A 90s baby racks up some 10s…

[Video][Website]
[7.20]

Thomas Inskeep: “Turnin’ every head, hell I ain’t even tryin’” — that’s because Maren Morris is that good, that natural, she really doesn’t have to try. I know she’s talking about cruising in her ’80s Mercedes, but the lyric applies to her talent just as easily. I think we can officially say that we’ve got a new class of female country singers now who are as comfortable working in pop idioms as country, while being completely country to the core: Morris, Cam, Maddie & Tae. And Morris is at the head of that class. “80s Mercedes” is a highlight of her debut album Hero, a song about driving that actually drives, that sounds amazing blasting from car speakers, that makes you feel it. Everything about this works. And I want her white leather jacket. 
[10]

Alfred Soto: Even if the producer hadn’t included a sequencer this tuneful bit of lust would be marvelous: sung with wit and precision by Maren Morris, taking the song for a ride as if it were a Reagan-era 380 SL. An advance after the blustery “My Church.”
[9]

Katie Gill: “My Church” was a REALLY GOOD country car song. So Morris decides to follow that up with…another country car song? And a cliche car song at that! It’s not even a car song based around a silly metaphor, which are undoubtedly the best car songs. It’s a car song…about a car. Add in the over-worked vocals, half-hearted “wuh-ohs” and even more half-hearted rhymes and really, can’t we just listen to “My Church” again?
[3]

Lauren Gilbert: Maren Morris has explored the mythos of the car before (“My Church”), but in “80s Mercedes,” she’s absolutely nailed the car as self-expression. Country music has made the love of the open road a entire subgenre of its own, but most such songs are very masculine-coded. This jam — because I’m not sure how else to describe it; it’s a mf jam — isn’t a rebuke to the endless songs about trucks, and it’s stronger for it. It’s just a woman singing about her own car, her own life, her own freedom. Her soaring vocals add to the urgency; listening to this song, I just want to jump on the 5 and floor it, drive until I run out of country.
[10]

Will Rivitz: I know nostalgia is all the rage, but “I’m a ’90s baby in an ’80s Mercedes” is about as low as you can get without entering Puthland. I quite like a lot of pop-country; this is certainly not a song I’d show somebody who doesn’t.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: An overextended lyrical merging of woman and car, no doubt, but it makes a change from a car being a penis substitute, and Morris’s boast is not just self-aggrandising. The generosity of her tone makes the luxury she sings about seem accessible and aspirational, and makes me forgive a couple of really forced rhymes. That bass prowls like Saturday night, and the beat shakes and shakes with confidence as long as the road.
[10]

Cassy Gress: I know she was born in 1990, but I’m not sure I buy Maren as a “90s kid”, particularly when she doesn’t seem to know what decade Raybans were popular in. Seems more likely that this is one of those “quote the brand names for ‘regular joe’ cred” kinds of country songs. It’s also one of those songs where the flow of the lyrics doesn’t match the flow of the music, in lines like “feel like a hard to GET starLET”, “keeps get-TING bet-TER with age”, “classic through a-NY de-CADE”. There’s neat harmonies on her vocals in the chorus, but this feels too slapdash.
[3]

Brad Shoup: The chorus is fitted for Morris’s open-throttle pipes, but I suspect that it and everything else was built around that rhyme. But she settles into it like it’s a beanbag. This is more adult-alternative than country, or maybe country’s heading for Little Big Town.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: Is the central couplet a bit heavy-handed? Sure. Is there a way she could’ve expressed the same sentiment without losing any of its immediacy? I doubt it. Morris was right to stick with the bluntness of the first draft, which carries the whiff of truth in a way that a more nuanced metaphor never could. It helps that the rest of the lyrics, delivered with the right mix of pride and playfulness, acknowledge the futility of pining for an era before you were born. None of this is practical, she admits, but neither is she — an honest rationale, and a welcome departure from the kind of unreconstructed nostalgia that revived vinyl and killed Vinyl. The synth bassline and piano power chords may recall the titular decade, but Morris’ concerns are located squarely in the present moment.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The writing is good, but the delivery is great. The sing-along chorus is a masterpiece of audience particpation, the guitars rollick straight out of the gates, and the it’s this exquisite, sweet-but-not-too-sweet confection. Perfect summer song.
[10]

Lovely eyes. The song, eh, not so much.

[Video][Website]
[3.22]

Alfred Soto: Look at his hair. It’s gorgeous!
[2]

Taylor Alatorre: With a humming bit that seems to take after the vocal manipulations of softcore EDM, Joel Adams aims to bring Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me” into the 21st century. Narrative cohesion is one of the first things to be left behind.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: The humming hook is kind of neat, but my first thought was “boy, if you want me to open my heart, you’ve got to open your mouth.” Never have I regretted my thoughts so much as during this chorus.
[2]

Katie Gill: The Youtube description describes Joel Adams as a “blue-eyed soul and pop singer/songwriter.” Blue-eyed soul my ass, this is a generic pop song! It’s the pop version of country music’s interchangeable sea of cowboy hats–you could have told me Shawn Mendes or James Bay sung this and I would believe you 100%. Which, of course, means that it’s generic and boring enough that I should expect to see it on the Billboard Hot 100 sooner or later. At least the humming’s an attempt at distinction.
[4]

Tim de Reuse: A doe-eyed sadboy contorts his voice into breathy sobs, emoting so violently that it’s hard to get through without being genuinely concerned he’s going to strain something. A spirit of mid-aughts pop preserved in formaldehyde, kept chemically pure for the present day. A time capsule that maybe we should put back into the ground, actually.
[2]

Will Rivitz: This is exactly the kind of song that will get panned by TSJ’s crack team of pop-culture cynics, and for good reason — it’s Sam Smith without any of the self-awareness or mild lyrical profundity, it’s music The Script rejected for being too schlocky. Some bonus points for the fairly nice post-chorus distortion, but if twenty-year-old me dismisses this as music I’m too old to enjoy that’s probably not a good sign.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: Quite how an Australian teenager without a major label or a particularly impressive online following made it to the global Spotify top 40 is intriguing, but it’s not as if this doesn’t sound like a demographic-crossing hit. Building gradually to the tip of its sincerity so as to avoid becoming overbearing, it is an exemplar of Nice Pop. There’s a real warmth being shared with the sadness, and so if it can’t be entered into Eurovision, it really should become a Mellow Magic staple. He’s certainly got a much more pleasant voice than Charlie Puth.
[7]

Cassy Gress: That thunderous bass drum deserves better than this nasal hum. He left his soul, and back there he’s too weak. My kingdom for a writer who creates a lyric that doesn’t fit the phrasing, and then rewrites the lyric or phrasing until it fits.
[3]

Brad Shoup: He sings the word “soul” like he’s just learned it, and the hook like he’s a mosquito. In the bridge, the kickdrum and the backing vocalists conspire on a three-note figure of disbelief. But it’s very quiet. I wish they’d boosted the melodrama; lord knows it’s not being used elsewhere.
[3]

Not a Fefe Dobson cover (may her album be unshelved)…

[Video][Website]
[6.88]

Katie Gill: Take a song from a concept album about weddings and add some repeating drum machine, high pitch trills, and poking piano synth and… those 1980s lady singer/songwriter comparisons Bat For Lashes always gets are just gonna keep coming. Still, once you get past the inevitable “Wuthering Heights” joke, we’re left with a tightly made piece, perfect for crying to and/or writing in your Livejournal about.
[7]

Cassy Gress: The subtle creepiness of “I Do” steps into the forefront here, though her airy falsetto wears on the ears a bit after enough repeats of the chorus.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: A classic stretch of post-punk skittishness whose drama is heightened, and then tempered, by an array of synthesized harps. Hints of danger are scattered throughout, but are ultimately forgotten when the final wistful comedown takes over. Khan conveys a well-mannered desperation which suits this paranoid-but-not-really atmosphere, in which uncontrollable desire is reworked into an anchor of stability.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The synth moves on little cat feet, while Natasha Khan goes crazy on a Sunday afternoon thinking about the woman who warmed her bed hours ago. The mid-tempo boringness is emblematic rather than a pejorative description, a bit like a Chantal Akerman film without Delphine Seyrig’s pathological concentration on the mundane.
[6]

Anthony Easton: The syncopated, sped-up percussion before the voice is introduced has a gothic darkness, but in a slightly ironic way. The vocals, compounded with the bell tones of an electronic piano, have the overwhelming anxiety of a day spent going over everything, an anxious anti-rest. It’s almost difficult to listen to; her claims of falling apart are well represented. 
[9]

Tim de Reuse: The electronic, clawing beat is a catchy undercurrent for a track that doesn’t quite know how to use it. The verses are appropriately urgent, but the chorus seems ripped from something else completely, with twinkling harp glissandi under an echoing vocal mixed three times as loud as it ought to be. I can maybe see how this all could’ve pulled together with a better mix and a little more compositional focus, but it didn’t.
[5]

Iain Mew: I don’t mind some melodic similarities to “Daniel” because “Sunday Love” comes across as the product of fruitful refining and perfecting. The building up of a particular aesthetic helps to bring together the earthy crunch and bass and top end twinkle, combining to support Bat For Lashes in a song more magical and more painfully longing than ever.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Not the sort of wilting marriage song “I Do” suggested — in retrospect, Natasha Khan’s ballads were always like that — but a synthpop piece built from organ and twitch. The Bride may not end up being the soaring self-mythologizing of Two Suns or the reverse desiccation of The Haunted Man, but now I at least want to give it a chance.
[7]

The most googled person in Croatia and Slovenia, according to completely accurate and factual Wikipedia text…

[Video][Website]
[5.14]

Will Adams: The prize for resisting the urge to discard this obvious “We Found Love” recreation in its first two minutes is the introduction of a jaunty melody that brings it closer to Perfume’s “Miracle Worker.” In terms of heavy, shameless borrowing, one could do much worse than those two songs.
[6]

Will Rivitz: Didn’t we bury this style of Eurotrashy house with Cascada ten years ago?
[2]

Katie Gill: It’s really dated in a way that reminds me of Cascada and slightly dated in a way that reminds me of “We Found Love” — but not in a bad way, though! Severina’s voice is powerful: she’s not trying anything new, sticking in what is obviously her comfort zone, and I love her all the more for it. Add in the strings near the end (I’m always a sucker for strings, even if they are a little square dancey) and you end up with a well-crafted pop song, perfect for dancing.
[7]

Cassy Gress: I’m trying and failing to make some sort of pun out of “she hasn’t found love in a Croatian place”, but yeah, as far as the sound this is a major ripoff, at least up until the bridge where it suddenly imports some bluegrass. “Cocktail mixed with tears” is an evocative phrase though, and regardless of whether everyone around her really is kissing or it just seems that way, this chord progression is great in general for songs about struggling to find a reason to believe.
[5]

Iain Mew: I enjoy this almost as much as practical joke as song, something in the territory of the YouTube account which uploads supposed video game music that morphs into renditions of very different things. In the case of “Sekunde,” its switch works because its overwhelming similarity to “We Found Love” (even the video looks similar!) is such a fine sleight of hand. It is so brazen that it kept me on first listen from noticing that its real game is to get through “We Found Love” and all its drops in half the time while also laying the groundwork for a triumphant twist. So the folk hoedown comes as a ridiculous surprise, but on further listens merges surprisingly well.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Sounds like what I imagined “turbo-folk” to be, so it gets theoretical points at least.
[4]

Brad Shoup: When the country band kicks in, it’s like the whole town coming out to welcome you home. Only instead of the traditional labors or wanderings, you just watched your friend do Rihanna karaoke. You’re still honored.
[6]

We like house a bit better when it’s not outta the UK…

[Video][Website]
[7.42]

Will Rivitz: UK house duo Gorgon City’s debut LP Sirens in 2014 was pop house done right by any metric, but it was missing vibrancy, something energizing it beyond safe dancefloor pleasers. “Free Somebody” is what that sound feels like. The elements are all the same — upper-register synth drones, superball bass, jazzy piano — but there’s crackle to the latter, a life so intent on demolishing any of the sterility on Sirens that it’s infectious, impossible not to like. It doesn’t quite reach the zenith of this sound — Disclosure’s Settle is still unassailable in that regard — but it comes admirably close.
[9]

Adaora Ede: Yaaaaasssssssssss. You know, there’s someone out there panning SM Entertainment for pushing the deep house/London garage/nouveau-’90s/minimalist EDM sound and look with nearly every single one of their artists for the past year or so (and like, not just the weird stepchildren SHINee and f(x)), but that person is not me! I can’t exactly tell you who the somebody that Luna freeing is, but I swear it’s me when that final belted chorus hits.
[9]

Lilly Gray: One of the more surprising solo efforts straight outta SM this year, and a kissing cousin to Diplo & Sleepy Tom’s “Be Right There.” I had no idea what direction they were going to take with Luna’s solo, but a dance track that slugs along into a chorus made for some snaky-slow arm waves and accompanying vocal blast is an interesting choice.
[6]

Cassy Gress: I’ve mildly stanned for Luna ever since “weonHAEEEEEE” at the end of the breakdown in “Red Light”, but in the continuing misadventures of f(x) solo work, this is essentially a slightly dancier rework of “4 Walls” with less charm. 
[5]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: SM is doing a tremendous job by putting Luna and French house together, but it’s her magnetism and soaring vocal delivery — complete with some Ellis-Bextorian “I know I know” lines — that sells this so well. And what a beautiful combination her crazy vocal delays make with those colorful, sugary synth chords. Now try to take that chorus melody out of your head.
[8]

Jessica Doyle: This is a worthy successor to Martha Wash’s Black Box-era work and a nice platform for Luna’s solo debut, but it still feels a bit inert. The chorus stops and starts enough to lose the momentum of the pre-chorus, but unlike in “4 Walls,” the pre-chorus hadn’t built up that much tension to begin with.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Wait — I do hear Black Box’s “Everybody Everybody” in those ooh-oohs, right? I’m not crazy? What a pleasure to hear this South Korean singer mix the sugar rush with the stateliness of house pianos.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: A novelty that shouldn’t be a novelty: hearing a house-pop song in 2016 that sounds like it remembers house-pop being exciting. Or, put another way: a house-pop song where I mishear the chorus as “freak somebody” and it sounds like it isn’t out of the song’s universe.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: Stylish, air-tight, and supremely danceable, but clings too firmly to the deep house template to register as liberatory in any sense. The only moments that feel truly freeing are the choruses, when Luna relinquishes her lockstep devotion to the beat and allows her voice to fill the entire room. 
[6]

Brad Shoup: They’ve filled this just enough, I think: it’s not a spangly arcade banger, and it’s not deep-purple minimal. Even Luna’s big moment on the chorus isn’t a diva turn. It’s a holler, a slalom of varying precision, and it absolutely enlivens her stated desire to free somebody.
[8]

Anjy Ou: There’s so much space in this song, from the post-chorus breakdowns to the centering of the listener in the lyrics: Luna wants to free us, but she’s not making it about her. Live YOUR dreams, be YOURself — she only wants to help you along the way. Fittingly it’s paced so you can dance to it at almost any tempo: a subtle head bob, a two-step, or full on voguing or whacking — all work with the beat. There’s a warmth in the song that enfolds anyone and everyone willing — like Luna is holding her arms open ready to embrace the world.
[8]

Madeleine Lee: Previously, I gave my definition of a good house song as one that makes me start dancing if I wasn’t already, and every time this comes on shuffle I have to dance: in the kitchen, on the bus, walking down the street. Luna shakes off the mysterious vibe of “4 Walls” and throws a feeling of joy and triumph into every note. No wonder it’s contagious.
[10]

Seems we cannot agree with Beth about what year it is…

[Video][Website]
[5.56]

Katherine St Asaph: How did something produced by Fuck Buttons come out sounding like “Funkytown” remade on the model of Nina Persson’s glottal stops in “Hanging Around”? It’s heartening to hear Beth Orton’s course — continued on the album — take her again down paths less beige, and selfishly heartening to hear something that sounds like it’s assembled itself out of what’s in my head.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Warbling over polite programmed beats is nothing new to a singer who worked with Ben Watt in the late ’90s. Central Reservation holds up, thanks to her melodic smarts. Orton’s decision to sing at the top of her register over Fuck Buttons’ wheezing electronics takes getting used to, though.
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: I mostly know Orton from the lovely “Magpie” and “Stolen Car,” which is probably my favorite song I know where the lyrics remain inscrutable after hundreds of listens. She has a history of electronics, but hearing the folktronica of those songs replaced with something that more resembles “Funkytown,” of all things, is somewhat disappointing. It feels undercooked, refusing to build to anything above pleasant. Also, the titular line reminds me of Scott Mildenhall’s blurb for “What Kind of Man,” if only because Beth was a toddler in that year, and the line might as well be 1983.
[5]

Katie Gill: Why on Earth does a song that repeatedly mentions the 1970s sound a tad bit Gary Numan and exceedingly 1980s? I honestly don’t know if I love or hate it, which extends to my confusion about the song itself.
[4]

David Moore: The referent in the production was nagging me — what song is that? Seemed later than 1973, surely, closer to ’83. Zapp? Atari? Plods when it should bounce, not half as playful as it needs to be. Speed it up a bit, give it a little more attitude and a lot less brain… ah, there it is — Girlicious, “Stupid Shit.”
[6]

Sabina Tang: Wispily pleasant uptempo single off an album that could have been released in 2002 as the de rigueur electro-indie follow-up to Central Reservation without any sense of the artist veering off-brand (“Dawnstar” isn’t exactly far off “Star All Seem To Weep”). But Beth Orton’s voice can be uptempo, or it can be wispily pleasant: both at once come off as mealymouthed.
[6]

Anthony Easton: As much as I appreciate an upbeat Beth Orton, this takes her unique voice and makes a kind of nostalgic, generic pop song about a time that never really existed. I’m disappointed. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: Orton has made a Looper song that finally got its shit together, one that keeps the mellotron tones but loses the cloudgazing lassitude. She sings about electric sky over a fat yet fading bassline, and it’s halcyon psychedelia but for her poise. The palm-muted synth chatters and seizes up; the cymbals are made to sound like they’re coming from a pocket Casio. In fewer words: the track jumps as much as the impatient narrator.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: This song sounds like it has a fever, but not a fun kind.
[2]

We’ve got a crush on “Crash”…

[Video][Website]
[6.73]

Hannah Jocelyn: It’s good to have the indie-cool side of Usher show itself again. This is not as intricate as “Climax” and “Good Kisser”, but gets by on the opposite quality — rather than relying on mind-bending production, “Crash” instead goes for effortless bliss. The other two singles have this sense of paranoia and dread permeating them, so it makes the easy charm of this stand out all the more. In a lesser artist’s hands, the shortened length would make this come across like yet another unfinished would-be hit, but Usher performs it simply and directly, as if it were a love song. And that might be part of the point — the lyrics ask “Would you mind if I still loved you?” like Usher is trying to convince himself that things can still work out by making his surrounding instrumental upbeat. Even with this lighter-than-air melody, he can’t resist slipping in a bit of darkness.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Like many aging R&B stars, he sounds most himself on ballads, and this co-write with Carlos St. John treats electronics as Astroglide. The song’s rather conventional; the pleasures are in the tension between his still formidable falsetto projecting desire and the lower register harmonies reminding him that whatever else we still live on Earth.
[7]

Will Rivitz: “Crash” nails only one of the two qualifications inherent in any top-notch Usher song. On one hand, it’s suave as hell, undulating gloriously under a falsetto which still holds up after all these years. On the other, it’s missing the fervent, emotionally crazed bite of his best work, remaining far too static and under control. Since Usher’s best work is unequivocally a [10], this gets exactly half of that.
[5]

Will Adams: Fine falsetto, fine reverb tails, fine electropop throb, all fine fine fine. Not fine: the chorus bassline sinking down to the tonic at the end of the progression instead of the IV that it so clearly wants to do (it does it in the verses and sounds so much better). It would be a nitpick if it didn’t occur on the most crucial part of the song, the title word landing on an unsteady ninth above the bass, derailing the pathos the song had built up.
[5]

Katie Gill: Easily the weakest part of this song is the falsetto, which happens repeatedly, and unfortunately in the chorus. I know Usher can do a good falsetto, but this really isn’t it. We’ve got a great sexy jam, Usher doing peak “songs for bumping uglies” Usher. And then you get Mickey Mouse in the chorus. Buh-bye, sexiness.
[5]

Sabina Tang: “Climax” stripped to its chassis. Usher’s falsetto floats above an astringent electro throb like white diamonds on black velvet — a trick of commercial photography that seems effortless and is notoriously finicky to achieve.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: My favorite version of Usher over the past decade or so has been this one, the more subdued Usher. Here, his falsetto leads the show. He reaches for the high notes for his questions like he already knows the disappointing reply, but he asks anyway just so he doesn’t have to suffer wondering “what if?” More than showing off how he’s surrounded by many, Usher’s best when he’s at his loneliest, pleading for his only one.
[7]

Cassy Gress: This really does sound like a late night waiting for someone so that you can apologize, and thinking about what if they forgive you and take you back. That’s the problem, though, is that it’s rarely about the other person; it’s just about making yourself feel better for whatever you did. It would be creepy, to say the least, if I broke up with someone, and a few days later I came home from a long day out and saw my ex’s car in front of my house. Nonetheless, I’ve been in both positions, and “Crash” nails that feeling hard.
[6]

Brad Shoup: There’s definitely an early-morning feel to this: a sleep-deprived emotionalism that can occur when you’ve powered through the night solo. You’re full of feelings, but you gotta keep it down. People are trying to sleep. Usher rides a buzzy synthworm to devotional heights on the chorus… everything else is so much talking. Melodically obsessive, doubled and trebled talking, sure. But it sounds like struck-through lines next to the directness of the hook.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: About 30 seconds of another good idea, Usher fronting Ladytron, surrounded by nocturnal electrovibes that in 2016 have become standard-issue. But standard-issue doesn’t mean ineffective, especially considering Usher is about 1000% better as a frontman than any of the wannabe Weeknds one could imagine here. Has a better hook, too.
[8]

Peter Ryan: I selfishly wish I were correct in hearing “you’re the only one who texts me back,” but really, who among us in this earthly plane would dare ghost Usher?
[8]

Is “She Is” any good? “She Is” is!

[Video][Website]
[7.20]

Alfred Soto: Of course it sounds like the former SHINee lead singer’s saying “bullshit,” the ideal accompaniment to a stop-start rhythm. Surrounded by breathy harmonies and bits of slapped bass, Jonghyun insists on that hook, over and over.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: The electrohouse parlor tricks on display here are old as hell, but, hey, there’s a reason this stuff has stuck around for so long. Here everything is produced to a ludicrous, glossy mirror shine, chopped into crisp, clever ear-candy edges. Its production succeeds by letting the vocals ride on the skeleton of an engaging chord progression, eschewing dramatic waves of tension and release for a single unbroken groove that just kind of strides confidently all the way through. The make-or-break on this one is whether or not you get tired of that breathy “OH!-she-is” that starts off half the lines in the song. Frankly, I think it’s absolute genius.
[8]

Iain Mew: A slick vehicle for providing the chance to repeatedly exclaim “oh shiz!” but not really. It’s a sign of how well constructed it is that the question of what the point is almost, almost doesn’t overtake it.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: It has been a good year for K-pop songs taking heavy cues from the sea of SoundCloud, highlighted earlier this year by “Overcome” and “Fly.” Now comes “She Is,” opening with big synth washes, featuring an impressive attention to detail (water drop sounds!) and some very welcome bass. And Jonghyun manages to turn all of these signifiers into a coherent and overall fun song.
[7]

Sabina Tang: Elastic and summery, like sheer color-block nylons, or an “m-flo loves x” single from nigh a decade back (e.g. “Loop In My Heart”).
[7]

Will Rivitz: While it’s impossible to argue this isn’t a nearly note-for-note ripoff of about half of Lido’s catalogue, there’s a reason that producer is one of the most sought-after in the biz today. The video’s food-coloring palate fits the tobogganing organ chords and boomerang bass, roughly equivalent to a giant hunk of cotton candy in its effervescence, weightlessness, and (after a while) sickly stickiness. It’s a lightweight, quick-moving pop song, and all things considered that’s not the worst thing in the world.
[7]

David Moore: Staggering sweep synths settle into to lite funk; smooth, blank male K-pop vocals turn from bug to feature by piling on harmonies. Lurches haltingly before melting into a big smile, like a toddler surprising himself with a bout of hiccups and then bursting into laughter — which is to say my son would approve of this one.
[7]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Gooey synth-funk that zig-zags the line between laid-back and intense, with jazzy guitars adding class to the syncopation and an even classier Jonghyun going savage with the triplets in the second verse. With all these ingredients incorporated so tightly, why does it still feel like the track’s about to burst into a bigger, funkier groove that never arrives? I wanted that big jump. 
[7]

Juana Giaimo: When I hear “She Is,” I imagine a boy enumerating all the things he likes about a girl he has just met. He knows his words will never be enough to describe her completely, but he can’t avoid singing about her. This sugary tone is contrasted with Jonghyun’s confidence. He casually shifts from a a perfect falsetto to precise rapped lines, building sensual tension to soon relax the atmosphere with a warm melody. Because he also knows that the girl is sighing, “He is”.
[8]

Adaora Ede: For every K-pop song, there is an exact counterpart. The apparition doesn’t have to be a perfect copy of the original song, but there will be the slightest glimmer in your mind of perhaps some KARA b-side from 2009. Even as a track made up entirely of bells-and-whistles, “She Is” stands alone. There’s nothing like it. “She Is” is synthy without sounding stiff; its chorus sounds paeanic but wholly modern. Stylistically, one can easily identify why Jonghyun has been labeled the supreme in the new wave of idols-turned-songwriters because his ideas are sonically stronger than the typical Rachel Platten-lite or nu metal revival we get from most of our self-proclaimed creatives. Nonetheless, this is no sort of perfect pop package; you’re going to have to do a lot of unwrapping. It starts out as such a double creeper-sleeper jam because you will struggle to even remember the tune by the second listen, but then you’ll remember just how surreal it is to be hearing a dance breakdown in the middle of a neo-soul funk jam and hit that damn play button again. But at this point, so much of the lyricism of this song has filtered into my daily life that I will actually excuse the contrived hip hop bridge. And then I realize why it doesn’t sound like anything else: this song is the culmination of nit-picky emulation. You know that.
[9]

And we close out our Monday with cumbia…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Juana Giaimo: Old-fashioned cumbia songs are underrated. Accordions and mariachi-like trumpets makes “Desde Esa Noche” a fun and warm song.Thalía’s fast-singing benefits her more than the Auto-Tune, while Maluma’s melodious voice joins her well. The music as well as the lyric theme — being afraid of unrequited love — contrasts with the sharp tone of clubs’ music. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I simply missed songs like this on the radio.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Maluma might think this duet is an equally leveled game, but he’s really playing catch up to Thalía, who runs circles around her guest. From her subtle break into Auto-Tune to switch-up to a fuller, more staccato flow, she teases out parts I wish she could dedicate for its own entire section, only for her to instead give the space to Maluma. He gets a verse of his own, but by then I’m just waiting for Thalía to return.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I’m digging how the sentimental horns have their intent completely mauled by the galloping reggaetón beat. Less to how Maluma basically gets mauled by Thalía. If this is a trend I’ve been heretofore unaware of, I’d like a duet a bit more evenly matched, but it’s still a rousing combination.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: The track is Thalía’s: the horns and accordion trills emanate as if she had breathed them into existence. Maluma wanders, less sure of himself. If he feels something, he doesn’t feel it like Thalía does. This night is hers; she might have well made it.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Thalía’s held up better than most of her peers over the past thirty years because she’s essentially hollow, a vehicle for whatever the current trends of the moment are, so she’s never out of fashion even as she’s never been in advance of it. Reggaetón being ready for a Thalía crossover might be the cruelest thing you could say about it in 2016, that it’s completely lost whatever urban edge it might have had in the early 2000s and is as Zumba-bland as any other tropical rhythm. But it’s pretty-boy Maluma who proves the lightweight here; Thalía will outlast him just like she’s outlasted all the other pretty boys she’s dueted with, and left their carcasses in her wake.
[6]

Alfred Soto: To the accompaniment of timbales, accordion, and a yearning trumpet, the couple pledges their troth, and unlike duets in a similar vein they sound like they’re in the same room, eyeing each other across their cocktails, remembering last night, and saying fuck it as they join on the dance floor.
[7]

Wiicked…

[Video][Website]
[4.50]

Taylor Alatorre: Between the Jamie Foxx parody and Desiigner’s XXL Freshman spot, June 2016 has confirmed Future’s transition from forward-thinking upstart to a member of rap’s old guard. Accordingly, his current single is his most conservative of the post-Monster era. Name-checking the Taliban has lost its shock and awe factor, and the slurring of the title feels too deliberate, like an 11-year-old pretending to be drunk. While it may lack for surprises, “Wicked” otherwise succeeds in condensing the appeal of Future into a compact package. His blend of guttural melody and verbal economy is on full display, backed by a droning yet springy Metro/Southside beat which helps his lines land their punches. The nimble delivery of “she want that big big dog status” shows a rapper who is not yet content to rest on his laurels, no matter how ubiquitous his style may become. If only that rapper had showed up more often.
[6]

Katie Gill: Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. As such, all these tiny little underground rappers that got their sound by copying Future (cough, Desiigner, cough) have soured me on Future himself. Thankfully, he’s slightly more intelligible here than on previous records, with the exception of his inability to pronounce the word “wicked”: a shame considering that’s the damn song title.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: There’s something strangely comforting about the feeling that creeps over you when you realize that you are now officially too old to get what the youth find thrilling about work that, by the standards you’ve unconsciously adopted all your life, is only half-finished, or less. Like what they say freezing to death is like. Just close your eyes and let it happen.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: There’s not much to get from the verses besides being filler so Future’s fading, wiggling flow doesn’t get left behind the cutting room floor. Even then, he’s only half committed to his idea, while tossing backup lines in between as if he realized he has yet to figure out how to fully flesh them out into legit hooks. Purple Reign has weirder, more defined, and more moving moments, so I don’t know why this is the one he’s pushing.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: When you write a verse that ends trying to draw out natural assonance between “asparagus” and “embarrassed,” you should take a step back and be really, really sure that you can pull it off. I don’t think playing it straight was the way to go here; it feels like half of a joke, streamlined to the point of lacking any meat. Maybe if the hook didn’t sound more like “wiggle, wiggle, wiggle” than “wicked, wicked, wicked,” I wouldn’t be looking for something else to laugh at.
[3]

Alfred Soto: A year ago he sounded fresh and occasionally chilling; now I have to fight the urge to joke about the title (okay, fine: he should’ve called it “Peeved”). A few more mumbled indifferent rhymes and Metro Slummin’ beats like this and I may stop playing DS2.
[5]