We end in a Nigerian club, although we’re split on what time it is…

[Video]
[6.14]

Katherine St Asaph: More immaculate chill, but this time with a frisson of tension.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: The instruments and the voice almost fuse together in a quiet, smooth track that is seducing but lacks something — maybe a less repetitive chorus — to make it more than just nice background music.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I can sense Tiwa wanting to break this straitjacket, but, alas, this slightest of simmers keeps her at lukewarm temperature too.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: Spellz’s beat moves slightly tipsy, its glowing keys a little late to the percussion, and the echoes and ad libs from the singers don’t make it a stable ride either. But Tiwa and Wizkid leave the sweet melody intact despite the turbulence.
[6]

Stephen Eisermann: Tiwa and Wizkid flow perfectly with this sexy beat, trading verses about a difficult love throughout. They both sound terrific, but the real MVP is Spellz, who provides an incredible beat anchored by some terrific drum work: the kind that has me moving my hips in my chair.
[7]

Will Rivitz: Like a robot trying to approximate life, Tiwa Savage’s Auto-Tune slurs through a haze of shakers and synthesizer flourishes, wringing every last drop of swagger and poise from the limited note palate her range and pitch correction allow for. Also like a robot trying to approximate life, “Ma Lo” feels a little too hyper-programmed, pleasant and expansive but too static for its own good. If the best Afrobeats is the sound of a packed club at peak hours, bodies gyrating through every atom of space imaginable, this is the sound of that same club at around 9 PM, when only a few solitary dancers awkwardly shimmy to a DJ trying their best but not really succeeding.
[6]

Crystal Leww: “Ma Lo” is sexy and slinky, for late night close dancing in the sweaty club. I’m hoping that artists as talented as Tiwa Savage and Wizkid see some benefit from the rise of Afrobeat influences in Western pop in the last couple of years. 
[7]

Next we visit South Africa, and Sun-El and Mlindo visit our future sidebar…

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[7.00]

Julian Axelrod: If “Bamthathile” is a letdown compared to Sun-El’s last single, “Akanamali,” it’s only because it sounds like it could be made by human beings on planet Earth. Compared to the living, breathing organism that was “Akanamali,” this follows a more familiar dance music blueprint. But holy shit, is this good dance music. Sun-El Musician has such an ear for melody and restraint, taking his time to build to sort of anti-drop: a gently pulsing Jenga tower of pristine melodies that sounds like a slowly blooming symphony. And so far he’s 2 for 2 on amazing collaborators, with Mlindo the Vocalist delivering a rich, honeyed wail with enough pathos to make you forget about that name. These singles constitute one of the most assured, auspicious artist introductions I’ve heard in years, and we’ll be lucky to watch him grow in real time.
[8]

Alfred Soto: I wish this were better than “subtly insinuating,” for I don’t want to compare every Sun-El single to “Akanamali.” 
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Sun-El Musician knows his way around the low-key, and he knows how to make it burrow. Even more so than “Akanamali”, “Bamthathile” persists, neglecting to unfurl like its forebear — this is a far less cheerful affair. Compared to something like “Sonini” it’s also less obviously urgent, but that mesmeric, pulsing persistence is so absorbing that it heightens the immediacy.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Immaculately chill, and nothing besides. Your score probably reflects whether you find “immaculately chill” to be more praise or critique.
[6]

William John: A forlorn vocal mourning love lost, wistful synth washes, bass throbs, and airy woodwinds together combine to dramatic effect, though I can’t help but think how much more electrifying this would be if the tempo was hastened, even slightly.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Sun-El Musician tones down the house beat of “Akanamali” while roughening up the synths to more of an electro glow. The dusky groove still stands, though, and the mellow ride works splendid to back up Mlindo, who’s in a reflecting mood.
[6]

Will Adams: Sun-El Musician has a way with release, with making you hold your breath until a glorious instrumental break arrives and you spread your arms and lift your head to the sky. “Bamthathile” is more subdued than Sun-El’s usual euphoric house, but that moment is still there: after the chorus, when the winds pick up and send the electro midtempo into another realm.
[8]

It’s road trip day! First we stop in California…

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[6.43]

Eleanor Graham: This is how small towns get you. You leave nothing but an empty room, like you dreamed at thirteen. The name becomes punctuation in early conversation. To your best friends in the world, it means absolutely nothing. Going home for Christmas doesn’t feel like going home any more. And then you’re twenty-three and releasing your first single, someone else entirely, but unable to resist tying yourself to it forever, tying it to you like a lover: “Anywhere I go don’t feel like you, is that good or bad?” The town was unchosen, a part of it will always be unknowable. A part of you will spend your whole life trying to come to terms with it, and maybe that lonely pursuit is the same as love, maybe running away is the same as running towards. It seems unlikely. But it’s not not love. It’s bittersweet.
[6]

Alex Clifton: The story of “California, Missouri” is nothing new, but there’s a little less romanticism of the small-town life that you’re apt to find in country music. It’s downbeat, and that creeping guitar line in the chorus threatens to eat the whole song like a storm cloud. I view this as a grungier version of Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go Round,” but more on-the-nose than Musgraves’ take; Kassi Ashton walks a fine line between sounding mournful and bored. I really wish that I liked this more, but Ashton’s just one more girl running away from the middle of nowhere, and I’m not sure why I should care about her take over anyone else’s.
[4]

Will Adams: The small town blues would be ordinary if Kassi Ashton weren’t looking over her shoulder so much. The song is wracked with conflict, sputtering with syllables one line (“If I got past that one stop light…”) and ambling along with the music the next. The core of the song is the “bittersweet” repetition, but the kicker is the admission of her hometown having both too many ghosts and too many memories. The hometown haunts you, not to curse you, but to remind you of what you left behind.
[7]

Stephen Eisermann: Kassi is not like the other country girls. She’s said so in plenty of interviews, and the music here speaks on her behalf. The track is gritty, gloomy, and jam-packed with lyrics (sometimes to the melody’s detriment) about how much Kassi didn’t fit in, and she sells them tremendously well. The huskiness in her voice complements the sullen track, and the electric guitar after the second verse is practically begging you to wave a lighter in the air.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: The intermediate step between Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go Round” and EMA’s “California,” perhaps. It’s hard being in a country town when you learned vocals from Adele and phrasing from the last chorus of “You and I.” (Turns out those actually are her influences!) Well, perhaps not–rural radio plays Alessia Cara types, and Ashton did the pageant circuit like her country-music peers. But it probably is hard being in the country industry when you like arrangements more interesting than the standard Southern rock canon. (Nashville veterans Luke Laird and Shane McAnally helped write this, which makes one wonder once again why they still bother with hackwork when they’ve got this in them.) The lyrics have the same juvenilia issue as “Merry Go Round”–making a remark about “sheep” in line one is, let’s say, a strong move–and with this many references to California (the actual one), ideally there’d be some California sound somewhere in the mix. But these are quibbles about a remarkably strong debut.
[7]

Alfred Soto: I’ll take California, Missouri over Ebbing, Missouri, and I hope Kassi Ashton does too. This reverb-heavy hunk of hometown blues could be faster and less satisfied with itself — Ashton stresses the clever inversions as if she were doing a PowerPoint discussion. But she teases the rue out of the line “I don’t know if I’m wrong in a way.”
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Ashton sounds like she’s not sure whether she’s grunge, indie rock or country, in that her voice here doesn’t sound like a snug fit for any of them. It makes “California, Missouri” really stand out, particularly when the chorus comes in, which is the most country-ish part, and the most fitting for the lyrics. I’m less convinced by the rapid flow of words in parts, as if the structures and rhythms she’s writing can’t contain her thoughts, but talent works that out eventually.
[7]

…And The Mystery Of The Misleading “ft.”

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[5.83]

Julian Axelrod: Drake makes Blocboy sound like a feature on his own song, not through a show-stopping virtuosic verse but through basic competency and sheer personality.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Memphis rapper BlocBoy JB is essentially a guest on his own breakthrough single — he has the second verse, while Drake takes the entirety of the rest. But when Drake sounds this lively — he’s rapping! and not being all mush-mouthed and emo! — I can get down with that. The slightly sinister piano in the background is reminiscent of Three Six Mafia, which I also appreciate. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: “I’ve been gone since like July/niggas actin’ like I died” — oh shut up. With yet another American top ten debut, Aubrey Graham uses another up and comer to remind listeners of his right to insist. The piano hook is too perfect a complement for his hornet’s timbre. 
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: Drake steals the show here, sounding more energized and more full of conviction than he has sounded in recent memory. Too bad, then, that the song continues with Blocboy’s verse which is uninteresting and delivered poorly; not even Drake’s newfound grittiness can elevate that second verse. 
[5]

Andy Hutchins: No one trend chases (or straight up bites styles) quite like Drake. But it’s fair to say few could pull it off as adeptly: he’s chameleonic or malleable or versatile, depending on your degree of charity, and he can sound as imperial on a up-and-coming Memphis rapper’s turf and terms as he does on his own stomping grounds. Blocboy is A Thing largely because he doesn’t just play the heavy in his videos, incongruously dancing like a total goof and inadvertently inspiring what could have been Vine crazes a couple of years ago; the gun talk is his milieu, though, and so Drake is here to scoff and scowl and purloin Project Pat bars before Bloc shows him up with the simplest similes: “brown like cinnamon,” “rounds like Sugar Ray Robinson,” “spray him — like some FUH-BREEZE.” This all works, because secret weapon Tay Keith has made menace out of six or seven keys, a tea-kettle synth and a skeletal snare. (It is, though, deeply unconvincing for the man who a) made “Hold On, We’re Going Home” and b) has managed his career to the point that bragging about wearing name brands is a sea change from a time when swooshes bloomed out of nowhere to present himself as someone who could actually get pushed to the edge and taken to jail. C’mon.)
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Drake said “without 40, Oli, there’d be no me” on “God’s Plan,” but he actually sounds more revived over Tay Keith’s ominous piano banger. He drops enough off his chest to upgrade his feature spot as co-billing. For BlocBoy, though, this is simply just another street hit in the bag.
[6]

Hush, just stop…

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[3.00]

Will Adams: Because of “Rockabye,” I have no idea why this exists. After realizing that Ina Wroldsen co-wrote “Rockabye,” I suspect she’s wondering the same.
[3]

Iain Mew: “Rockabye: The Co-writer’s Cut” coming to a bloated Clean Bandit deluxe edition soon! 
[3]

Alfred Soto: “Let’s talk about honesty,” she announces. Let’s talk about sincerity, though — not the same thing, and Ina Wroldsen is sincere about putting over yet another colorless chop-trop house track. 
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: Musically this is a third-gen Xerox of “Shape of You,” so really, fuck this lame trop-house shit.
[1]

Alex Clifton: I’ve heard plenty of pop songs about breakups, and several that I’ve known were about the dissolution of marriages, but none laid out as starkly as in “Strongest.” The line “how do I explain this shit to our son?” knocked me sideways, and I felt off guard for the rest of the song. Breaking up a family is a far different beat rather than a generic breakup, and it’s far more affecting; I found myself near tears when the chorus hit, the narrator promising to be stronger for her son. In what would be a more generic song of moving on and letting go, these details stand out and make for a more cathartic piece.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: We, as pop critics, need a concise word for “songwriter shops a sonically trendy track around but nobody bites, not even Anne-Marie whom you’d think this is perfect for, so finally, once the trend’s at death’s door, releases it herself.”
[2]

“Your Dog” has its day…

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[7.00]

Julian Axelrod: I’ve been physically unable to stop listening to Soccer Mommy for months, and I couldn’t figure out why. There are the obvious reasons: an innate ear for deceptively catchy melodies, a swaggering yet vulnerable vocal presence, a stone-faced silliness evident in the extended canine metaphor here. But there was a deeper connection here than I felt with most buzz bands. It wasn’t until I discovered “Your Dog” is about an abusive relationship that I realized why I’ve felt so connected. When I was Sophie Allison’s age, I was just starting to overcome the trauma of my own abuse. Suddenly I couldn’t not hear the song in that light: a steely, seething statement of purpose about weaponizing weakness and fear. Befitting the subject matter, it’s also one of her strongest, most confident songs yet. Of all the emotional milestones in processing abuse, there are few more rewarding than realizing you don’t care anymore. And say what you will about Soccer Mommy, but she certainly doesn’t sound like she cares.
[9]

Ryo Miyauchi: Sophie Allison’s Stooges inversion doesn’t quite pack the kick as she thinks it does. Blame the elementary rhyme schemes or her bashful voice, but “Your Dog” comes across more as a plea for emotional attention than a fight back to break free from her leash.
[5]

Will Adams: Amidst the shimmering guitars and Sophie Allison’s lilting vocal, there’s a lingering sadness in “Your Dog” that even the line “I don’t want to be your fucking dog” can’t hide. It’s a sobering but important take on the breakup song format; lashing out can feel great, but it ultimately stems from being pushed to the ground and made to feel less than.
[7]

Katie Gill: It’s a decent enough song, but it’s three minutes that feels like six. It’s cute and quirky indie, with enough filter on the vocals and guitars to hide any mistakes and smooth things out, and it’s boring the hell out of me. From the name to the sound to the lyrics, Soccer Mommy checks off all the “generic cute indie band” boxes on the checklist. Expect it to be playing in the background in an episode of whatever the current hip teen show is.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Soccer Mommy’s lo-fi aesthetic, along with the slightly detuned guitar, gives me Exile in Guyville flashbacks. Which means: this is my kind of indie rock.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: Blurry guitar lines and a stern bass cast gloomy shadows over “Your Dog”; it’s enough to leave Sophie Allison’s high and wandering voice sounding even more adrift than it would have already. In her lyric, she is a dog, she is leashed to a frozen pole, she is choked — stark images that belie the pretty arrangement. When the lower end drops out, she shifts for just a moment from an account that is interior and metaphorical to plain narrative description: “Always talk to other people/dart my eyes across the room.” She remains in the first person, but it’s like we get a glimpse of her from the outside, seeing her public face while these thoughts blow about her mind. It’s an interlude of everyday life that deepens the chill of the rest of the song, making it more enveloping and harder to escape. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: Sophie Allison tugs at her lines like a person balking at the restraints imposed by an asshole love even as her guitars chime prettily and the bass shows new levels of elasticity. “I’m your dog but not your pet,” Debbie Harry said once upon a long ago. Soccer Mommy remind us that nothing has changed.
[7]

He’s in the headlines, and it’s not for reasons that are good…

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[5.57]

Will Rivitz: Man, of all times to cover NBA YoungBoy, huh? Two days ago, I might have mentioned the conflict between hip-hop as pure entertainment and hip-hop as a reflection of what its artists are actually doing in the context of YoungBoy’s “I’ma pull up in style, we gon’ do a drive-by in the Wraith/I’ma take it to trial, pray to Lord I beat the case” in relation to the ten-year sentence he received as punishment for a drive-by two years ago; I might have tried to discuss the weirdness of what happens when members of a generation raised on the increasingly violent rap of the late 1990s and early 2000s begin to blur the distinction between the lives of which they tell and the lives they actually lead. Now, though, we know that NBA YoungBoy has been arrested on a slew of deeply troubling charges, including kidnapping and assault, and we have alleged footage of NBA YoungBoy body-slamming his girlfriend in a Georgia hotel. If what we’re told is true, I no longer think it’s worth affording this piece of shit the critical capacity most of his contemporaries are worth.
[3]

Alfred Soto: A peek into the mind of a YoungSleazeball: if he’s gonna be this surly and misanthropic, he better not come outside all. A strong hook, with lazily malevolent verses. 
[5]

Katie Gill: It’s a bit too short, a bit too repetitive, and a bit too predictable with the lyrics, but NBA YoungBoy makes the best out of what he’s got. At least the beat’s catchy.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: NBA Youngboy’s melodic style suits his songs about a bond between family or a loyal girlfriend than paranoia. In this time in rap where triple-time flows are hit with one detached monotone, though, it’s hard to find a rapper better than Youngboy that delivers a tight rap song with a lively voice and a playful meter.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: “Outside Today” is, on its surface, a song about fame as a marker of success: YoungBoy only has to leave the house to get attention. But there’s a lot of melancholy between the new watches and expensive cars, and his wail on the hook matches the tension in his voice on the verses and the numbed, dissociative piano line swimming beneath the beat. This ends up a song of surveillance: from the law, from friends, from women, from god, from an ever-present atmosphere of violence. Before reaching the two minute mark, he says it directly: “Face every problem all by my lonely.” He doesn’t go on for much longer after that.
[7]

Julian Axelrod: YoungBoy is one of those rappers whose backstory interests me than his actual songs. Last year’s Fader profile showed a young man forced to reckon with the dangers of being newly rich and famous on the streets of his hometown. Viewed through this lens, “Outside Today” takes on a sinister air: One minute he’s buying tigers and mansions for his children, the next he’s strapped in his house trying to keep his empire standing. But viewed on its own merits, it feels flat. His brittle yelp suggests Kevin Gates by way of Young Thug, without the former’s everyman detail or the latter’s melodic daring. I want to love YoungBoy on his own merits, not because I’m inserting my own narrative.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: “Outside Today” touches at a weariness that someone like YoungBoy, arguably one of the biggest rappers to emerge out of Baton Rouge since Kevin Gates, should not possess for someone still pushing out of their teens. In the past few years alone, YoungBoy Never Broke Again (or NBA Youngboy or whatever spin on his rap name Atlantic wants to waste our time with to appease copyright holders) has provided a string of songs that communicate not only a latent aggression but a spiritual malaise that only undermines the tragedy that in 2018 a teenage boy can already project the kind of sorrow the average person would feel humiliated to admit to suffering. The obvious themes of paranoia are eloquated so well that even the fact that most of the bars are boasts reveals the desire to ward away anyone who hears a word. How somber a note that while the vermillion multitudes of SoundCloud rap with its cliched nihilism as fashion attracts all the jaw-jacking of concerned adults, it’s the kids who sound like they have everything and nothing to lose who often fall outside of our care.
[8]

We’re in pretty solid agreement on this one…

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[6.14]

Tim de Reuse: Peluso’s enunciation walks a very fine line between “fascinating” and “physically painful”; her stilted, arrhythmic flow is enthralling, and her stretchy, exaggerated delivery of the refrain “Este es mi jazz Latino” is a lot of fun, but the mix turns every clicking consonant into a sharp little blade against the eardrums.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The raps are awkward, but the backing track is interesting — sustained organ chords, dust-covered drum programs — and the timbre of Nathy Peluso suggests an art-damaged Amy Winehouse.
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Maybe the reason why “La Sandunguera” is weaker than Nathy Peluso’s previous singles is because it lacks some control in her voice. We all like when she raps loud and in an exaggerated way, but it loses some power when she does it three minutes straight. 
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: The sleepy lurch of the hook robs “La Sandunguera” of a bit of its momentum, but the verses simmer ominously: Peluso’s precise enunciation and nasal raps make better use of the track’s crawling pace. She portions out her consonants — the plosive ps and cs, which rattle against the airier r sounds in a couplet like “A mí nunca con nada me podrás comprar/Acá te espero sólo si querés ayudar” — in a tight tensile rhythm, adding to the sense that the energy here is being contained only through great effort.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: In the time of detached monotone and triple-time flow, Nathy Peluso’s careful, overly enunciated delivery runs counter to the pop norm. She’s dedicated to her said cadence to the point it’s on the brink of becoming a sore listen at any minute. Thankfully, she’s got the content to justify such an in-your-face presentation. It’s hard to ask for a better introduction that gets down to the roots of who Peluso really is.
[6]

Leah Isobel: I love how heavily Peluso leans into her vibrato, and when she layers her voice the effect is beguiling. She gives the song a ragged, weary charm. The semi-rapping on the verses toes the line between fun and irritating, but the chorus hits like a burst of sun-bright energy every time it comes back around.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: One part parodical, one part boastfully irritating; “La Sandunguera” is reminiscent of sing-rap pop backhands à la Blu Cantrell and its produced in a similar manner, but Peluso’s working to convey a general DGAF attitude that could be a flag waving or a jeer. It’s hard to detect the intentions behind the attitude, but there’s enough to spare here.
[6]

Hot Jukebox tip: Never listen to this while hungover!

[Video][Website]
[2.86]

Alfred Soto: The fuck did it take so long for an act to combine Vampire Weekend’s sampled strings and strangled vocals, bro country’s obsession with supine alcoholism, Animal Collective’s fetish for regression, and Walk the Moon’s massed chants? And why wasn’t Rivers Cuomo available earlier?
[0]

Jonathan Bradley: “This sounds just like those twerps who made that horrible Spongebob song a few years back,” I thought. Turns out, it is exactly those twerps. I don’t care how many Vampire Weekend records they’ve listened to since then; the only excuse for an adult to be whining about what the “big kids” are doing is if his audience has an average age of…
[3]

Will Adams: After pulling stunts like sampling Spongebob and writing a song whose hook goes “I’m weak!”, AJR’s choice to drag Rivers Cuomo onstage for a disconnected bridge here seems almost pleasant. Maybe next time around they’ll realize that they are capable of good choices — the string work adds far more liveliness than the shout-along chorus — and stick to making those.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Any good potential from “Weak” has quickly been discarded to indulge in the lyrical cliches of the former single as well as a dull sort of baroque pop cash-in with Rivers Cuomo as a cred stamp for the Gen Xers who could be deceived into thinking AJR aren’t pandering in desperate desire for a good middle-of-the-road single. Nothing worse than multiple generations of cynics parading faux-unease banding together to scam you out of your time.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: I don’t even like Vampire Weekend, which this sounds like, so this is getting off on the wrong foot from the jump. But worse, it is infested by twee strings and asides like “ello ello!”, and it aggravates by being twitchy and whiny at the same time, a pitfall the real Vampire Weekend are smart enough to avoid.
[3]

Hannah Jocelyn: There are some great ideas here: the string line feels organic, and I kind of like the central conceit, a specific spin on a Good Ol’ Days Type Song. But then again, it’s an AJR song featuring Rivers Cuomo. It’s not as patronizing as that sounds, though there’s plenty of that. The verses have the infamous “Millenial Whoop,” but it feels misplaced as a first line instead of in its rightful place as a post-chorus chant. As does the cello line, and as does Cuomo. “My taste in music is your face” is adorable; “my favorite color is yeewww,” not so much. (Also what resonant frequency are you talking about, Rivers; your low end is entirely missing.) The one thing everyone involved can do is write a good chorus melody, but the hook here really sounds like the result of Sisyphean pushing through a writer’s block, which Genius tells me it was. “Sober Up” is a phrase I associate with a much better song, an effortless grand gesture of love that only adds insult to a song that, by nature of its origin, is extremely effortful.
[3]

Julian Axelrod: Three vaguely Antonoff-esque dweebs throw early Vampire Weekend, late fun., and any-era Mumford & Sons into an industrial blender and produce a vaguely off-tasting sludge. (Ironically, the only white dudes they don’t echo are Weezer.) I look forward to only encountering these guys at the supermarket and the top lines of festival posters.
[5]

Saying goodbye: the ultimate love scenario?

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[5.67]

Anjy Ou: Well, that was unexpected. The song starts out with this ragtime piano, then throws in a metronome and some coconuts to give you this “smiley face” atmosphere. But then the drums kick in, and the first thing Bobby says is “actually I’m not okay.” This bitter and sweet contrast continues as the pre-chorus gets emotional, and the chorus is delivered in a matter-of-fact sort of way, but then midway there’s a drop into a solid trap beat that feels kind of dramatic? This song is the forced smile you give while you say “it’s okay, no hard feelings” after a break-up. If it feels a little on the nose, I bet it’s intentional. At the time B.I. would have been writing this song, iKON was going through it. They’d finally returned to Korea after a 2-year sojourn in Japan, only for their comeback single to flop due to a dwindling fanbase. Considering how easy it is for idol groups to implode, he probably thought this would be his last release as a member of iKON. So he pens a happy goodbye – to the fans that loved him as well as the fans that left him. Aside from the impossible catchiness of the song and the [ugly crying] factor, I also love that this song feels contemporary and nostalgic at the same time. The piano reminds me of early Bruno Mars, while the trap beat roots it in 2017/18. It feels very “of the moment” and yet nothing sounds like it. It’s the kind of song I imagine people hearing years down the line and going, “oh yeah, I remember that group!” with a smile. The skill that it takes to achieve that balance shows that iKON are underrated as songwriters, and they deserve more attention than they’ve gotten. (Bobby’s 2017 album is a lovestruck millennial pop-hip-hop-R&B dream and absolutely worth a listen.) Any comparisons to Big Bang only highlight this fact, as Big Bang themselves are at their best when showing off their pop prowess. All this to say, it’s the sweetest kind of irony that a song meant as a farewell is what’s bringing iKON a new round of fame. They absolutely deserve it, and I’m excited to see what they do next. I just hope YG doesn’t keep fucking them over.
[8]

Ryo Miyauchi: That piano riff says it all: “Hey, we fucked up, but we had quite a ride, didn’t we?” Though I’m happy for the peace iKON find, I also wish for some tension to disrupt this sound of mutual agreement. Or at least some flashbacks to the supposedly frustrating melodrama would’ve done fine.
[5]

Will Rivitz: The happy-go-lucky Aminé vibes here are pleasant, but the Portland rapper is as alluring as he is because of his nearly unparalleled charisma, turning songs with about as much harmonic complexity as “Love Scenario” into living and breathing creations, the rapper as the electricity invigorating Frankenstein’s monster’s cadaver. iKON, unable to capture the same spirit, sounds flat and lifeless.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: “Lush Life” plus “Same Old Love,” plus synth claps and cowbell for some reason. You’d think that combination would be good, or at least dynamic; instead it’s pleasant and static like hold music.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Have these kids been listening to Fountains of Wayne or something? That piano melody and the lilt of their voices suggest a nugget buried on the back half of Welcome Interstate Managers. But FOW wouldn’t have attempted the alternation of programmed cowbell and keyboard lick.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: It’s hard to say exactly when the thread began (in some respects you can go to the under-regarded cornmeal of “Yesterday” by Block B, or even as far back to the supreme 1D derivative cheese of “We Like 2 Party” by BIGBANG), but a strangely inviting group of K-Pop boy band material is not looking to the cool nostalgia of definitive pop styles such as New Jack Swing or even current day rap tropes, but instead end up somewhere closer to Plain White T’s or All-American Rejects “the big hit was over a year ago and we’re so fucked on our debts we need another one NOW” pop rock. “Love Scenario” with its absurdly trite piano melody has one foot in that camp and another in the sadsack pop raps of Beenzino, but thankfully avoids being too wistful for a strange mix of stoic glumness and acceptance. iKON’s failed romance isn’t so much full of regret or disdain, but a reluctant desire to treat the past with a scrutiny not to find out what went wrong but instead to try and preserve its integrity. Maybe a bit chauvinistically noble in some regards, but in others a bit more mature than it should manage to achieve.
[7]