In which your editor wonders, not for the first time, why Hall & Oates are still a thing…

[Video][Website]
[6.22]

William John: On the last lead single from the xx, Romy Madley Croft sung about someone who moved through a room “like breathing was easy,” as if they were the only two people in it that mattered. That awareness of the power of cavernous space has been the defining characteristic of the band’s work to date. “On Hold,” complete with a lively Hall & Oates sample, is cluttered by juxtaposition, but the busyness of Jamie xx’s arrangement doesn’t detract from the singers’ dramatic intimacy. This isn’t so much the resuscitation of a band that previously “didn’t have a pulse” or whatever; it’s more like the awakening of a handful of geniuses to the presence of others at the party.
[8]

Alfred Soto: I give’em credit for fucking with their finely calibrated narcolepsy: the art of staring into space until space itself blurs. Mixed high and proud, Romy Croft and Oliver Sim come off like a Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt for the daze-y age while a bass burbles and a chopped vocal flaunts Jamie xx’s admiration for Drake and Kanye.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: I’d listened to this a couple of times and liked it well enough before seeing the xx’s Saturday Night Live performance of “On Hold” last weekend. Their energy in that performance (an odd word to use regarding the xx, I know) really seemed to open the song up. There’s something about watching the chemistry between singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, watching them play guitar and bass (respectively) against each other while singing, while mastermind Jamie xx controls all sorts of keyboards, electronics, samples, and percussion behind them. Significantly, that includes Jamie’s triggering of pitch-shifted samples of Daryl Hall & John Oates’s 1981 classic “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).” Much has already been made of said samples, so I’ll just add that they really add something to “On Hold,” not just catching the ear but grabbing and pulling it, throwing a super-unexpected element into the xx’s proceedings. (And pay attention to the specific lines incorporated, because they matter as lyrics.) As for the rest of the song, it’s got the xx’s semi-patented mix of subtle drum pads, Cocteaus-esque chiming guitar, and Croft and Sim’s flawless back-and-forth talk-singing. This is a single that gets meatier and deeper with subsequent listens, and may well be the best thing the xx have released since “Intro.” Delicious. 
[9]

Tim de Reuse: This would be a tasteful bare-bones synthpop morsel if it were just a little more brave with its sound design; the most gorgeous parts don’t appear until too late in the song and don’t stay quite as long as I’d like. And those stringy, chopped vocals from Hall & Oates that pass for a chorus are the exact opposite of what this track needed; they sound like the unpolished first pass of a second-rate mashup artist, stuck in an ugly clash with the smooth hum of the rest of the mix.
[5]

Ramzi Awn: There are plenty of good ideas in “On Hold,” but with young hearts come young lyrics. For a song about loss, it borders on the aloof.   
[3]

Will Adams: The xx never became the soundtrack of my teenage years like it did for many of my friends, and after Jamie’s reasonably good solo effort last year, I feel even less inclined to try this time. His chorus, with a julienned Hall & Oates sample over lonely percussive patter, is the most exciting portion of the song, and it’s been sandwiched between Romy and Oliver mumbling their way through a trite breakup narrative. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: An xx song with a sample from Hall & Goddamn Oates is the equivalent of the critical discourse throwing up on me; the soft-rock balladry is the equivalent of it doing so in the dentist’s office. Romy and Oliver have taken some voice lessons, at least. Jamie could use lessons in repertoire.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Until Sean Paul relents and tweets his endorsement for Mike + The Mechanics, there’ll be a chance this year could be the first since 2003 that the Christmas number one isn’t taken by The X Factor or a charity campaign. “On Hold” is thus perfectly timed. Like an inverse, non-homophobic, non-class tourist “Fairytale of New York”, The xx have released their Christmas single. It sounds like autumn fading into winter with spring inconceivable; Distant Daryl Hall is a plague of summers passed. That vocal filtering isn’t exactly a burst of originality, but none of this needs to be — it’s archetypal fun December misery.
[7]

Danilo Bortoli: The characters who used to occupy The xx’s songs used to be nocturnal beings — people ready to find love in silence and negative spaces. “On Hold” shifts the view: the video is our generation’s “1979.” The song, expectedly, borrows a lot from that melancholia yet fills it with euphoria. A penchant for the unsaid gives place to a prominent sample. Comfort gives place to teenage infatuation. Surprisingly, that does not really change the nature of their music: “On Hold” still hits that sweet spot between falling in and out of love. Their message is simply louder now. And a bit more optimistic.
[9]

And not one of us had it ruined by mishearing “cellular”…

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[6.78]

William John: From the kitsch of “Pull Shapes“, to “Find Me Out“‘s devastating heartbreak and corroding faculties, to the comparatively exuberant “Stellular”, one thing has remained constant: Rose Elinor Dougall’s superlative, confounding voice. It’s at once sinewy and commanding, as though it could slice glass, but also velveteen, cosy, and so reliably tender. On “Stellular”, Dougall positions herself as cheerleader, accompanied by cosmic synths and a whirring bass line. When the pistons come to halt and she exclaims “you…are…stellular!” in her round-voiced, admiring, knowing way, not only does it restore the listener’s figurative crops, but makes one flush with incandescent triumph.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: “Stellular” is built around an awesome snare pulse much akin to Trentemøller’s stellar “River in Me” but goes in some unexpected directions: it’s spacier (pun intended), it’s got vaguely horn-y synths on the chorus, and its title is “Stellular” for chrissake (“having the shape of a small star,” according to Merriam-Webster). The guitar tones read post-punk if not quite new wave, and Dougall’s vocals especially give this liftoff. As someone who never paid attention to the Pipettes, for me “Stellular” is one of 2016’s most pleasant — no, not “pleasant,” more like small-scale magnificent — surprises.
[10]

Madeleine Lee: I’ve been informed that “stellular” is a real word, but it’s not a very attractive-sounding one to me. But if it’s what allows the syllables of “constellations burn brighter” to be laid out over the next line the way they are, turning a potential cliché into something as alien and ear-catching as the marriage of outer-space synths to post-punk bass, then I’ll allow it.
[6]

Katie Gill: This desperately wants to be a synthpop banger. And the verses have the potential for a synthpop bangers! However, the lilting vocals mixed with the ethereal synth mixed with those hard snares just muddle together into noise at certain points–especially ironic considering that the muddled mess is accompanied by “burn brighter.” I wish the song took its own advice.
[5]

Will Adams: With its hyper-tempo and skittery synths, “Stellular” plays like a brighter reimagining of Trentemøller’s “River In Me.” While it misses out on some of the sinister edge, Rose Elinor Dougall’s starry-eyed performance is a pleasure in itself.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Finding someone stellular in a cold and cruel city is a great feeling, but it doesn’t always sound so great on record.
[3]

Ryo Miyauchi: Instead of showing us how big the stars actually are or how strong its gravitational pull, Dougall points up at the sky to admire celestial bodies from afar. The gossamer synths draw out most of the song’s sense of cosmic grandeur and curiosity while her voice stays low-key, raising exactly once and only once. But whether it’s that sudden jump giving the song a subtle yet effective hook or how she awes at the sweet sounds of the titular word, her state of down-to-earth reserve makes me appreciate the small things.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: There’s probably some critical syzygy that can map, perfectly, Rose Elinor Dougall and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s respective shifting alignments with rock and dance. While you work that out, I’ll be here, whisked alongside the ambivalent narrator into someone’s gravitational field: a star that looks like a pinprick (key to the lyric, I think, is that it’s a small star) until you’re swept up by it. The metaphor’s been done before, and so has love, but both retain awe. What’s “you’re giving yourself away again” to a cosmic force?
[9]

Cédric Le Merrer: Solo ex-Pipette makes modern space pop isn’t a shocker at this point, of course. But this time I get the lyrics, and they seem to aim for comforting and confidence-boosting. At this point it’s a cliché to point out how awful 2016 was and how worse 2017 will probably be, but will the psychedelic be the comforting escape from it all we need? I kind of get the appeal of the surrealist, of the lysergic and of, basically, drugs in the face of absurdity. But we’re going to need much stronger doses than that.
[6]

While others get burned…

[Video][Website]
[5.60]

Iain Mew: Sometimes you can make a sparkling new pop song that does interesting things with piano and misleading tempo and has neat rapping, and it just doesn’t appeal as much as the one that sounds like it could be a years old ballad by your soon-to-be-disbanded predecessors. It just happens.
[6]

Jessica Doyle: Apparently YG wasn’t kidding when he decided to rebrand Blackpink as the “pretty” version of 2NE1: even some of the shots in the video are recycled. (Compare Rosé at 1:35 and Lisa at 3:15 to Park Bom and Minzy, respectively, in 2012’s “I Love You.”) It’s disappointing enough, after the smarts of “Whistle” and the energy of “Boombayah,” that this feels so tepid: everyone (especially Jennie) seems so preoccupied with projecting cool and keeping their voices steady that the vocals come off as passionless, and there’s not enough going on in the background to overcome that. But “Playing with Fire” looks even weaker as the potential sign of a new strategy: Blackpink’s future as someone else’s past.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The bass throb and “look at me now!” hook evokes early-2000s J. Lo, and there’s no question that any song afire with a flame metaphor will send listeners into disco inferno (unless written by Scissor Sisters). 
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Neatly answers the question “what would it sound like if Fifth Harmony did ‘Same Old Love’”: more vocalists, more strut, still not much of a hook.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Just when I thought Blackpink overdid it with their styling in “Whistle,” I now miss its sass. Lisa plays the brash voice and a needed punch in the gut, though she’s not enough to raise its middling rock.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Defiantly midtempo K-pop that plods along and doesn’t seem to go anywhere.
[4]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: I’m marveled by the beat — it moves in several swing/shuffle groove variations without ever losing that mid-tempo riddim fluidity — and the way the low end is used to manage the space is exquisite. Yes, producer Teddy is using Blackpink to continue where he left off with 2NE1, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that, and in “Playing with Fire” he did not miss. The diversity in the girls’ voices remains a strong factor, and the production knows it. And come on, can you resist Jennie’s heavy, extra-breathy first verse? I think I’ve found my bias. 
[7]

Adaora Ede: A flashy take on chopped-n-screwed, “Playing With Fire” meshes ravey-style maximalism with minuscule acoustic elements, dumps more moonbahton-ish sound over that, and washes out a pretty detuned piano interlude into synth breaks. So much for it, because that’s not what Blackpink wants the listener to remember. There’s a low-key vintage vibe, aided greatly by aforementioned piano, and fearless vocalwork — even when it falls flat on Lisa’s part, serving not much more than drabber CL x GD vibes (hmmmm). And it demonstrates the skill it takes in adapting foreign dance genres for a trendy pop single (hmmmmmmm), which is most likely not a reach from what YG wants for their revamped 2NE1.
[7]

Madeleine Lee: Having actually mistaken both “Whistle” and “Boombayah” for ersatz 2NE1 when hearing them in public, I’m humbled that “Playing With Fire” is such a tune, a solidly written, uncontrived melody that shows off every member to her advantage (even Jisoo) and that fits in with the K-pop of 2016, not an idea of a YG girl group that’s frozen in 2011. I wish I could say that this indicates a bright future ahead of them, but in the wake of 2NE1’s decay and YG’s continuous neglect of its younger talent, I’m not so sure.
[8]

Ramzi Awn: Though not completely boring, “Playing With Fire” plays it basic — unfortunately, it goes in one ear and out the other. 
[4]

…in order to form a more perfect leaderboard…

[Video][Website]
[8.43]

Hannah Jocelyn: I hadn’t listened to A Tribe Called Quest at all before hearing Thank You 4 Your Service in full. I don’t know why I’ve been missing out, because I needed this; even the power of Lemonade has worn off at this point, as well as any other critically acclaimed blockbuster to come from this year — most of those albums now seem frozen in time. Meanwhile, this album, especially “We the People,” is for right now, and for the next four years. “We the People” comes at exactly the right time, the perfect soundtrack to begin the terrifyingly uncertain Trump era. The anger, in particular, is palpable here, in both the rough, edgy beat and the expressionless delivery of the chorus. The tone feels especially urgent because when the band started work on the album, I’m not sure anyone involved wanted it to appear at such a heavy moment. There’s an alternate scenario where the album came out with the foregone conclusion of a Clinton presidency, and perhaps another one with Phife Dawg (who delivers an excellent verse) living to see the release. Maybe either album is more of a celebration than the emotionally charged one we got. But perhaps they knew what was about to happen to America when they recorded this a year and a half ago — not dissimilar to Dave Chapelle’s sobering SNL skit, they understood the nightmare that the rest of the country, myself included, is only starting to understand. It’s not much of a fair compensation, but instead of those alternate scenarios, we got a song and album that shows why indifference and passivity are not options, and why protest music is not futile, but more necessary than ever. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: I was in tears when that squirrelly burr joined the snare in the first forty seconds. On point, Tip? All the time. Seizing a historical moment that threatened to flatter them as much as us, Q-Tip and Jarobi write a classic up-with-people anthem that recontexualizes the dead Phife Dawg as a voice of cross-cultural protest.
[10]

Thomas Inskeep: This should by no rights be this fucking great. Credit especially Q-Tip, not just rhyming like our lives depend on it, but also in the producer’s chair. And credit Tribe altogether for knowing that this was precisely when we needed them back.
[9]

Will Adams: The mixing may be questionable, but the message is essential.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Tribe is on time and ready to spin. They make it sound easy. 
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The buzzy bass and minimal beat, not to mention the use of silence and sound effects like sirens, are perfect for a call to arms. Claiming “we the people” on behalf of those assumed to be trying to usurp the natural order of the Rich Straight White Man having all the rights and power is so powerful in Tribe’s hands and rhymes. Hearing the lyrics rattle off a list of the underclasses — black, Mexican, poor, Muslim, gay, you name it — reminds me that the new majority of minorities will eventually win everywhere. At a time when liberalism feels confused and moribund, this song is such a tonic.
[9]

Tim de Reuse: Mercifully, these guys don’t sound like they’ve been on hiatus for almost twenty years — the performances are tight, the production is fuzzy and full, and it’s just snappy and energetic enough to feel genuine rather than heavyhanded. I mean, on first listen, I thought the directness of the verses might end up overcooked and awkward, but I kept listening — maybe I really wanted/needed to hear those first two lines. There’s a particular resonance between the phrase “We don’t need you” and the chorus, delivered by Q-Tip in an ominous singsong from the other side of the power dynamic (“All you Black folks, you must go…”) that imparts a kind of infectious defiance, which isn’t really how I wanted my 2016 to end — but this is probably as realistic and positive a message as we’re gonna get, huh? 
[8]

Controversy star…

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[4.17]

Alfred Soto: The arrangement has the synthetic squelch ‘n’ bounce of mid ’80s Atlantic Starr and the S.O.S. Band, and I’m delighted the underappreciated Marsha Ambrosius does more than decorate a hook. The star attraction is less Common(place) than he’s been the last half decade too. Will adult R&B radio excise the long sampled-vocal outro?
[7]

Will Rivitz: If you’re copying nearly verbatim from “Juicy,” could you at least try to make it less obvious?
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Common: well-meaning but boring as all hell these days. And based on “Lovestar,” he should never ever pen odes to women ever again: “pull your dress up/ain’t nothin’ formal” and “like cousins/tho’ we kissin’ tho’” are just two very unsexy examples. This is like hearing your Dad attempt to talk sexy, and no one wants that.
[1]

Jibril Yassin: “I’m the sun god, let me warm you.” How about nah, Common?
[1]

Jonathan Bogart: Not to raise the specter of the old man shaking his head at the Young Thugs and Uzi Verts going “back in my day rappers enunciated,” but there’s an immense nostalgic drive to this kind of song, so much so that it almost sounds like a parody of the hippie wave of conscious rap Common popularized in the late 90s, all floating textures and plodding beats and the man’s own stilted, earnest flow. Marsha Ambrosius couldn’t sound bad on a hook if she tried, but even she’s working with very little.
[6]

Ramzi Awn: It’s hard to argue with a great mellow hook and a Cayman Islands beat. Not to mention a surprise ending.  
[7]

Just let it all out…

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[4.36]

Natasha Genet Avery: Now we’re two singles in and I still don’t know what Kiiara’s thing is. Felix Snow’s Soundcloud bedroom beat only accentuates the flatness of her delivery — much like on “Gold,” Kiiara seems unable to conjure any emotion through her timid whisper.
[3]

Iain Mew: Kiiara here gets just right the stream of conciousness of a certain kind of satisfying self-reckoning often seen on the internet — “fuck it, keep on going” is, as they say, too real. She doesn’t have much to fill her stylistically perfect song with, though, and the chorus lets it down. Not because it has the line “I’ve got way too many feels” but because it really wants to be a song with the chorus “I’ve got way too many feels” but doesn’t have the confidence or direction not to follow it with a redundant translation.
[4]

Will Adams: It’s only appropriate. “Feels” the word is less a descriptor of deep emotion than it is a signifier for it. “Feels” the song is all talk, no show, with Kiiara hovering on the same note throughout barely trying to convince you. This shouldn’t be shocking coming from someone who titled her EP Low Kii Savage and peppers her lyrics with lines like “we finna blow it” and “drop top in that coup” over serviceable trap production. It’s referencing, not relating, and also deeply uninteresting.
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: Wait… did Kiiara just say “finna?” It’s not my place to judge how problematic that is, but between that and the attempts at catchy one-liners (“faded when I’m sober/sober when I’m faded,” “you say you smoking grams, I’m smoking into the Grammys,” the title of the actual song), it’s easy to think they should have chopped up the vocals here, too. Judging from that song, the more mysterious and otherworldly Kiiara is, the better — making this faux-confessional song a bit of a misfire. Felix Snow’s production is still glossy, lush, and atmospheric, but clearly, all that glitters ain’t “Gold”.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Serious logorrhea — no space for the track to breathe, no space for Kiiara to breathe. I’m not even sure the melody’s nice.
[3]

Will Rivitz: A year and a half ago, there was a Pitchfork review that complained that a certain band didn’t “have feelings; they have #thefeels.” That’s arguably the case here: Kiiara grouses that she’s got “way too much emotion” without really describing any of the feels she’s feeling beyond an ambiguously angsty distrust of those around here. The attitude isn’t unexpected — Kiiara’s schtick generally fits better in an Instagram caption than in A Place For Serious Music Criticism, which is an attitude I really vibe with — but compared to the fangs she bares on “Gold” and “Say Anymore,” this one falls flat. She’s best when she’s holding court over bumpin’ production; drowning under a Tinashe knockoff doesn’t work quite so well.
[5]

Katie Gill: “I got too many feels” yeah, no, absolutely not. She’s twenty-one, so this hilariously juvenile lyric can be forgiven, but the boring production can’t. “I got too many feels,” she monotonously sings in a five note score over a stale beat, a three and a half minute song that’s so rushed and aimless it feels like a minute and a half. The best thing this song can provide is the lyrics superimposed on ironic Tumblr gifsets of Eddie Redmayne crying.
[1]

William John: I’ve no doubt Kiiara has “feels” — plenty of them, probably, as do we all — but why do them the injustice of being expressed in a manner so comatose?
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: A little like Alessia Cara x Lorde, but with a trap underpinning and some very wide open synths unpinning its background. I don’t love her high, thin voice, but this has some interesting stuff going on. 
[6]

Juana Giaimo: “Feels” could be going on forever: the melody repeats itself, offers slight variaions and it also takes new paths. Kiiara’s vocals are angelic and absent-minded, joined by ambient sounds. But she cuts off the listeners’ expectation with her defiant rambling. It is puzzling that someone who recently started her career is already singing “You say you smoking grams, I’m smoking into the Grammys.” But just like in “Gold,” Kiiara isn’t here to be sweet, and she doesn’t mind spitting out everything that comes to her mind to your face. 
[9]

Ramzi Awn: The lyrics get in the way of a brilliant track, and Kiiara’s mashup of curses and curtsies makes for a cloying mix.
[5]

You have reached the Singles Jukebox hotline. At the tone, please select from [0] to [10], then press the pound key…

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Cassy Gress: I’m almost always up for hearing that bhangra lilt, but I don’t know why they hired Eeyore to do the bassline, especially when all he did was feel a sneeze coming.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: There’s something about the bass in this song; when I listen really intensely, focusing in on it, I feel woozy, as if I’m going to be sick. Therefore, I wouldn’t risk it on the dance floor. It’s the sections where the bass cuts out that the catchy rhythm of the words and the charm Singh has come that make me want to persevere, but this is a good, if generic cut elevated by charisma and equally damaged by some bad choices.
[5]

Alfred Soto: I hear potential but the fake tape effect joins the processed chipmunk vocal in the list of grievous modern recording sins.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: Las Vegas casinos need this bad. Or Miami Beach. It’s all about the second verse in Mickey’s sexy ballad in disguise. 
[5]

Juana Giaimo: “All of the feelings I can’t show without going crazy,” Mickey Singh sings in the pre-chorus, and that might be the best description of “Phone.” His voice can be both casual and carry a tenderness that makes this single somewhat deeper, even when it could be a dance hit. 
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Of course the person to make bhangra even slightly a thing again in the US fifteen years after “Mundian To Bach Ke” couldn’t pass the paper-bag test. The song is structured too much like generic EDR&B, but the bhangra bits are distinctive enough to make me hope he might have better stuff, not so reliant on bog-standard party tropes, in him.
[7]

J-pop veteran has seen better reception around these parts…

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Cassy Gress: It doesn’t sound identical, but this mostly just makes me think of Xtina’s song of the same name, in which her vocal acrobatics struggled to drag a rather limply written rock song along with them. This is the reverse, a generically powerful synth stomper with comparatively weak vocals. It’s especially noticeable in the chorus, on phrases like “If there, is a, chance that, I could, see you.” There are too many consonants too close together to make that phrase not sound awkward, even if she had been a native English speaker. Lyrics like “make my frown upside down” don’t exactly help.
[3]

Ramzi Awn: The barrage of noise that is “Fighter” takes it to the next level when Namie starts rapping, and though she seems to draw inspiration from a variety of sources, the Kesha-inspired stuttering chorus underscores the single’s singular lack of focus. 
[4]

Gaya Sundaram: It’s a grower, but it still feels tired.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: The J-pop veteran struggles with her verses. More than stale lyrics, it’s her attempts to catch up with today’s ever-demanding vocal acrobatics that drags. But “don’t you know that I’m a fighter?” is a hook worn with pride by Namie  Amuro, who has lived through two decades worth of trend shifts in  dance-pop without much of a dent to her superstar status. And that vocal  stutter behind the titular word continues to place her hot on the pulse  of the charts.
[6]

Iain Mew: Namie Amuro sounds more at home than ever amidst big chunky electronic pop, probably because this sounds just like much of her albums of the last few years but even more ruthlessly direct, subtlety lost in the fi-i-i-i-ight. I imagine it has little chance of changing anyone’s mind, but hey, I already liked this stuff.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Hi-NRG had a one-night stand with EDM at its most pneumatic, and this is the result. Amuro’s the perfect voice to take it on.
[7]

Will Adams: “Fighter” exists in the same realm of “I’m Not Yours,” with its 2010 stadium trance and staccato vocal hook. It brings the energy, but I prefer the Namie Amuro of “Golden Touch,” where she was allowed to shine without fighting so much with the music.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Amuro’s grasp of English means she trips over her own consonants — I really thought she said she was “a leper, not a fighter” at one point. When I close my eyes and imagine she’s some Slovenian or Latvian girl singing for her life on the stage of Eurovision in the year 2006, I suddenly like it a lot more, because that’s exactly what it sounds like.
[7]

We’ll keep this in our prayers…

[Video][Website]
[4.50]

Katie Gill: Oh my gosh, what did they do to poor Stevie Wonder’s vocals that they sound so LIFELESS? When you have the name Stevie Wonder attached to a project, it naturally comes with a set of expectations that this song doesn’t have. I can’t wrap my head around this song because one, it’s written by Ryan Tedder and you can tell. Two, if you’re wanting a mega hit with a lot of radio play a la “Can’t Stop The Feeling” for your animated movie, this middle of the album fodder is a valiant effort but certainly not it. And three, again, the song feels like it was written for someone like Charlie Puth but Stevie Wonder showed up and asked for the part, that’s how generic and boring his vocals are. But the worst part of all? I can’t actively hate it. I really, really want to hate it but I’m a sucker for peppy, handclappy pop that I find myself giving it a four even though it really deserves a two.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Of course I want new Stevie Wonder — it’s been eleven years. And he’s often a supernatural covers artist, so ceding songwriting and producing credits shouldn’t have bothered me. But Ryan Tedder and Benny Blanco? In singles like “Counting Stars,” Tedder has sought and attained a Rose Bowl level of dick-waving importance at odds with Wonder’s modest way of creating, inhabiting, and burrowing out of a track. “Faith” is a gesture, a series of hand motions, an attempt by songwriters without convictions to approximate transport. Nothing against Ariana Grande. Stevie however — Stevie sounds like he’s been told to gargle with margarine.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: On one hand it’s not only to some extent yet another “Happy” Xerox, but it sounds (even if you didn’t know) like it’s from an animated film (which it is). On the other, it’s an uptempo Stevie Wonder song (hallelujah indeed) and features Ariana Grande at her most believably cute. So you bop your head to it, knowing that anyone under the age of, say, ten will likely be singing this all through the holidays, and that this dynamic duo will give Lin Manuel-Miranda a run for his money at next year’s Oscars. It’s pleasant, inoffensive, and perky as all hell.
[6]

Cédric Le Merrer: I guess if I was a CGI animal this would be my jam: as far as these soulless cash-ins go, this is a better job than both “Happy” and “Can’t Stop The Feeling.” Stevie Wonder can still do a better Ray Charles than most. And not pushing Ariana Grande too high smartly avoids any Minnie Ripperton comparison. 
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: In children’s entertainment, soul is used to evoke the uplift and positivity of the 1960s Motown sound while removing it from the sociopolitical context in which it was made. America loves black music of generations past: the creativity endures but the frisson has been muted by time. In “Happy,” Pharrell gave Despicable Me 2 a modern take on an old style; on “Faith,” recorded for a movie about a koala who sounds like Matthew McConaughey, an originator of this sound conforms to the cast poured by his successors. It’s entirely perfunctory; Ariana Grande exerts a greater presence than Stevie Wonder, which is not a good sign.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: Perfunctory pop with a punch of everyone’s favorite multitalented impersonator belting it out perfectly on point.   
[3]

Olivia Rafferty: A lot of it feels like a song assembled with a great sense of ease and formula, like stacking Lego blocks of Motown tropes. But Stevie Wonder’s still got it, Grande injects brightness with her vocals, and the overall energy keeps it comfortably afloat.
[7]

Will Adams: Illumination Entertainment’s relentless onslaught of advertising this year already predisposed me to dislike anything associated with Sing; “Faith” epitomizes the same in-your-face, market-tested approach to pitching a movie that seems to have no plot other than “animals singing pop songs.” Tedder and Blanco microwave “Happy” leftovers and serve it to Wonder and Grande, who’re left to poke at it with their forks so as not to mess with the family-friendly “fun.”
[3]

A bit too much for most of us…

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Juana Giaimo: Sofía Reyes has tried ballads and EDM tracks, but it seems that she finally found her style in “Llegaste tú”, a warm and partly acoustic love track featuring a light cumbia beat with an innocent spirit. It could be put together with CNCO’s “Reggaeton Lento“, which is enough for me to hope this becomes a new trend.
[7]

Iain Mew: I like the questing, semi-episodic structure, which is pretty unusual. Reyes is also good at giving the quieter phases a sense of possibility for magic, fun or both, even if the overbearing chorus isn’t a destination I’m too pleased to end up at.
[5]

Alfred Soto: More convincing as flamenco-flavored come-on than hydroxygenated disco thumper.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: Sofía’s intro to a particularly… energetic chorus is stunning, and so is her recovery. The joyful chorus is admittedly infectious, and “Llegaste Tú” sparkles with hooks all around. 
[7]

Will Adams: What’s clever about the explode-y bit is by the end of the song, it goes from being over-the-top and unsubtle to nicely tying up the narrative. From the sound of those stiff trance synths, though, it seems like more time was spent on the quieter verses.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Reyes’ voice is too much, too loud, too everything for this song; she makes the beat sound tinny, which is some feat. If she sounds like this in concert, she would not be in need of a wind machine.
[5]