aka Three Acts Who’ll Shit, I Know, To See Their Name Get Billed Below…

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[4.12]

Crystal Leww: A cut-and-paste song made by a lot of people contributing vocals, “Best Friend” is inoffensive — seemingly made to be used in an Apple commercial, as I’m sure it’s mostly known for — and fine, maybe kicking off a dance floor but definitely not used when the crowd is in full swing.
[5]

Katie Gill: Yet another entry in the category of “songs that are designed to score commercials with choruses tailor-made to get stuck in your head” Even if that “do you wanna meet me at the bar? YAH.” part seems designed perfectly to get on my last nerve, the horns are fun, the lyrics are blandly inoffensive, and the song is memorable enough that it can be used to score trailers once Apple finds a new song to sell you an iPhone.
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: I keep hearing the phrase “Spotify-core” tossed around to describe tropical-tinged percussion-heavy synch-ready pop, but it feels like a forced term. SoundCloud has a -core, but SoundCloud is a distribution platform. Spotify is a streaming service. With that in mind, this might be the strawsong people will point to when they want to prove Spotify-core exists, though it came to prominence due to Spotify’s main rival in music streaming. “Best Friend” is not quite a monstrosity like “HandClap” (baring the bizarre Pokemon line), though the heavily processed reverb is grating and the “do you want to meet me” section is not even catchy enough to spawn any memes.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Look. I not only survived, I even appreciated the era when people insisted that SpankRock made music that was closer to the spirit of hip-hop or whatever than what was on the radio. Dance music and rap is not inherently a bad combo — it’s been proven time and time again. But I’ve been subjected to the most inane nursery rhyme raps over a lazy house beat, which sound more like a Fitz & The Tantrums record than anything that should make you want to get down, and been told this is a gesture of friendship? With friends like that….
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: The stupidest music controversy in recent memory is that over “fake artists,” also known as the new scare term for production music. There is endless hand-waving freakoutery about how playlists are being hijacked by artists who “don’t exist,” but until AI progresses past Microsoft Songsmith, there are real, existent humans composing these songs for hire, presumably very confused at all the thinkpieces doubting their existence. (“We don’t expect any of you to get in touch, of course. Because you’re fake. Lifeless. Non-existent,” said the initial report. More like under an NDA, as most such commissions are. Hey, this argument isn’t completely horrifying when you test it against other common NDAs!) Lots of things are elided here: the fact that the supposed “fake artists” are generally independent musicians under shitty contracts with limited creative freedom, i.e. the very people we’re supposedly concerned about, just not as hip; or that just as many precious playlists spots go to “real” artists” who increasingly resemble “fakes.” Vaudeville aside, there is no actual “Sofi Tukker,” just like there’s no actual Marian Hill or Kate Boy. (There is producer Tucker, indistinguishable from a Chainsmoker, and singer-songwriter Sophie, who used to make “bossa nova-inspired music” that is probably better than Tucker thought.) There are a lot of these duos, subsuming their messy, unmarketable musical history between a made-up, singer-songwriterly, usually female name, with no past that isn’t sufficiently instantly successful, or that isn’t branded — Sofi’s big corporate benefactor is Apple. None of these mean the music’s bad. “We’ve got our own language we cannot describe” is a little rich for a song designed to be instantly likeable by as many people at possible, but there’s an appealing jazziness to the verses that suggests Sophie got some of her original ideas past her co-bro; the whole “we’re just friends contributing verses for our friends out of organic friendship!” marketing of this is dubious, but Nervo deserve more press than they get, and Alisa Ueno could deservedly break out off this. The other reason this controversy is so exhausting is that “fake” music, once out in the world, generates real reactions. If they inspire YouTube piano covers, or home videos, or artsy fanvids, are they really fake anymore? And similarly, if someone makes a new best friend to the genial honking and “yah”s here, it’s done its job, more enjoyably than some.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The recent acclaimed crime drama Good Time shows a New York City that is interchangeable with an Eastern European or Asian counterpart. I imagine this multi-ethnic creation playing during one of its impeccable suspense sequences. 
[3]

Julian Axelrod: This has so many charming elements, from the spare hook to the pitched down pre-chorus-as-hangout-texts to the prioritization of comfort and longevity in a friendship. But the song’s structure is so baffling it undermines its own concept. It’s an ode to Sofi Tukker’s friendship — but it also features two other duos? So it’s a song about partnerships — but here’s a verse from solo artist Alisa Ueno? Then I guess it’s about non-romantic love — but Ueno says “I might have first love with a great passion”? And “I’m so addictive like some Pokemon”?!?! For a song about best friends, it doesn’t sound like any of these people have been in the same room.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: If nothing else, “Best Friend” proves exactly how impressive the Girls Aloud / Xenomania approach to pop songwriting was. The track is crammed full of bits and pieces that you could conceivably construct songs around. Unfortunately, stitched together, they form a Frankenstein’s monster with too many left feet and no heart.
[4]

Nearly double last time’s score! We must really love him now!

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[2.44]

Julian Baldsing: “This is brilliant,” Calum Scott thought, placing his quill pen down for the first time in minutes. “Because it sounds like I’m too sad to even rhyme.” His eyes scanned over the lyrics, a slight smile on his face. “Hm. Could do with a piano arrangement though.”
[1]

Scott Mildenhall: If Calum Scott is going to sustain his career at the level of his first single then making a companion piece to “You Raise Me Up” seems a good way to go about it. With a video that looks intended to be the most universally understandable British cultural export since Mr. Bean, there’s something quite impressive about its unabashed desire to touch people in ways some may balk at. The lyrics are near enough bare conceptual metaphors: thought is motion, time is money, the heart is a container, life is a journey, life is a challenge, life is war… Most such songs don’t succeed on anywhere near “You Raise Me Up”‘s level, lacking the demanded astute arrangement, but clichés can be powerful when they’re put over well.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Rivers, mountains, and Sam Smiths — oh my!
[0]

Claire Biddles: This isn’t as blatantly offensive and borderline homophobic as the Robyn cover that we really really hated, but it’s still very bad, mainly because it feels so unnecessary — how many white boys pumping out these copies of diluted Sam Smith balladry do we, as a people, need?
[2]

Alex Ostroff: There was only one quietly interesting thing about Calum Scott’s mopey cover of ‘Dancing On My Own’. Like many men covering songs by women, he changed a few lyrics. Unlike most, he did so to make it more gay — he watched the man he wanted kiss “her” but wasn’t “the guy you’re taking home.” Scott explicitly did what queer folks do whenever we read ourselves into pop music, but forgot that pain aches truer and more beautifully on the dancefloor. It wasn’t much, but it was bolder than Sam Smith, who not only played the pronoun game on his entire first album, but memorably (and awkwardly) replaced “he” with “you” in a cover of “How Will I Know?”. Unfortunately, for his original material, Scott has retreated into Smith-esque anonymous yous. It’s disappointing, but appropriate for a gay man recording blandly passionate ballads entirely devoid of any real heat or sexuality.
[1]

Micha Cavaseno: You know how food and music metaphors occasionally work together? Y’know, like how people will say a song is a “jambalaya” of elements? This is as about as “condensed milk” of a ballad as you can get. Times are hard, who needs your ballads to have soulful resonance?
[2]

Stephen Eisermann: Calum Scott has a beautiful voice, but that’s about the only nice thing I can say about this dreary song. The best part is how similar the chord progression is to Little Big Town’s far superior “”Girl Crush.”
[3]

Iain Mew: A curious yawning vacuum of a song, or at least song-shaped thing. Every choice is easy and obvious. It often reaches for epic, but the cumulative effect in force is so much less than the sum of its parts that it’s surprisingly easily ignored.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The world abhors a Jason Mraz vacuum. (The lack of Mraz, that is. The vacuum that’s the song, they love.)
[3]

Seems like there’s another party happening over here…

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[4.83]

Ashley John: Pure and light and positive, “Boa Me” sounds like sun beaming down on the peaks of my shoulders for the first time since fall. It’s the burn to dance without the urgency, just the absolute rightness of smiling and swaying my hips. 
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Fuse ODG’s beat mellows in pace especially with that acoustic riff hanging on. Ed Sheeran, meanwhile, gets to reside in a pop place distanced from his own. Everybody involved for “Boa Me” takes a break from their usual gig all to give thanks. And it’s better to be taken as that: a break spot to visit but not to frequent.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: The disappointing aspects of “Boa Me” is definitely Ed Sheeran, but not in the way of “OH GOD HERE COMES ED SHEERAN.” Rather, the unfortunate thing is that in the UK, Fuse has been eagerly and desperately campaigning to grant legitimacy to the new wave of African music, and in the past few years he’s more or less gotten his wish. One can not only think of several Afrobeats stars (as well as other African genre acts) getting more than tertiary coverage in the non-African music press but more than a few genres with overt links to said genres in traditionally Western styles. So does Fuse get to have a commercial triumph based on that victory? No, it’s at the benevolence of Ed Sheeran, whose technically enjoyed the biggest post-Afrobeats victory with “Shape of You” and has bothered to be generous enough to let someone else get a rub off his patronage. “Boa Me” is a charming record, but the warble of Sheeran is just a bit too depressing a compromise to make it feel like something Fuse ODG deserves.
[4]

Alfred Soto: I can’t begrudge the enthusiasm with which the participants approach this stab at highlife, and Sheeran does what he does best, i.e. sell and sing a hook, but his sinuosity has assumed sinister proportions, spreading an affectlessness like an unwanted mayo.
[4]

Julian Axelrod: Ed Sheeran seems like the kind of guy who does a semester abroad and constantly uses the three foreign phrases he learned in every conversation.
[4]

Will Adams: I’ll take Sheeran singing a chorus in the Ghanaian dialect of Twi over him doing an entire highlife song on his own, but it still smacks of him parachuting into the sound after “Shape of You” took off. The best thing that can come from “Boa Me” is that it spurs listeners unfamiliar with these styles to seek out more examples that aren’t as bland as this.
[5]

I’ll bring some chips…

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[4.50]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Oh good, more songs about buildings and food. 
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: I just love hearing Byrne’s benevolent-mad-scientist voice again, even if it’s affected by Auto-Tune artifacts this time around. This song isn’t anywhere near as off-the-wall as Talking Heads could get, and more in the vein of his recent work with St Vincent or song like “Home.” That’s a good thing, but his weirdness remains, because he’s David Goddamn Byrne. Between the three producers (Byrne, Rodaidh MacDonald, and Patrick Dillet) and all-star cast of backup musicians (when he says “Everybody” he means it), as well as the Dust Brothers-esque drum fills and noirish horn samples, it’s a strange combination! Yet it holds together well despite lacking a more emotional component.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Not for nothing, if Jonathan Richman came to you with a bad electro-disco song that felt like a LCD Soundsystem injoke that opened with something that felt like a Garage Band James Bond knock-off for the intro, you’d probably laugh him out of the building right? Sure. So here’s my question: why should you be any more forgiving for a guy who’s been coasting on the fact that he was once part of a band who made a lot of overrated albums back when some of you weren’t even born? The yelping affect is now strained and absurd, and every sense of groove is just utterly lost. David Byrne is someone whose credibility has been cashed in on far too many times to make hearing a record like this a plausible argument for a worthwhile effort.
[0]

Alfred Soto: There might be a decent tune waiting for a less skeletal arrangement or less contorted vocal performance. If you want me, I’ll be at the bar.
[2]

Ryo Miyauchi: David Byrne songs aren’t going to scan entirely as fun things for me, not without sensing there’s some deeper, cerebral interrogation afoot. This one is no exception, despite the efforts from the drum beats trying to further draw out an inviting tone from the titular chorus. It doesn’t help the chorus reminds me of a similar aged cynic who once said Daft Punk was coming to his home. I want to go out and dance without feeling like I’m being somehow scolded for going out and dancing.
[5]

Julian Axelrod: I’ve had anxiety since I was old enough to spell it. I fell in love with Talking Heads around the same time. That can’t be a coincidence — David Byrne’s twitchy, live-wire yelp sounds like an upscale panic attack unfolding in real time. So it’s fitting that he’s returned to a world created in his image, where every morning brings a new crisis as we resign ourselves to a fiery nuclear death. “Everybody’s Coming to My House” has an unshakable apocalyptic vibe, but for Byrne the end of the world is just the latest in a long line of headaches. It sounds like Curb Your Enthusiasm by way of Darren Aronofsky: “I know the sky’s turned black and it’s raining frogs, but please use a coaster.” It’s comforting to hear such a relatable anxiety writ large, especially coming from a master of the form. David Byrne’s already given us so much. Now please, get the fuck out of his house.
[8]

It’s awards season and boy are we cranky…

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[2.29]

Alfred Soto: I imagine this inspirational number would work splendidly as bumper music for a NBC show, for even Joel Osment would find it, to quote Karen Richards, de trop. 
[2]

Iain Mew: Like someone wearing all of their clothes on top of each other at once.
[2]

John Seroff: I haven’t and won’t see The Greatest Showman, so perhaps I’m completely mistaken in the intent of the video clip (and no shade to Keala), but the unmitigated ahistorical gall of co-opting the travails of real life, overwhelmingly black sideshow performers in the service of setting up a sub-Scherzinger self-affirmation pablum boiler is gross enough before it becomes clear that the real purpose of the song is to aid onscreen frisson between sometimes-fashion models Zendaya and Zac Efron. Yuck.
[1]

Will Adams: The sandblasted inspiro-pop is a good fit for a musical number that similarly sandblasts its history. Feeling down because your life’s worth has been reduced to being gawked at onstage and abused offstage? That’s nothing an anachronistic empowerment anthem and choreography won’t solve!
[2]

Julian Axelrod: I haven’t seen the film, but based on this I’m assuming it’s about a woman who overcomes an angry mob of Hamilton extras and her fear of gigantic drums to form Imagine Dragons?
[6]

Hannah Jocelyn: When I was younger, I had issues with processing sound — not because I wasn’t sensitive, but because I was oversensitive, taking in too much sensory input at once. This would usually result in whatever the 3-year-old equivalent of get me the fuck out was. I still have occasional moments where that’s triggered (concerts, particularly intense movies, crowded subways), and somehow, listening to the studio version of this song was one of those moments. What did me in were the jump-scare electronic drum fills, which feel tonally jarring both thematically and sonically, and the overproduction of the choirs which obscures some genuinely powerful performances. Instead of expanding the scope, the elements only make the whole production, and me, feel more claustrophobic. It didn’t matter what the lyrics are, because even though they’re better-than-average for this kind of inspirational song, it’s not like I’d even be able to pick them out when everything else is making me go borderline numb. (In this house, “This Is Me” is always preceded by “this is real” and succeeded by “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”) The whole Plattenization-of-P.T. Barnum doesn’t matter, nor does the strange lack of energy in the visuals when the sound affects me like this. Looking up the credits, I saw people on all ends whose work I generally admire (even Pasek and Paul, who already wrote the Lawful Good to this song’s Chaotic Evil), so I can’t explain how this total mess happened. But get me the fuck out of the sum of its parts.
[2]

Katie Gill: The only reason Dear Evan Hansen won all those Tonys is because the cast can sell the hell out of those generic lyrics and middle of the road tunes. Pasek and Paul are boring, have always been boring and this boring-ass “inspirational” song that hits every cliche in the book and uses every lazy songwriting technique known to man doesn’t help their case. This is the song that New Directions would write and perform on the season finale of Glee because they need an original song to actually win Regionals, you guys! This song will be played in the background as NBC advertises it’s new fall schedule to try and show just how unique and daring the network is. And it’s gonna win the Best Original Song Oscar because of course it fucking will.
[1]

Dum-dum, da-da-da-da…

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[6.62]

Julian Baldsing: “You Don’t Know Me” had Fruit Loops on its cover. “Instruction” had Sriracha sauce. “Breathe” has Tic Tacs. Tic Tacs. Nobody craves Tic Tacs. Tic Tacs are functional. You might pop one in your mouth if they’re around, but I find it hard to believe there’d be any type of outcry if they disappeared off the face of this earth. “Breathe” is a perfectly usable banger, but unlike its predecessors — which came equipped with snappy hooks and colourful personalities — there’s nothing to elevate it to being essential. “You Don’t Know Me” and “Instruction” were like jolts to your senses; “Breathe” is what you dance to when you’re too hammered to really register anything.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Is Jax Jones ever going to reveal any qualities worth keeping him around? Besides looking like the UK’s equivalent to DJ Akademiks in “most slappable human being” despite just being kind of a clod and not a psychotic weasel. Digressions aside, Jones has spent a comfy sort of year enjoying chart supremacy in pop despite lacking any sort of identifiable stylistic traits, and remains the most generic producer in dance music who makes you long for the days of just a few years ago where pop-house and EDM producers at least tried to go for some sort of unique gimmick of the week to boost them into the top 40. Every Jax Jones song is the most formulaic soundalike tech house that relies solely on the talents of whichever vocalists he employs, and that Ina Wroldsen’s approach on “Breathe” is at least moderately catchy does him the world of favors, because on his own, you’re left to wonder why in the world someone with so little to offer has reaped so many rewards.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: One of the best pieces to come out of nu-MTV News was Meaghan Garvey on the particular sadness of Eurodance: “All of [these songs] were desperately preoccupied with something just out of reach, and presented with an irrational optimism that twisted the knife even deeper.” By the mid-’00s, that subtext was text: songs like Dirty Vegas’s “Days Go By,” Sonique’s “It Feels So Good,” and iio’s “Rapture” are minor-key, obsessive broods, music for car commercials if those commercials didn’t sell freedom but loneliness. “Breathe” emulates the melody, vocoder, and da-da-da of “Rapture,” along with bits of “Stereo Love,” “5AM,” “Needed Me,” and Wroldsen’s own “How Deep Is Your Love”; of course it’s great. Songs like these exist so listeners can impart nonsense like “dum-dum-da-da-da-dum” with their own longing; in a songs-about-songs trick I actually haven’t seen before, the lyrics make that process explicit.
[9]

Will Adams: “I don’t know how many da-da-dums I can take” is a perfect lyric, really, especially for a song that can’t help but using that wordless hook to impart the weariness its narrator is feeling. The music of “Breathe” follows suit: sleek house that’s pointed to the dancefloor, at once hoping for a spark to arise out of a repeated hookup and seething at the self for falling for it again.
[7]

Iain Mew: Ina Wroldsen doing agonised questioning over chunky pop house already worked once, so another go with someone who credits her is an appealing prospect. “Breathe” comes with a twist in its chorus folding into the text of own verses. “I don’t know how many duh-duh-dums I can take” is the kind of songception more common in much more obviously songwriterly records. If Jax Jones showed the invention to accompany it with something that went beyond sleek and competent, the effect might have been more brilliant than endearingly gawky.
[6]

Crystal Leww: Yes, I already know I wrote about this when she was on “Places,” but I will never forgive Calvin Harris for failing to give Ina Wroldsen a featuring credit and letting freaking Gigi Hadid play her in the video. She flexes her house vocalist muscle again here on “Breathe,” with Jax Jones. He makes this sound like a jumprope for her to perform vocal footwork all over. This is an absolute slapper, and Wroldsen (again!) is that dramatic bitch who makes it sound like a destructive relationship is the end of the world. 
[9]

Alfred Soto: Jones has found a fly vocalist in Ina Wroldsen, and the beats are almost up to her. I can’t predict where the hook will land. Let’s introduce Ina to Katy B and Geeneus. 
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Jax Jones and Ina Wroldsen avoid the more obvious route of relegating the humming hook to an actual beat drop for “Breathe.” Actual words escape from pop choruses with every passing year, so it’s a curious little development in a way. It also helps that the hums are a quirky feature for memorability’s sake. But this is actually an instance where they should’ve went with the obvious. Music as metaphor gets embedded within the narrative, and Jax Jones could’ve further blurred the lines with the actual beat bleeding into the romance.
[6]

Nor do we, tbh…

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[4.57]

Katherine St Asaph: What if Vertical Horizon’s “Everything You Want” were performed by an automated nail-polish-emoji tweet?
[2]

Iain Mew: Back when the album came out, this was as obvious an initial highlight as “New Rules.” It hasn’t grown in the same way since, lacking the same emotional and musical depth and range, but if it’s one-note in its strutting dismissal, it’s still one-note done very well.
[7]

Alfred Soto: With the martial percussion, multi-tracked chorus, and overdubbed “hey!”s, Dua Lipa shows she’s got Jack Antonoff on the brain. I hear nothing much of interest in a track — and she’s too old to use adolescent abbreviations and hashtags. The guitar figure makes for a dandy na-na-na-hey, though.
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: Drearily stern and martial, abandoning a sense of scorn or regret for sheer resistance. Perhaps the lack of tragedy is a good thing in the sense of conveying Dua Lipa as having been utterly exhausted of sympathy or a desire to meet anyone halfway, but a similar lack of inviting experience beyond a tired guitar lick makes for a very uninviting listen.
[3]

Stephen Eisermann: Dua Lipa has an especially expressive voice; that’s not a bad thing, but it’s very telling. There are certain songs she’s released (or been a part of) where she comes across as borderline disinterested and then there are tracks like this one where her investment is very clear. This petty kiss-off sounds right in Dua’s wheelhouse and she sings the song so effortlessly and confidently that the rather pedestrian lyrics take on a stronger emotional heft than what is expected. Her voice and tone alone elevate a song from wannabe edgy fodder into a genuinely cool pop song.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Our Scott Mildenhall recently wrote, in regards to Troye Sivan’s “My! My! My!,” about how songs with exclamation marks in the title should not be lightweight. I have a similar personal rule for pop songs but for ones using the word “fuck,” and Dua Lipa’s doesn’t quite pass. “IDGAF” falls in the category of break-up pop that’s more wish fulfillment than truth: words you wish you could’ve said at that moment that left you dumbfounded. Relieving as it may feel to sing them, the fuck-yous in the chorus fall too perfectly into place to hold them close truly as one’s own. And for that key “I don’t give a fuck,” it lands way too gracefully like she practiced the landing for weeks before she laid them down.
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: I still love Dua, but “IDGAF” feels by-the-numbers, both in spite of and because of the cursing in the title. At best, her music feels both effortless and controlled; at least-best, Lipa gets stuck into a genre where she doesn’t belong. This falls way into the latter category, with MNEK providing a instrumental with unnecessary gang vocals (was there a Songwriters Retreat around a campfire one year?) and a Robin Schulz guitar line I thought was on its way out — “Waves” came out four years ago. I like the moment in the post-chorus where the gang momentarily leaves and she actually gets to sing by herself, but then they come back, as does a Jack Antonoff-style piano which has nothing to do with anything. The video has the exact kind of subtle confidence that made me like her in the first place, but this doesn’t nearly match Dua at her best.
[5]

Kylie goes (kinda) country…

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[5.67]

Katie Gill: Everybody’s going to claim this is “country influenced” just because this song has an acoustic guitar. But this is KYLIE MINOGUE. She’s as country music as Dolly Parton is pop-punk. This is Kylie doing what she’s done best for the past thirty plus years: giving us a cute and fun poppy jam of a dance song, only this time she’s using a prominent guitar. It’s a bit more sedate than past Kylie (if you wanna go out dancing, might want to actually sell it a bit more) but that insanely catchy chorus helps make up for the song’s flaws.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Although Kylie Minogue favors producers who apply a lacquered finish to dance tracks, “Dancing” is an idea of dancing not borne out by the results. The verse melody and Minogue’s lilt evoke Dolly Parton, but Dolly Parton went disco too, fabulously. When Kylie hits the dance floor, “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” is her idea of release. 
[5]

Iain Mew: Using “go out dancing” like “go down fighting” is one of those lines so perfect that it made me wonder why I’ve never heard it before. I love the way it takes pop’s recurring dance-until-the-world-ends theme and reins it in to the personal and intimate. And Kylie is the right singer for the sentiment, not overdoing the bittersweetness but giving it a heart-swelling clarity.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The dual meaning of the line “When I go out I wanna go out dancing” gives this a bit of added poignance that the rhyme-and-hope of the verses don’t even hint at. Corny as they are, they’re also over pretty damn fast. In mood, it puts me in the mind of fellow Australian fifty-ish Tina Arena’s “You Set Fire to My Life,” only this one has a great chorus, and this is my favourite Kylie lead single since Fever.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: If this song didn’t revolve around a lyric as emphatically multiplicitous as “when I go out, I wanna go out dancing”, it would be far lesser. After a vaguely Postman Pat, kids-TV-theme intro, “Dancing” develops into quite heartwarming sentimentality, and it does so with the moderate but concerted power of that chorus. Mortality meets euphoria with subtlety, and the latter two take control.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: You know, the fake out from acoustic strummer into dance-pop has to get some sort of praise. It’s too late to feel like we’re dealing with hangovers of that weird blend of folk-pop and EDM so instead you get something akin to the idea of “Stevie Nicks 21st Century Mainstream Comeback Album” (which is now going to haunt me for a good six hours), but at the same time it just doesn’t have the full impact you’d hope for such a clever trick.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The acoustic guitar is fine; it’s neat hearing Kylie’s voice shade from sounding exactly like Dolly to indelibly like herself and back. But the chorus is a throwaway, and the vocal snippetizing after it a plunge directly into anonymity. Extra point because co-writer Amy Wadge deserves more than being the woman not credited for Ed Sheeran’s success, and if it takes late-career Kylie so be it.
[4]

Will Adams: So is “I’m making a country album lol jk it’s dancepop but there might be guitars” the new marketing strategy for big pop albums? “Dancing” reaches for expansiveness like “Into the Blue” did, but it’s even less impactful, mashing guitar noodles and chopped vocals into a loaf of a song.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: Oh, honey, just because you decide to try out country instrumentation doesn’t mean you have to use the same platitudes so many country artists use.
[3]

TO BE THE MAN, YOU GOTTA BEAT THE MAN!!

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[5.33]

Julian Axelrod: Somehow this already sounds like a throwback. In the bygone era of October 2017 — before Offset cheated on Cardi, before we were reminded of his latent homophobia, before one of the most unfortunate neck tattoos in recent memory — the Migos were riding high, so high that Offset had enough juice to cut his semi-solo debut with the hottest rapper and producer in the world. But even in the wake of Offset’s recent misfortunes, “Ric Flair Drip” still goes. Metro lays down a deceptively simple beat by his own standards, which means it occasionally disintegrates into weird whale calls that sound like an Old West standoff at the bottom of the ocean. This spare backdrop gives Offset a blank canvas to spray a polysyllabic Jackson Pollack painting of jet skis, hula hoops and holy scriptures. Offset’s legacy may be complicated, but that hook will be stuck in my brain forever.
[8]

Ryo Miyauchi: For all I’ve heard my friends recite the titular line and hit that attached “woo” with enthusiasm, it barely scans as a hook inside the record. Offset seems more concerned to nail that quadruple time flow, like he figured the only way to one up the Culture vultures is go even faster. It’s only a natural strategy to come from the most technique-obsessed Migos, though it’s a mindset that doesn’t result in too much pop fun. Not enough to live up to that wrestler reference, certainly.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: The point here is Offset’s technical skill, and a beat with more going on would be unnecessary distraction — but does that mean it should sound this dated?
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Offset delivers word salad over a too-basic Metro Boomin beat, and I’m bored.
[3]

Iain Mew: There are some intriguing hints of fragility at the edges of the instrumental in the ways it stretches and slows. As catchy as the hook is, though, Offset performs the whole track as too monolithic to make anything of that possibility.
[5]

Stephen Eisermann: If Halloween was magically turned into a hip-hop beat, it’d sound like this — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The beat is slick, if off-putting, and Offset does his best work flowing through more brags about his status, money, etc. It’s Offset’s best work, sure, but that doesn’t mean this is particularly good.
[6]

Not always there when you call…

[Video]
[4.33]

Thomas Inskeep: The UK’s hip-hop and R&B scenes have now produced their own version of a Ja Rule and Ashanti duet. Congratulations? Not3s ain’t nothin’ special, but I do like the tenor of Mabel’s voice quite a bit. 
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Not3s seems really determined to do his best to be a lesser version of Yung Bxne these days, however he at least one-upped the originator of the style with a duet w/ Mabel (fresh off a single with Bxne’s friend and collaborator Kojo Funds). “My Lover” is tame and sweet, but perhaps a bit too chaste to believe any genuine feelings of love between the featured and main artists, resulting in an easily forgettable sort of breeziness.
[3]

Iain Mew: The remix initially promises a female perspective and a bit of conflict, two novel ideas in the context of the genre’s breakthrough singles to date. It doesn’t really deliver on either though, Mabel’s best vocal efforts still leaving her verse feeling like a weak nod in the face of Not3s’ underpowered promises.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The backing’s like a General MIDI recreation of an old Kandi song, which is not unappealing; shame the rest seems equally off-brand.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The electronic wobble to which the vocals are treated creates a mild frisson, but I notice it only because Mabel isn’t given much to do.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Irrelevant to the quality of the song: damn, ridiculously cute video. Relevant to the quality of the song: how bored Not3s and Mabel both sound. They should have studied some old Jennifer Lopez/Ja Rule songs for how to bring goofy fun to the table.
[5]