Na na na na, hey hey hey…

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[5.67]

Mark Sinker: Still reeling really from this dreamy-dirty neon-still whispered reinvention of a London I also live in, after all, and hardly recognise. This isn’t much more than a fragment and no one breaks a sweat. You’d think the sense of languid boredom would kill the mood, but maybe it’s what makes it… 
[7]

Iain Mew: It’s telling that Krept and Konan and their sauna-nana gleefully pick up from Stefflon Don’s hook more than anything Jeremih does. Catchy and just the right side of silly, its contrast with the late night minimalism helps both work better.
[7]

Will Adams: The production is an intriguing marriage of wispy flutes and heavily distorted bass, over which these four performers construct a more brooding take on late night haze.
[6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Is Jeremih attempting a Wizkid impersonation? If so, nice try, good sense of melody and all, but he just can’t match the flow. Stefflon’s hook is just dumb, which is a shame; that flute-led riddim deserved much better. 
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Given how well Jeremih sounds great when he carves his own lane, affecting that weird accent in order to make this lunken bit of faux-dancehall is a really harsh betrayal of everything you could come to love about Jeremih’s adventurous spirit. Stefflon is annoying, as usual, and baby-whisper singing isn’t worth giving features yet that also has been done in a weird maneuver of appealing to who??? You know its bad when you’re looking at Krept and Konan to save the track and of course only the latter actually tries to make this feel like it’s supposed to be a memorable jam.
[2]

Ryo Miyauchi: Jeremih takes on patois better than the crop of other R&B dudes of the past year. His vocal experiments since at least Late Nights with Jeremih pays off here with his elastic voice fitting to the accent like a glove. More than stylistic chops, though, the persona he has been nurturing since the mixtape comes alive here. While his friends think strictly about the pleasures of now, the man carries conversation like the night’s last forever. His emotions gets the best of him, and getting caught up in his feelings still remains both his gift and his curse.
[7]

No, that does not mean you can count your score as [43.00]…

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[6.14]

Anthony Easton: This made me cry a little bit, mostly because I need pretty songs about loyalty, and I am convinced the world isn’t falling apart for like 3 minutes. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: I wonder if this made Pharrell cry too. Why not — the warmth of the synth pad recalls ’80s Springsteen, and the track has a point where Maggie Rogers’ voice mimics a second keyboard. If the WB still existed I imagine “Dog Years” as soundtrack for a teen love scene.
[6]

Katie Gill: “Dog Years” is a mish-mash of instruments: chimes, wobbly synths, and woodpecker noises. It’s absolutely lovely. All of these combine to create a unique sonic landscape, matching perfectly with Rogers’ voice, creating this beautiful blissed-out, relaxed final product. And man alive did I need the final refrain. Even if it’s in the afterlife (which Rogers views metaphorically), just hearing “we will be all right” over and over again gave me a little bit of strength I didn’t know I needed.
[7]

Will Adams: I’d assumed that it’d been long enough since my own graduation that I would no longer be gilding its significance to apocalyptic proportions, yet “Dog Years” still gave me pause. Some of the most important songs in my life the ones that impart the message of “I’ll be there” well enough that I believe it, and “Dog Years” has the makings of one of those songs. It provides real comfort, not just for reflecting with your classmates the night before the ceremony, but for facing the uncertainty of each day with a bit more confidence to know that you’re not alone.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: The production on “Dog Years” sounds alternatively like woodland marshes and a silverware drawer magically clattering against its shores. And that works with Roger’s foghorn vocals bowling over the surface of the record. If there’s any complaint to be had, it’s that the intensity of Rogers seems too oppositional compared to the at times restless attempts at serenity behind her, those big swells such relatively small leaps.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: Maggie Rogers still sounds too clean to fully convince me, though “Dog Years” fares slightly better than the more whimsical “Alaska.” The difference is in the chorus and how she tries to hit home urgency with that breakdown of a vocal performance. But I still hear it as performance, nothing more. I don’t hear true, lived-in risks from this experience she’s singing about.
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: My initial hot take was “Peter Gabriel working with Sylvan Esso,” and that’s still true to an extent. But there’s so much more here, especially with Rogers’ falsetto in the chorus and the emotional, poignantly crafted lyrics. If it makes “Alaska” not sound quite as singular, that’s only because this one truly shows how much talent Rogers possesses. Sometimes, as with “Closer,” the artists’ Genius annotations can make a song less lovable, but seeing how she expands leaving college to a literal matter of life and death improves it even more, and humanizes it. It’s awesome the way she’s expanding her range. “Dog Years” shows that following Maggie Rogers is a prerequisite for anyone interested in 1. how young people are processing pop music, and 2. where they will take it.
[8]

And doooooon’t tell me what to do, and… wait, wrong song…

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[5.44]

Crystal Leww: Remember the quick second that we thought that Jax Jones was the voice on “I Got U”? Thank goodness Jax Jones shares none of his pal Duke’s unwillingness to credit vocalists; RAYE is great on this, and this is a real tune. It’s a shame it dropped in winter though — would love to hear this while dancing on a beach somewhere. 
[6]

Iain Mew: RAYE doesn’t quite own this like Kah-lo on the similar “Rinse and Repeat,” but it’s still enough to further her case for Dua Lipa-sized expectations.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Cribbing its rubbery bassline from a 2005 classic-to-some by M.A.N.D.Y. vs Booka Shade, “You Don’t Know Me” unfortunately forgets to surround it with much else of any interest, instead building a generic house track with equally generic vocals around it. 
[2]

Will Adams: I’m all for the “Body Language” bassline becoming a staple in pop, but at least will.i.am did something interesting with it. Jax Jones programs some drums and calls it a day, leaving the classic riff to do all the lifting (which admittedly keeps the song decent). Meanwhile, RAYE is only barely able to elevate the drab songwriting.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: This feels very meme-minded, to the point that it seems RAYE is doing an impression of an American formulated solely through GIFs. When she does the whole spoken sassy diss thing, it comes across so strongly as an affectation that it’s interesting that they haven’t got an actual American to do it. Perhaps such a posture is so strongly absorbed now that most people won’t see it like that, but outside of that perspective it sounds like “Jack” without the archness; minimalistic and fidgety in a way that’s curious for a chart hit — meme-minded, but not comprehensively pop-minded.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Spare like I want it to be, fluent in the dis and the WTF aside (“we could throw shapes together/but it doesn’t mean you’re in my circle, yeah”), no longer than necessary, “You Don’t Know Me” was a pleasure to meet its acquaintance. 
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Tragically, the tech-house pulse of the UK was already starting to get exhausted by this time last year, but at least then we were in the big-Top-40 mode of pushing the sound. Here, RAYE is doing her best to try and push the song to elevated levels, but she’s working with such a flat beat that frankly it’s a wasted effort.
[4]

Claire Biddles: I’m a sucker for dance music that acts as a narrative of a night out: the chronicling of a club set to the sound of the club. It’s definitely corny to compare “You Don’t Know Me” to a sequence from a musical but it describes its surroundings in the same way; a kind of immediate existential storytelling. It reminds me of one of my favourite examples of this sort-of lyrical subgenre, “Katy on a Mission” by Katy B, but with the added (super relatable) twist of calling out a dude who is taking up your space on the floor. I found myself shouting out in agreement after every line. 
[8]

Will Rivitz: Someday, I hope we’ll move on from 2013. Apparently, today isn’t that day.
[4]

Merci de ne pas fumer…

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[4.87]

Will Rivitz: The lyrics are inane, the production is a cross between mediocre pop-rock and bland disco, Drew Taggart and Emily Warren work about as well together as cotton candy and Marmite, and yet the song is somehow incredible. I can’t tell if it’s in spite of all of this or because of it. My love for this group defies rationale, and I guess I’ll just have to accept that all critical faculties go out the window whenever I put them on. All things considered, that’s probably not so bad.
[9]

Megan Harrington: The Chainsmokers are masters of turning the ephemeral, the ineffable, and the alchemical into the immediate, the obvious, and the true. “Paris” sounds almost simple, a string of hashtags and a few evocative synthesizer notes, but it’s an ode to nostalgia delivered as an ode to the future. “When we go down” and “we’ll show them” Drew Taggart sings about a love already past, complicating the straightforwardness of memory’s opiates. By the song’s end I’m left wondering which is better: the future endlessly rewritten but always triumphant or the past brutally specific and eternally stirring.
[9]

Crystal Leww: With every passing single, the marketing campaign around The Chainsmokers grows more and more perplexing. Why play the asshole when your songs are about falling in and out of love in the most genuine of ways? “Paris,” for Drew Taggart, is about Paris and the girl he loved in Paris, but “Paris” for anyone else can be about any specific place attached to specific memories of a person, perhaps remembered through rose-colored nostalgia glasses more than clear eyes. Last year, millennial nostalgia was one of the most fascinating storylines for me, and The Chainsmokers have doubled-down here in 2017, making a sweet little tune about falling in love in the most cliché of cities. Remarkably, “Paris” is actually about the boy in Paris for me, the one who exists only in my memories as handsome, quiet but confident, understanding and empathetic, the small town boy who made something of himself. I miss a younger me, too. 
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: Some music is better described with reference to literary genre than those conventionally used for pop song: Modest Mouse, for instance, makes a kind of Pacific Northwestern Gothic, while Arcade Fire’s Funeral is children’s fantasy. The Chainsmokers’ artless and affecting “Closer” exists in the same territory as Carly Rae Jepsen, Taylor Swift’s 1989, or the first two Bloc Party albums, which is that of publishing’s nascent New Adult category. “Paris” attempts to add to the oeuvre with another narrative of twentysomethings negotiating the heady mix of possibility and responsibility offered by adulthood via the earnestness and emotional volatility of adolescence. But where “Closer”‘s chorus of “we ain’t ever getting older” worked because it was bold and affirmative and more than a little embarrassing for it, its equivalent here is “if we go down, then we go down together,” a maxim more familiar and so less expansive with possibility. (In recent times, Colin Meloy invested it with more drama, Adam Lazzara with more urgency.) In fact, much of “Paris” has that musty, recycled quality that forbids the gauche possibility of “Closer”: I enjoyed the slant rhyme of “Paris” and “parents” until I remembered that I enjoyed it more in “Ultralight Beam.” The parts that work do so almost by accident: the proficient prettiness of the song’s new wave throb; the cheap romanticism of travel; the easy evocations of ennui and aimless hedonism, so easy that to describe them thus is to over-intellectualize them, that attach to cigarettes and drunkenness and Instagrammable moments. Love and wanderlust and self-seriousness don’t become any less inviting just because they’ve been delivered with artful design and posted to a Pinterest board, but this isn’t even the best song in this milieu called “Paris” from the last twelve months — and The 1975’s one was mostly about London! 
[6]

Claire Biddles: This is not the “Paris” acknowledged in my household.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: I’ve been in the cult too long probably, but I’m spending the majority of this song going “…she’s tragically posting pictures on the internet, he’s entering a period of self-loathing beneath his vapidity, they named the song ‘Paris.’ Oh yeah, The Chainsmokers are into The 1975.” Which, y’know, a shame that doesn’t make them much better, but still.
[3]

Anthony Easton: The ennui of easy money seems obscene after the 20th, the rhyme “terrace”/”Paris” is lazy, and this does that sexist thing where the heavy lifting is done by Emily Warren without even a guesting notice. All of that said, I am feeling a bit seduced by the production here: suburban American white boys pretending to be Neil Tennant, and it kind of works. 
[4]

Josh Langhoff: Living in Round Lake, my drunken death fantasies usually involve choking on pound cake, not falling off a terrace. My fantasies might not suffer from the nobility of these scrufflaws and their majestic dissonant V chord (which never resolves; neither does life), but my imaginary choking game definitely out-nobles them in one regard: How you gonna pledge your troth to Emily Warren and then leave her off the credits?
[7]

Katie Gill: CREDIT [clap emoji] YOUR [clap emoji] GUEST [clap emoji] VOCALISTS. Especially when Andrew Taggart still kind of can’t sing. Emily Warren pulls more out of her six words than Taggart does for the entire song. I don’t know how many “mediocre EDM with corny rhymes and a guest female vocalist who’s really deserves a part that’s better than what she’s given” songs the Chainsmokers have but “Paris” proves that they’ve at least got one more than I expected.
[2]

Will Adams: An easy fix: here’s a Chainsmokers song that actually credits Emily Warren, doesn’t have Andrew Taggart struggling with a range of a major third, isn’t yet another “Closer” rehash, and is much, much better.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Replace your man from The Chainsmokers with chirpy evangelist Adam Young, and you basically have an Owl City single here. If ever some people needed a trip to “Umbrella Beach,” it’s these three. Even as a volume-based metaphor, flat does not magically connote “depth,” so it’s probably a good job that it seems what they want above all to connote is a false affinity with the marketing cliche illusion of a generation. Next time bring out those ’80s drums quicker, and remember that you’re the band 3OH!3 could have been.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The piano and guitar parts drift in, worth accompanying a better song. No one will say this is clever or particularly offensive either: it’s a nothing song anchored to a moronic couplet and a kind of desperate uplift. Nevertheless, the royalties ensure Andrew Taggart’s ability to buy the most expensive hair products.
[3]

Mo Kim: Barely qualifies as a text: at least “Closer” had petty larceny and overpriced cars to add background detail. The subdued instrumental fares a little better, at least, though frankly neither Andrew Taggart nor (uncredited!) Emily Warren are putting in enough effort to convince me there is romance or tension or much of anything here. Like staring at a drawing of the Eiffel Tower rendered in black Crayola.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Anyone who warns their daughter away from the Chainsmokers deserves a parenting award. Two, if they throw in uncredited frat-glurge.
[3]

Hannah Jocelyn: The lyrics are RhymeZone-should-block-Andrew-Taggart’s-IP-address lazy, sorely lacking the narrative specificity that made “Closer” a smash hit, but this is definitely a musical improvement on most post-“Roses” singles. The production is lush and warm, while still retaining the minimalism that’s become their signature sound. Everything that works, though, probably does because it was lifted from “Midnight City,” and “City” is the kind of song that even Imagine Dragons couldn’t screw up. In fact, “Shots” actually sounds better when compared to “Paris” — for all the faults of that band, their urgency feels far more engaging than Taggart and co’s floaty lethargy. But even as the typically dead-eyed lead performance, the arbitrarily placed “One Dance” piano and those atrocious lyrics threaten to screw up the song, the builds soar and there’s actually a climax instead of just a copy-and-paste drop. If anyone makes that work, it’s Emily Warren, whose sadly uncredited contributions help glue the parts together and raise it above most of the Chainsmokers’ other work. It’s not quite as immaculate as “Roses,” but it’s easily one of the better songs they’ve released since then. 
[6]

Alone for the first time…

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[5.22]

Hannah Jocelyn: I wanted this to be better than it is, because I really liked not only the Kaytranada collaboration, but the awesome, Grammy-nominated Ego Death. This song is Syd deliberately trying to sound “mainstream,” but that’s kind of the problem — when musicians try to go “full-on pop” or mainstream or whatever, that means someone like Greg Kurstin (or Max Martin if you’re really lucky) absorbs them into their sound, to results that are sometimes dull, but always pleasant. Here, it means the sultry, weedy mainstream of albums like Anti or songs like “Bad and Boujee,” which is hard to pull off, especially when the beat winds up too dark and minimalist. There’s none of the edginess that made Anti fascinating, nor any of the spirit that allows Migos to transcend whatever beat they have. This is true for the lyrics, too: “People drowning all around me/So I keep my squad around me” — even knowing that “All About Me” is really all about her squad, that doesn’t make it into the defiant statement that Syd and Steve Lacy are going for. It’s clearly a one-off, though, so I’m not worried.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Syd forgoes the splashy introduction her solo debut could have been (assuming one wasn’t already introduced by Odd Future, or The Internet, or the infinity guest hooks she’s done in the past few months) for a hollow beat with a hollowed-out vocal. The level of energy suits the times.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: A big lack in Syd’s solo anthem is presence: despite all this talk about family, she sounds lonely and half-there as she toasts solo with the phantom of a club beat. But the song might be this way on purpose. “People drowning all around me” is the line I pick up from her in the chorus, and the whole time Syd sounds like she’s frozen from seeing ghosts.
[5]

Crystal Leww: “All About Me”‘s star is that creepy beat as Syd’s vocals are altogether fairly underwhelming (and mixed way too low), but I’m still excited for what’s to come from one of Odd Future’s most promising members. 
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Syd’s Odd Future days are long behind her, but “All About Me” has, in its eerie and lo-fi simplicity, some of that group’s makeshift approach to sonic construction. Peppered with Rick Ross growls and other assorted ad-libs, filtering in like ghosts of Soundcloud playlists, her debut makes synth-pop out of hip-hop tools. Syd’s sleepy mumble is bent into rap cadence with indie rock rejection of guile: as if Metro Boomin’ were producing a Public Image Ltd record.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: No matter who it comes from, generic trap-inspired production and half-mumbled anthems that make being a melancholy heartthrob who does it for the team is going to be done-to-death. I just don’t see why we should celebrate Syd getting the opportunity to be a unique individual who gets to say the most banally acceptable ambitions.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: Spare, trappish R&B that could stand to have a little more going on.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Humid, musky, “All About Me” has presence and a cool 808 bass. This Odd Future fellow traveler has a slogan anyone can remember: “Take care of the family that you came with.” Memorable like Syd isn’t.
[5]

David Sheffieck: In the beat and in Syd’s delivery, this sounds carefully restrained — almost subdued. But behind that measured facade there’s a quiet confidence that allows this to work: she draws attention slowly in to herself, rather than demanding it upfront. There’s a risk to that, especially in launching a solo career — I didn’t fully pay attention until my second listen — but the reward is high, and she nabs it.
[7]

The future sound of London?

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[7.00]

Alfred Soto: Forget the diminishing returns of Stormzy and Wiley. The sense of play on the Afrobeat winner “Eyelashes” gets my veins flowing. This group rhymes “big trousers,” “ISIS” and compares eyelashes to paintbrushes with unforced dexterity.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: From the distinct Auto-Tuned melody lines to the roiling skank of a rhythm more supple than its stiff 808 construction would suggest, “Eyelashes” sounds more West African than what would usually accompany the familiarly acid pronunciations of a British MC. The London in this hybrid comes through in its gray English chill: the sleet synths, frosty snare hits, and a low-end with the murky creep of dubstep at its more uncompromising. The sound is more arresting than the song — the chorus is far more interested in “big trousers” than I am — but I would like to hear more from where this came.
[7]

David Sheffieck: A thrilling whirlwind of sound rendered a coherent whole by an adept and flexible production, this is the most fun I’ve had listening to a song in this (admittedly young) year. The resurgence of rap groups has been one of my favorite recent trends, giving artists a venue to balance each others’ strengths and unify their voices behind a single message, and this does it better than many: there’s never a moment that doesn’t introduce some new element, some new voice, doesn’t support the propulsive flow of the track. This is one of those songs that sends me straight to Soundcloud to get caught up on the rest of the group’s work.
[9]

Mark Sinker: Woozier and more mysterious than earlier NSG releases, a local posse’s semi-tough group affect — never entirely menacing despite themselves — swapped here for a lilting, almost keening Auto-Tune gang dance, a lovely, intimate, in-head 3D lurch staged for no one’s joy but their own.
[9]

Ryo Miyauchi: The beat behind NSG sounds like a straight-up battle track with high-voltage bass springing up from a bed of sputtering percussion. They somehow find pockets between the rough bumps to write a melody. And their nonchalance posits their message closer to a “this is how it’s done” than a “you can’t touch this.”
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: NSG are decent rappers, but the Jamaica-via-Nigeria beat is a little too meh to really get me excited. Also, who titles a song “Eyelashes”?
[4]

Lilly Gray: I jumped all over another Jukebox entry that had a voice that i just couldn’t stand, so there’s satisfying cosmic justice in hearing a singer whose delivery and timbre make hearing what would be an otherwise tiring hook fun each and every go-round. I can do a little mental check on every loop of the eyelashes/paintbrushes/trousers slant rhyme: Am I enjoying this? Is he gonna keep me here for yet another careful wub-wub on the edge of a hypnotic bounce? The answer is yes, every time. 
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: While in the last two years, you heard that grime’s Drake-endorsed “comeback” had begun, what nobody told you was that it was all bullshit perpetuated by old men wishing it was 2005 again, ex-dubstep nerds and university students who trust rappers more than their own neighbors. The dominant sounds of London were in actuality road rap as done by the likes of J Hus, #67, and Tion Wayne or the growing UK-based Afrobeats scene pioneered by the likes of Mista Silva, Moelogo, or Kwamz & Flava. Over time, this has pooled together into a new scene mixing the two genres with R&B, dancehall, pop, and more into a distinct sound that’s not trying to bombard you with new CONTENT but simply works to evoke as many moods as it can. NSG are one of many groups who’ve had a number of great songs over the years including “Pinga,” “We Dey,” “Love & Affection,” and their pro-African anthem/diss song “No Jamo Full Ghana.” “Eyelashes” is as good an introduction as any; it’s NSG at their most playful, with a hook comparing eyes to paintbrushes while producer OGD makes the track move from danceable and breezy to glorious and majestic to menacing. Its so self-satisfied, maybe it’s no wonder that something so content with its own existence, rather than demanding your attention, isn’t being pushed quite as heavily as “THE SOUND YOU NEED TO HEAR.”
[8]

I like that we like songs like this.

[Video][Website]
[7.33]Alfred Soto: “Most people take out the trash/they don’t bring it home” — daaaammn. Such is Candi Carpenter’s self-assurance — I’m reminded of Dustin Hoffman’s admonishing Teri Garr for showing her rage like a second-rate actress in Tootsie — that I understand how some listeners might think this voice incapable of rage. I’d say she has to hold it together, like Reba McEntire barely did in “Whoever’s in New England.” In Carpenter’s tool shed you won’t find gunpowder and lead: we’d find kerosene and Kwell.
[7]

David Sheffieck: I’m most struck by how low-key Carpenter is here: she might say she wants to burn the bed, but she never sounds like she actually would. So the song functions as a lament, a mournful plea, rather than the threat that the title and refrain promise. It’s all setup, no payoff – and that mostly works, especially thanks to the passion she shows in the bridge. But I think we might both feel better if she’d just gone through with it.
[6]

Iain Mew: It’s not that Candi Carpenter’s performance is lacking, exactly, but she can’t overcome the way it sometimes feels more like she’s wallowing in cruel details because it makes for a fine writing conceit than because the character in the song genuinely would. Perhaps that’s why it’s one of the less elegantly crafted lines that’s by far the most powerful, when she shuts down the song and story with “most people take out the trash; they don’t bring it home” before it seems to have run its course, a sudden note of total finality.
[6]

Megan Harrington: Against quiet and demurring production, Carpenter stages her searing goodbye kiss. The horrifying particulars (a personified photograph, a defiled wedding ring, a dab of perfume) are acute and vicious and absolutely no match for the wistful guitar. With all the gnashing and burning, I wish there was something more substantial for Carpenter to chew.
[7]

Anthony Easton: A smouldering ballad, with the hook complicated by a profound materialism–details of picture frames, wedding rings, mattresses and trash that seem beyond metaphor. Her voice is a bit Miranda and a lot Sammi Smith, and it’s a haunting masterpiece of slow anger and deeper contempt.
[10]

Thomas Inskeep: Taste of Country calls Carpenter “country music’s next young traditionalist,” and while I guess that might apply, she sounds more modern than that to my ears, especially in her vocal delivery. That said, musically this cuts a nice swath between, say, Maren Morris and, Jon Pardi, and that opening lyric — “Most people take out the trash/They don’t bring it home” — brings to mind the defiant “oh no you don’t” of Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough.” I hope there’s more where this came from.
[9]

Josh Love: Innumerable country songs have plowed this specific furrow, imagining all the ways a faithless lover defiled the domestic nest, but newcomer Carpenter digs deeper than most, particularly with the creatively biting line, “Did you take my pictures down or did I have to watch?” “Burn the Bed” would fit effortlessly on any Lee Ann Womack album of recent vintage, the highest praise you can bestow on a wronged-woman balladeer.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: “Girl Crush” plumbed the subtext here, and Sunny Sweeney and Miranda Lambert and her cohorts imagined the other woman with more compassion and less middle-class morality, and of course critics prefer all that. “Burn the Bed” is aimed squarely at someone else: the enormous demographic of divorced Southern women, cheated on by those country bros and suburban family men yet still fundamentally conservative. The details here are exactly how they’d tell them, and Carpenter delivers them not with outsize vengeance but more lifelike exhaustion and rue, which is why this should be a hit.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: “Most people take out the trash/They don’t bring it home” — terrific opening line. It’s a terrific performance too, and that and the music vividly capture the uneasy mix of hurt and anger that would make you want to burn the bed but never live out the fantasy, where anger fuels desire to act but at the same time paralyses. Back to that terrific opening line, though, it doesn’t function as a good or suitable closing line as the song stops abruptly on a note of unwon resolution that’s at odds with the rest of the song. Not that you want to pancake things, but it’s crying for at least another chorus to end on the right mood. And it still would have been done in 3 minutes.
[7]

Needed a pizza place.

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Katie Gill: It’s truly amazing how this song can start with the obnoxious overdone masculine tropes of country music and then flawlessly morph into generic romantic country music about a girl who’s…beautiful? Beautiful and out of Shelton’s league. That’s about it. Since he doesn’t even give us the customary country “she’s wearing jean shorts and she’s blonde as hell,” we learn practically nothing about this girl that Shelton’s mooning over. She’s got heartbreak eyes and she’s pretty. That’s it. And that’s annoying. You could swap out this girl for a Ferrari in the song and you’d barely have to change anything in the lyrics. It’s hard to believe Shelton’s so in love with this girl when he doesn’t tell us about any of her characteristics besides her appearance. At least throw in a line about how she laughs at your jokes or she’s singing along with Conway Twitty, like goddamn Blake! This is just sad!
[4]

Alfred Soto: This sad palooka travels in the kinds of circles where being a woman’s +1 makes one the object of conversation — the hell? Was Miranda Lambert the first woman he ever kissed? And of course she’d sing this novelty with wit. However, he handles the tricky changes in the verses like a pro.
[6]

Crystal Leww: The best thing I can say about “A Guy With a Girl” is that it does not sound like a Blake Shelton track. 
[6]

Anthony Easton: Ugly and dull, Blake usually sticks more than this, or at least knows how to play charisma games. I’m disappointed. 
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: This is cute, upbeat, and empty calories: a Hostess cupcake of a hit single, then. Good singing from Shelton, and production that does its job (primed for saturation airplay) and nothing more.
[6]

Megan Harrington: In a genre defined by sharp storytelling and a penchant for the real and the lived, Blake Shelton always manages to stand out by rejecting everything meaningful. I can’t make a single word of “A Guy With A Girl” stick in my head but the song’s not uncatchy. It’s alchemically better than its ingredients — Shelton’s aging charisma, a guitar lick, and a hummable melody — even as it’s probably a mostly uncharitable bit of false modesty. 
[6]

Oh hey, it’s the guy who jumped out of a plane with a bunch of stolen money in the 70s.

[Video][Website]
[3.71]

Iain Mew: If “September Song” is to be believed, JP Cooper (born 1983) has been listening to the same mixtape, the one that makes him reminisce over his teenage girlfriend, every weekend for eighteen years. That’s: 1) a little creepy; 2) a possible explanation for why there’s so little in the way of new musical ideas here.
[3]

Megan Harrington: I didn’t expect this to be such an adept updating of the jazz standard, nor did I expect it to twist the May/December romance from the unpalatable (the couple’s mismatched ages) to the tender (the lifetime of a single love) but Cooper delivered, impressively. 
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: Fifteen! It’s easy to forget when listening to pop music that there are ages other than sixteen, but what a reminder this is. You could posit that the shift from /i/ to /f/ being smoother than /i/ to /s/ may be JP Cooper’s real reasoning for plumping for the lower number (and maybe that the /ft/ cluster is shorter than the /kst/ one — although you’re right, those are more like /d/s than /t/s), but that would be cynical and a taint on his heartfelt heartfeelings. The only problem is that while you’re typically on to a winner with adolescence reminiscence, this doesn’t fully mine that well. It’s very, very vague. There’s no need for unending detail, just a line or two that really stand out and touch a nerve. Simply saying the word “mixtape” does nothing but set the QI klaxon off.
[6]

Hannah Jocelyn: A melange of different melodies from every song in the last year, sounding as though it was awkwardly comped together to make an aural uncanny valley of a topline. The titular self-referential gimmick is cute, as is the bouncy instrumental, but there’s not much worth recommending. (Maybe I’m just being harsh because Heavy Meta music like “Potential Breakup Song”, “Best Song Ever”, “Pop” and even Da Vinci Notebook’s “Title of The Song” have all set the bar quite high.)
[4]

Alfred Soto: Brecht-Weill might laugh at the painful joke told at their expense. The rest of us mourn the existence of Englishmen with tropical presents and tapioca vocals.
[1]

Crystal Leww: Everytime I think tropical house as a pop movement is dying, Ed Sheeran releases another song. I am a little embarrassed to admit that “Perfect Strangers” ended up growing on me more than I thought, so while I don’t like “September Song” right now, I am wondering if it will grow on me as well. Still, where “Perfect Strangers” had a cute little bounce as a drop, this grooves along for about twenty seconds with background chanting before it goes back to the verse. 
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Christ, now we have singers who are trying to fucking sound like Bieber.
[0]

Hey guys, do you like THE NINETIES?

[Video][Website]
[7.14]

Katie Gill: “Paradise” is one of two singles released by S.E.S. to help celebrate their twentieth anniversary as a girl group. And man, if you’re gonna release a comeback single, this is how to do it. “Paradise” is light and effortless, with a sense of fun permeating the whole song. The song’s definitely trying to play to a sense of nostalgia, especially with that new jack swing/Paula Abdul 1980s realness. But it’s a comeback single. Those tend to be a bit nostalgic by design. And, instead of hampering the song, the stylings combined with the light vocals and just overall fresh feeling of the track just push it further into greatness.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The chorus excepted, we could be listening to New Jack-ed pop circa 1990: lightly concussive, sung with precision.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Name me another girl group who’d sound this good 20 years after starting: oh wait, there isn’t one. This is smart, sexy pop music made by women who know what they’re doing, and in the extremely young woman’s world of K-pop, that means quite a bit. Musically this takes a page from the Wonder Girls book of uptempo, and I’m smiling all day long.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Would have both fit in perfectly, and been a breath of fresh air at the same time, on the charts of 1991. So many listens later I still love how that extended pre-chorus leads into the rap break the second time, a delicious head fake. That makes this single feel middle-loaded, if you can say that about anything, but it glimmers throughout.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: From its keyboard glamor to its slinky swing, S.E.S. book one fun escape down the sunny side of nostalgia. That said, check back with me when summer gets closer because the season feels a little too distant right now to really buy into this crafted slice of pop optimism.
[6]

Adaora Ede: The 90s are back in K-pop….for at least the fifth time. Near-past period concepts are a to-go sound for idol groups, I mean, Wonder Girls have been grasping at decades like straws since 2008. It’s like a perpetual lomo filter — slapping on whatever era sounds good and calling it a homage when Brave Brothers quits answering your calls. In the battle of the SM groups whose names begin with the letter S and who also have 5 or 3 members, S.E.S’s anniversary track beats Shinee’s New Edition parody by a decent margin. Yeah, the drum machine is a ostentatious stumbling block (WE GET IT, THEY’RE FROM THE NINETIES), but the production builds naturally into synthpop that the rookies could never pull off. “Paradise” is much more deliberate in its execution- a fusion of new jill swing and some oldheads trying out this singing and dancing thing, endearing but not sloppy. There’s a whole lot of cleanliness under the jacked up reverb; it’s not the fact that S.E.S lived the time, but the work of heart fluttering power pop saving us all.
[8]

Madeleine Lee: S.E.S.’s prime years were in the ’90s, but rather than feeling like a plunge into nostalgia, the new jack swing style of “Paradise” feels refreshing. It fits right in with SM’s current musical direction, while maintaining a direct line back to “Just A Feeling” as a reminder of where that musical direction comes from.
[7]