be performed live well, taking into consideration staging (lighting, costume design), choreography, voice on the night, the performer’s charisma, and it has to be a decent (enough) song that appeals to a wide audience at first or second listen. No covers, no “Disco Night,” and only sometimes drawing upon well-known narratives of the performer (which might be why it doesn’t tend to produce pop stars, but that’s for a different essay). A Eurovision winner has to get points on all of this, which is why it’s always hard to judge “just the song” off a studio version that doesn’t take the context into account. As far as “just the song” goes, “Heroes” certainly isn’t a zero — it would definitely be my favorite Avicii song — and it’s catchy and contemporary, and not a damn ballad. On the night it was well-staged (great gimmick with the backing projections, although I found the stick-boys hokey) and Måns is a handsome, charismatic man who hit the choreography and the notes perfectly. It’s not my favorite Eurovision performance, not even of the night, but it’s far from my least favorite winner, and I can’t argue it wasn’t deserved. As I said before the event started, I am fine with a Sweden win. Still, though, let’s try harder next year, Europe. 
[7]

Anthony Easton: I would have preferred if this kept as a Euro remake of ’60s kitsch story songs, and at the beginning Marty Robin’s vocal suggested real potential. But, like most of Eurovision this year, it descends into an electronically focused ballad, and I’m bored. 
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: From drawls and Linkin Park wails to disco strings, a whole lot of drama and effort to bore us to tears.
[2]

Iain Mew: On the night, a fussily staged David Guetta remake was unappealing next to some of the delights on offer. On record, it’s a slightly different matter. There’s an exquisite build behind the first chorus that got lost on stage, twangs and strings unfurling while Zelmerlöw floats above with an easy authority that the singers in similar songs rarely achieve. There’s at least one too many iterations of the chorus, but it’s not such a bad winner after all.
[6]

Alfred Soto: “The song was the child of David Guetta‘s “Lovers on the Sun” and Avicii‘s “The Nights,” according to the Wiki. No, someone else said: Coldplay meets Avicii. If this dude’s going to sell inspirational bumper stickers he needs a euphoric hook.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Not even country respects country, and it was the release of “Timber” when I realized how badly I wanted pop to strap on the shitkickers. It’s been happening, no doubt: we’ve referenced Rednex — the clever cornponers who found all kinds of puns in the term “square dance” — four times since then, in Wang Rong and Avicii and AronChupa and (I did it this time) Andy Grammer. On my drive home today I heard “Just Can’t Get Enough”, for the first time, as a bluegrass song, but some folks knew this years ago. Zelmerlöw’s brand is the self-serious kind, a shuffling-triplet cross between Morricone and peak Garth Brooks. This being Eurovision and 2015, EDM ties the package up; once the twang distinguishes the tune, ponderous piano rides in. It’s not fun, no ma’am, but pop’s pitching a wide tent over country, and I couldn’t be happier.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Since 2011 Sweden have been in an imperial phase of Eurovision entries, and in selecting the best song, best gimmick, best performance and one of the best looking competitors of this year’s contest gave themselves every chance of achieving their second victory in that time. Naturally, faced with the heady concoction of a compelling 21st century reimagination of La Linea and the fulfilled potential of syllable extension, Europe plumped for… the aimless Italian entry. Or at least the public, whose votes comprised 50% of the final calculations did. So that’s what jury scoring is for.
[8]

Mo Kim: A call to heroism with about as much weight as an empty bag of Cheetos.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: I can sum up this slab of Eurocheese for you easily: Adam Lambert as a straight man (i.e. less interesting on every level, no offense to the heterosexuals in the audience). From song structure and lyrical content to vocal stylings, based on this song, Zelmerlöw is a pale xerox of Glambert.
[2]

Or are we dancer?

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Iain Mew: It turns out there’s extra emotion to be had in the electronic love-is-our-superpower stakes by casting it not in present tense, or even conditional, but past. It lets “Super Human” be both the rush and the comedown, and Bayer’s careful pacing and Asbjørn’s cosmic intensity make it equally adept at both.
[8]

Will Adams: The language of “Super Human” is heartbreak. Unlike most dance songs, it captures not a snapshot of emotion but a relationship: from attraction to contact, from release to closure. Andrew Bayer’s production plots the journey, the intense throb collapsing into nothing but piano, then building into a rocket blast of a drop. All the while, the title hook remains the same, the super human adapting and triumphing at every turn. But the heartbreak continues outside the song: the video, however artful and meaningful to its creators, can’t escape the consequences of its queer narrative. The homophobic comments are few and far between, but they stick out like searing scars that won’t go away. It’s so frustrating, so saddening, so mind-boggling that these people care enough about Bayer to complain about the queer narrative in the video but not enough to know that he himself is gay; I can’t think of a crueler way to dehumanize someone’s art. But Bayer takes it in stride (at least it appears so), and the song’s power speaks volumes more than the tossed off comments, and it becomes an anthem. The two lovers in the song are super human, though they are so separately, though the rest of the world tells them otherwise. For a genre that traces its origins to being a safe haven for oppressed and marginalized groups, the past few years of EDM’s pummeling through the music sphere has been scant on queer representation. We need this kind of song, this kind of video, this sense of power so we can continue to fight.
[10]

Micha Cavaseno: For all the striving for excellence, it sure does just come out mediocre.
[3]

Nina Lea Oishi: I can’t get over the clunky lyrics, especially with that idiotic “superhuman” echo over and over again. There’s also something irritatingly pretentious about the whole endeavor, like that slow “emotional” piano bit. It’s like if aliens were doing bad amateur spoken word and decided to remix it for the club, then kept posting about their new mix on alien Facebook.
[2]

Alfred Soto: The falsetto poured like fresh whipped cream over the hook has the hint of boy band sincerity while the thump ‘n’ roll recalsl 2008-era Calvin Harris. How’s that for decade straddling ?
[4]

Natasha Genet Avery: Full-throttle belting may be overdone in EDM, but Asbjørn’s meandering mumbling zaps the energy out of an otherwise promising track.
[4]

Mo Kim: The fusion of hard-hitting EDM banger and delicate piano balladry has been done more smoothly than this, and the transitions are neither subtle enough to appreciate nor blunt enough to rouse. Asbjørn sings the word “superhuman” twenty-six times.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Songs From The Reject Bin For The Original Soundtrack For Lucy
[5]

Now this is pretty…

[Video][Website]
[6.33]

Micha Cavaseno: THE BRONX GOD, ladies and gentlemen! The last year or so has been spent by me in an enraptured state, hurrying to try and comprehend the phenomena that is Santos. Especially amusing as my boricua ancestry means I will forever be aligned to Latin-tinged music, despite having a mental block whenever remembering any of the seven or eight years of Spanish I’ve taken in all my education. I am cursed to always be the exile, barred from truly entering Santos’ romantic sagas. I’m like the guy who shows up to a fancy restaurant, confused by a menu, who haggles with the server to find whatever’s closest to chicken strips. This is the torment of being in love with this man’s music, and how effortlessly luxurious every single can sound, despite not understanding a damn word, and also wondering why the guitar tone sounds more 80s UK indie at times than bachata.
[7]

Nina Lea Oishi: Romeo Santos’s soothing voice convincingly smooths even the most soul-anguishing heartbreak into another sweet bachata ballad. And this track hits all the usual notes, albeit in a pretty way. But there is one moment of surprise, and it plays off our sense that we know what we’re getting with “Hilito.” Because just when we’re settling in, lulled by the familiar rhythms, Santos whispers, “Hey, listen to the words,” followed by a sudden fade-out, jarring us out of our mindlessness, forcing us to wonder for the briefest second if our headphones glitched or if our mp3 was faulty or if we accidentally turned the volume down on our device. By the time that we realize it’s just part of the song, we’re actually listening again, as Santos ordered us to. Meanwhile, Santos keeps on going like nothing happened.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I love the confections that Santos bakes out of bongos and the faintest hint of high life. Even the electronic interlude is well judged.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Gwen Stefani has some stiff competition in the Latin market. Santos’ heartbreaking voice is a welcome diversion for summertime.  
[7]

Juana Giaimo: I’m beginning to think that every song by Romeo Santos is exactly the same and when they don’t have a catchy chorus — like “Cancioncitas de amor” or “Propuesta indecente”– his seducing melodrama just doesn’t work.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The backing meanders through what I swear are the melodies to at least three songs I heard growing up — probably a coincidence, but it does fit the lyric and its empty-afternoon wistfulness. I go back and forth on whether I find Santos’ voice too tremulous in general, but I also can’t imagine a larger voice on this.
[7]

Is Canaan Smith pretty? DISCUSS.

[Video][Website]
[4.38]

Anthony Easton: I am shallow enough that if he weren’t prettier, I would find this more vapid. It is really really vapid. Also, it tries to do the Sam Hunt style talk speech but doesn’t commit. In fact, this doesn’t commit to anything.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Thinner than a Hershey Kisses wrapper, more sincere than a bullfrog on a fence, “Love You Like That” hopes to woo that special someone with relentlessness. Graded on a curve because “steady” is not an adjective I’d use to describe a Tom Petty track.
[2]

Will Adams: He got me at the pretty city boys line; as someone who felt he could never compete with them, despite growing up in a big city himself, I can find comfort in Canaan Smith’s courage to admit his faults, and challenge my own anxiety in doing the same to that one special woman who makes my heart beat faster than Canaan Smith rolling the out similes.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: OK, OK “Canaan”, let’s cut the bullshit. You could never be a “pretty city boy,” but you are hardly bringing the grit and the grunt here. For all your Photoshopped-in sweat and chest hair, you might as well be Bon Jovi. This song, for all its cocksure strut, is some sub-“When The Children Cry” pop glam laziness. Couldn’t make it as an appliance delivery boy looking ass! How are you going to love her, fam? By singing like an impetuous puppy hopping from foot to foot, all goofy “Hey baby, I’m a real MAYNE” guffaw? People can find this cute if they want, but get this buffoon far from me.
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: I don’t expect contemporary country to transcend cliché, but I do expect it to at least sound fun while comparing yet another woman to yet another alcoholic beverage. Canaan Smith is all eye-rolling similes without any of the booze-soaked fun.
[1]

Ramzi Awn: As a Tennessee native, I can’t pretend that I don’t have a weakness for starry-eyed Nashville boys who are “more efficient in the dark.” Still, “Love You Like That” would be much more efficient if it didn’t sound so much like an Eagle-Eye Cherry comeback.  
[5]

Josh Langhoff: Canaan Smith is pretty and I’ll punch any city boy tells him otherwise. This is basically the half-time version of Thomas Rhett’s “Get Me Some of That,” slow and steady, and I’ll tell you what’s efficient in the dark: whatever combination of Nashville studio technology and Canaanite vocal crag produced the words “SLOOOOW” and “STROOOONG.” Reminds me of fellow Nashville pretty boy Michael W. Smith. That’s the spot!
[6]

Crystal Leww: God bless the newest wave of **~~sensitive~~** bro country that has been ushered in by the massive popularity of Sam Hunt. I will never not be enthralled by the small town boy who falls for the girl he doesn’t think that he can get. The posturing these boys do is centered around a different ideal of masculinity: slow, patient, steady, quiet strength, and their dynamic is also very us vs. them in regards to the slick city boys. Smith lets his insecurities fold in on themselves, and the result is painfully sweet and deeply vulnerable.
[9]

Goodbye to one-liners? Never!

[Video][Website]
[5.43]

Will Adams: Johnny, la gente esta muy cansado… what the fuck?
[5]

Alfred Soto: My samples bring all the boys to the yard and they’re like I’m better than yours.
[5]

Iain Mew: Finally someone has found something interesting to do with that rolling “Waves” sound — turn it dark and paranoid, and have it eat away at itself to the point of decay. With Lyse’s detached mutters, the chilled elements work as the kind of statement of being in control that has to be conflicted enough to stretch to accommodate lines like “are you thinking of me when you fuck her?”.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Arrestingly sinister, but ultimately quite tedious. “Drunk Text” with all the fun sucked out, or “Two Months Off” without the light.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: The gooey yet quill-sharp riff is almost too jarring to be deep house yet drips in a way that seems so un-rock, so un-funk. The best comparison I could give it to you is trying to play a comb as an instrument and irritating your mother (Was that just me? Eh.). Lyse’s presence is, depending on the exact moments of her narration, Gainsbourg-style elusiveness or clunky camp, and the intended mystery of certain sections can really send this stuff over the top. But it’s ever so creepy a song in an age where way too much a habitual headbang is declared your only domain.
[6]

Crystal Leww: Sick of dance music you can barely dance to.
[3]

Ramzi Awn: “Goodbye” melds the smarts of 2015 with the rawness of 1990’s “Justify My Love” to great effect. Lyse could go on for hours, and you almost wish she did.      
[7]

Now taking suggestions for ways to prove Jonathan wrong…

[Video][Website]
[3.86]

Crystal Leww: RedOne’s international profile has fallen since the heyday of EDM-pop, and while it speaks to how quickly that style has gone out of style, I can’t help but wonder if it’s also because American record labels didn’t want to give the non-Anglo foreigner a chance to adapt. I am sadly assured that it’s not by “Kayna Wla Makaynach.” While RedOne’s other collaborations with Chawki were absolute thrills, they were also still very much in the vein of his early-aughts output. An attempt here with a more measured midtempo croon is thoroughly unremarkable if not outright boring. It’s lovely, but it doesn’t move or try for anything new. RedOne’s tricks end with the build up and thrill it seems.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: “Kayna Wla Makaynach” sounds as pretty as it has been translated ugly. Chawki could be playing censorious, he could be playing devil’s advocate; with the linguistic and cultural barriers in the way, it’s impossible to tell. Less uncertain is the feeling that this has far less to latch on to than a stereotypical English-language RedOne production. As far as Chawki goes, it doesn’t hold a candle to the audible delight of the time he went gallivanting with Pitbull.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Both the lyrical and musical equivalent of some real neckbeard style #ACTUALLY being passed off as pop.
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: This one’s saved by the Auto-tune vapor trail behind the vocals and the beat. It adds some intriguing touches to an otherwise boringly straight-ahead song. 
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The problem with tokenism in a nutshell: this is likely to be the only Arabic-language song we cover all year, and it’s a mediocre croony bore. The mistake would be to take it as representative. All pop tends toward mediocre croony boredom; the outliers in every field take more tracking down.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I always have to double-interrogate my taste with Arabic-language music: the comparative sliver Westerners might curate or appropriate, versus what I remember of the music I’d hear in my father’s car, which often sounded like this. The ballad-orchestral instrumentations and the Auto-Tune — popularized in Morocco — mark this as mostly pop, albeit with more of a gentle sweep than some. RedOne stays out of his way, not normally his forte. And yet… it’s a midtempo ballad. You know?
[4]

Ramzi Awn: Perfectly pretty, and perfectly boring. 
[4]

The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?”

[Video][Website]
[3.75]

Will Adams: Tyler Farr, meanwhile, had just been broken up with by his first girlfriend and was on his way to the bar.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: *interrupts the self-pitying morass* EEEEEEY EEEEY! TAKE IT OUTSIDE! TAKE IT OUTSIDE!
[3]

Alfred Soto: He sure does sing like he means it — the bar is means not end. But the solo is conceived more heroically than The Girl.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: I didn’t think mainstream country could pull of a grittier-sounding Brantley Gilbert. This is classic mid-’00s-sounding country, nothing remotely bro-ish about it, including the production, which could be straight off a Trace Adkins record, and that’s a compliment. Plus a(n admittedly short) guitar solo! This goes straight for my solar plexus and nails it. 
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: There’s no shame in trying to be Bon Jovi. The shame is in being so bad at it.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Knock knock. Who’s there? Tyler Farr. Tyler Farr who? Tyler Farr from being remotely interesting. 
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: The joke is on him; he thinks the punchline’s that he got dumped, but the punchline is that he got dumped because he put as much thought into why he chose this particular girl than the chicken did the road.
[3]

Ramzi Awn: As far as bar songs go, it passes. But the hook is too understated for the lead-up, and I’d rather just listen to Toby Keith.
[4]

In which Mark Ronson inexplicably makes it onto the sidebar…

[Video][Website]
[7.22]

Nina Lea Oishi: In middle school I pretty much only listened to James Brown Live at the Apollo (I was a weird kid). That was the beginning of my deep sonic love affair with the Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk, so boy did this get me excited. For all the talk about “Uptown Funk” being James Brown-esque, it doesn’t even come close to what “Feel Right” aspires to be, and it’s all because of Mystikal. Ronson and Mystikal don’t even pretend that they’re not trying to resurrect Soul Brother Number One — Mystikal calls himself “the Godfather,” later yells “I’m back” in a near-exact imitation of “Get Up Offa that Thing.” Ronson does his part in pulling back so that you can notice, if you didn’t already, Mystikal sounds just like James Brown. He’s got that James Brown rasp, that suave aggression, that confidence that Bruno Mars can only attempt to project. It comes off as a weird combination: a desire to usurp the throne, hidden behind a sheen of reverence. However, the uncanny vocal resemblance only goes so far, and the blatant embrace of imitation over all else brings the track down. That Ronson’s production feels a little lifeless and boring doesn’t help much either, especially when you consider that he’s trying to ape the funkadelic energy of Brown’s live backing band(s). If you’re going to replicate, not just pay tribute to, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, it has to be great.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: The best James Brown rip I’ve heard this side of Prince’s “Sexy MF,” and possibly even better, because Mystikal actually sounds pretty much just like JB, which I’m not sure how I never noticed before. Oh, actually, I do know how: because he’s never had a backing as musically sympathetic as the one Ronson provides. Remember, that’s what he does at his best: Winehouse, Mars, et al. 
[9]

Alfred Soto: “Uptown Funk” was “Living in America” James Brown, this is “Mother Popcorn” Brown in its slinky riffs and horn chart. With Mystikal yabba dabba dooing in his declamatory manner, this turns into a strange idea of a party, like Cookie Monster leading a parade.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: Mark Ronson has proved over and over he’s a master of replication. Now he’s found a fine way to spike it. Mystikal cast in the James Brown lead is a fit, but even better is how his brand of fiery works. Dude’s slapping kittens by the third line, and practically honking only a few lines later. It’s a hypnotic listen, and a nice change from the trailer-ready sound of Bruno Mars on “Uptown Funk.” 
[7]

Will Adams: “Uptown Funk” was about as saturated as modern pop production could get on its own, so its saturation on the airwaves has made it doubly obvious as a hit. “Feel Right” is a subtler affair, reeling you in with the juxtaposition of Mystikal’s rasps with Ronson’s whipped butter funk until you’re joining the response of “Riiiight?” by the last chorus.
[7]

Crystal Leww: I can appreciate what Mark Ronson is doing, letting really talented and compelling vocalists over his retro-productions. Mystikal is toned done and palatable for a wider audience on “Feel Right,” but wanting to feel good shouldn’t necessarily make you boring. Thankfully, he’s not; Mystikal flips and turns and growls and shouts. This won’t get as big as “Uptown Funk,” not anywhere near it, but I’m still cheered by the idea of this playing at a couple of backyard barbeques this summer.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: So it turns out that “Hit Me” was more of an audition than the true comeback some of us took it for. The only thing Ronson adds is money: Mystikal is still one of the most ingenious and polyrhythmic rappers of all time, and he can prove that over any bed of funk, even a diamond-encrusted one like this. (He’s also a rapist and abuser. Luckily I’m not scoring his soul.)
[8]

Micha Cavaseno: I like to be proven wrong. Mystikal — a man who’s arguably the greatest MC ever to be signed to No Limit, yet with a record reasonably tainted by his mistakes — has been in creative limbo for an unforgivable amount of time. THANKS A LOT, BIRDMAN. We’ve heard the occasional glimpses on wax and in brief freestyle performances, in which his Tasmanian Devil strings of boasts and references sound like you’re being attacked by a very threatening television set that will channel surf until its heart beats no more. He’s even given us another (slightly better) James Brown song on his own, so I’m not too over-excited by this effort. The real pat on the back should go to Ronson for having the guts to ride with this as a single. Yes, Michael Tyler should spend every day recognizing that his crimes have been an unforgivable mistake, yet he is an exceptional talent and should at least be allowed to harness and demonstrate that. Really, it’s your choice to listen or not.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Exactly what you expect from the billing Mark Ronson ft. Mystikal: sanitized funk, questionable in concept and personnel, somehow gratifying anyway.
[7]

Feel free to provide your alias if you were in this video in the comments…

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Katherine St Asaph: Pop songs about friendship are surprisingly rare, and pop songs about friendship breakups might be stunningly so; I’m a pile of feelings and lost friendships who can’t get through “Postcards” without tearing up, but surely wider audiences might find these relatable too. Swift, as always, delivers relatability via tales of the stars, but the Katy Perry “diss” in “Bad Blood” — splattered through the press, then the video in full splattervision — is perhaps overstated. All celebrity “feuds” are inherently suspect, and at any rate her name was once rumored as the surprise guest, which would’ve been something, if not something unprecedented. As a narrative, though, it’s canny; it plays right to the stans, ensuring that any criticism of the song outs you as Team Katy, which in “Bad Blood”‘s case is convenient. The biggest difference between Pop Taylor and Country Taylor is that while Country Taylor faltered for sounding too hyperpolished, Pop Taylor thrives on polish, without which she sounds sloppy, ungainly or, as here, lopsided. Kendrick is enough of a get that he’s given huge swaths of the remix, which makes Swift’s already-thin songwriting sound even thinner. Some parts work, like Taylor massing dozens more unison Taylors around her vocals like a cloud of retweets, but the melody leans harshly on each line end, each syllable taking up three spots: “you made a really deep cut,” “take a look what you’ve done.” Not only does it draw attention to underwritten lyrics (every time the chorus rolls around I half-expect “we have bad blood, it used to be good blood“), as an effect it suggests — and I don’t think this is projection — unprocessed thoughts, petty spite. As feelings, those are fine, no one expects you to coddle thy enemies; as a song, it’s nothing I have use for.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: In the end, this is just “Better than Revenge” without the hooks and with an obvious subject, neither of which is an improvement. Releasing this, hopefully the worst song she will ever write, as a single, even with a slightly beefier sound and surprisingly substantial (if boring) guest appearance from Lamar, looks like Taylor put the cart (acting like a pop star) well ahead of the horse (writing great pop songs).
[2]

Alfred Soto: Superstar offers her latest single to superb rap album artist, but, Schoolboy Q cameo and a couple others excepted, his cameos amount to colorless pandering. Full of bravado, he sounds like Schoolboy and thus overstated in context; she wrote the stronger hook, with which she punches him repeatedly. It isn’t even a contest. They would’ve been better off meeting for vodka tonics.
[4]

Anthony Easton: I find the video inscrutable and as for the remix, Lamar’s verses are not well integrated into the rest of the track. The sped up, endlessly repeating bit at the end tries too hard. I like the line about band-aids and bullet holes though.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: K. Dot goes back to the 2DopeBoyz Filler verses he used to slosh out for buzz, which is about as content-filled as any of the inane verses he’s peddled out on his own album, so why not? Taylor got the best Kendrick can do all year, so she was certainly not cheated the undoubted expenses of this verse. Honestly, though, as vindictive a writer as Taylor can be, she probably would’ve bodied this three times as hard if she’d tried to pull that stunt herself. Brand counterproductive? Possibly. Reminder of hideous memories long repressed? Easily. But I can’t say it would’ve been any less dull than Duckworth is here.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Taylor’s BFF/BF breakup song (your mileage may vary) gets a couple of Kendrick verses which don’t really add anything to it, but don’t detract, either. And like pretty much everything else on 1989, this is crazy earworm-hooky. Start-of-the-art well-engineered pop sold by the best saleswoman around, then. 
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Taylor Swift led anticipation for the music video for “Bad Blood” so intensively and for so long that it was easy to forget about the song and only care for the music video. Maybe that’s why it was such a huge surprise to suddenly hear Kendrick Lamar and also the reason why, when I try now to put together some words about the song, it’s hard to leave aside the images of the slightly ridiculized but still powerful superwomen… and Kendrick. In the video, he isn’t part of the action — he is watching all of them from the side, but never controlling them — and while it may seem that he has a main role in the song, he still acts like a shiny attractive ornament. He is here only to fill up what the weak verses of the album version couldn’t. The catchy and loud chorus needed something better; it didn’t make any sense that after such a striking “HEY!” Taylor was suddenly pensive and with a suspicious attitude. Therefore, while Kendrick’s verse isn’t for many the ideal choice, the idea of a sudden collaborator acts as strongly as to forget about the music itself, showing once again the importance and influence of all the elements surrounding music. 
[8]

Ramzi Awn: Taylor Swift’s voice is almost as contrived as her style, and half as effective. Still, “Bad Blood” has good bones.  
[5]

Mo Kim: The original “Bad Blood” made my eyes water in the middle of a library the first time I heard it: it was a song about reeling from somebody who has bled you by a thousand little cuts; clutching at the words to transcend what is too often shrugged off as pettiness or sensitivity; cauterizing a wounded body with fire. This 2.0’s a sleeker model, with Kendrick Lamar’s confrontational chest-pumping replacing the original’s simmering verses and orchestral flourishes that lend the campfire shit-stomping of the chorus more weight than it may have been built to bear. Then there’s the video, which has prompted discussion around how Swift’s embrace of friendship as a political gesture becomes complicated by dynamics of female rivalry, how name-dropping for its own sake can devolve into a tactic to out-Regina Regina George. Yet for all that has been loaded upon it, the remix eventually hits on the same emotional power as the original. It collapses inwards towards that same stripped-back bridge, hits the same core — that banshee cry of “If you love like that, blood runs cold!” — explodes into that same supernova of a final chorus where hate fizzes into anger and sorrow and maybe even joy. The politics of “Bad Blood” may be difficult for me to parse, but the music isn’t.
[9]

Sonia Yang: Lamar’s verse adds an edge of cool and graduates this from bratty teenpop to college party jam. However, it also makes the song a shade more generic than I’d like – I’ll take the original, tongue-in-cheek Katy-Avril love child over this. Side note: I wish this star studded action flick was a full length film (more androgynous mob boss Lena Dunham, please!).
[6]

Luisa Lopez: Taylor Swift literally built an army of supermodels to take down Katy Perry. I love everything about this, especially the parts where it fails. What was once a song about the voicelessness of female anger now has a music video that devotes one half of a chorus to fetishized boxing in eyeliner (#kaylorlives) and devotes the rest to leather and heels, where the ultimate expression of power is a catwalk down the runway of a flaming city. Now “Bad Blood” is an easy dance track, complete with rap verses. They’re terrific, by the way, those rap verses. Kendrick manages to outshine Taylor in nearly every moment he has by giving some heated conflict to the song that its original verses lacked (compare, for instance, “Did you have to ruin what was shiny?” to “Better yet, respect ain’t quite sincere no more”). Taylor’s at her best when her personal becomes universal and “Bad Blood” without its music video was blank enough that you could fill it with your own feral hunger, but it’s hard to write over the prolonged parade of celebrity, to enjoy it without thinking of all the petty connections you’re meant to draw. In light of this that final chorus is so good, such a terrific confluence of the way music — bad, goofy music reveling in its own dumbness — can quicken the pulse of a room: the thinner bassline of the original swelling to those gaudy remixed thuds; Kendrick grunting out the wordless ribcage of a song stilted in the details of its own anger; the significance of the cinematic, Taylor’s increasing need to be seen in new and heightened ways, to turn her life not only into a soundtrack but a movie, acknowledging and laughing at the baleful sexiness imposed on female hatred before cutting to black. It’s messy and it’s great. In the future, we’ll dye our hair when we’ve been wronged and build an army of supermodels to exact revenge.
[8]

Will Adams: 1989 worked best when Swift’s writing superseded her biography; the emergency room visit in “Out of the Woods,” for example, was unsubtly about Mr. Styles but worked on its own to provide narrative depth. The entirety of “Bad Blood”‘s hype, conversely, rests solely on the still alleged “beef” with Katy Perry, which apparently forgives the weak writing here: that leaden “problem”/”solve ’em” rhyme, the awkward extension of “cu-u-ut” (neither of which would be so bad if they didn’t both appear on the chorus, of all places). Really, I get hives thinking about all the people involved in this single’s bloated campaign — the cameos, stunt coordinators, graphic designers, Kendrick, whoever had to remaster the new mix. Too much effort wasted on a product that wasn’t very compelling to begin with.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: From small-town festival performances of “Lose Yourself” and “Irreplaceable” to arena encounters with Nicki Minaj and T.I., Taylor Swift has throughout her career exhibited a comfort with hip-hop and R&B her detractors insist should not be plausible. As such — frontseat freestyle aside, even — Kendrick Lamar’s presence here isn’t disorienting, or even unprecedented, even if it is perfunctory. His two guest verses do more to make “Bad Blood” a remix and an event than they do to expand the song; the sort of trinket that would show up in the video version of the fourth single back when such things were sold mostly on CD and audiences needed some extra push to lay down cash again. In its original form, “Bad Blood” married mean-girl venom with playground taunts and alkaline agitation to form something both spiteful and frazzled: “if you’re coming my way, just don’t” was sharp enough to suggest its cut wasn’t the first delivered. That jab and that focus are gone here, and “band-aids don’t fix bullet holes” has turned into a literal tagline. A scene and an arms-race are a good way to keep a party going.
[6]

Rebecca A. Gowns: They’ve taken away most of the interesting stuff happening in the original instrumental, replacing it with a beat so basic I’d hardly call it a remix. The rapping’s a notch above, but the overall impression is a wash.
[3]

Crystal Leww: A couple of weeks ago I audibly booed when “Bad Blood” came on the radio in the car. The remix is better, I guess?
[4]