Is it Shaluma or Makira?

[Video]
[6.33]

Juan F. Carruyo: We’re probably reaching peak Shaluma by now but I get it. Although it’s super common for superstars to join forces, it makes a difference when they come from the same place; they’re making Colombia proud and I wish them well, but this is not the way. Just another tepid, morose reggaeton without any of the trademark wit that helped Shakira establish herself early on or any of the sass that made her an international superstar. This is even miles away from the catchiness of Chantaje, just a 3 minute drag. 
[2]

Stephen Eisermann: Shakira is so good at embodying whatever vibe she wants her song to emanate, as seen in “Clandestino” where she slinks across the beat with her soft upper register. It feels so sexy and forbidden and Maluma plays into her game well, proving that sometimes reusing a winning formula really is what’s best. 
[7]

Juana Giaimo: Shakira and Maluma make a good duo because they share similar vocal strategies: they either use an almost rapped flow or slightly dramatic vocals. The rest is how their voices weave to seduce each other. After “Trap” they return to a reggaeton song that puts emphasis in the “reggae” part, thanks to the guitar riff of the beginning. Along with their voices, the beat is the star of this single: the loud rhythm of the prechorus fills the song with energy along with Shakira’s intense vocals. Unfortunately, the chorus doesn’t keep up with that: the beat goes back to normal and the vocals become shy. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: Now this is reggae, and the well-matched performers don’t outshout each other or drown the other’s lines. I can even imagine myself moving to it.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Like Jhené Aiko, Shakira’s voice purrs with the right kind of bass. The melody does what you want it to, and Shakira and Maluma succeed in an illicit seduction. “Clandestino” has grooves for days.  
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Reggae is back baby. It’s good again. Awoouu (wolf howl).
[7]

Our feelings are (mostly) pretty consistent on this one though.

[Video][Website]
[3.00]

Alfred Soto: Will you please stop shouting? You might be a better person than the creator of “Sad!” but you didn’t make a better record about your malicious self-absorption. 
[1]

John Seroff: The Post Malone narrative of “is he a rapper or is he emo or is he an appropriating pop star” mostly serves to obscure the larger question, which is when is he going away? Bonus sympathy point for Frank Dukes’ production, which sounds to me to be providing the weight on this sure-to-be multi-platinum turkey.
[3]

Katie Gill: Sure says a lot about the state of modern music that we let friggen Post Malone get multiple hit singles and that I’ve heard this boring piece of three minutes, twenty seconds multiple times on my perpetually late to the game Top 40 radio. A Jonas Brothers reference (which admittedly, is so stupid that I kind of love it) can’t replace the fact that Post Malone doesn’t have any flow, doesn’t have any wordplay, and has a vocal style that calling it monotone is the nicest thing you’d say about it. This is a song sung by someone who claps on the ones and threes.
[2]

Vikram Joseph: While banal and inoffensive on the surface, I feel like there’s something particularly grotesque lurking in the shallows of this fratboyish attempt at regret, which runs deeper than the mere grating nature of Post Malone’s vocal melodies. It’s honestly hard to pin down why this song grinds my gears so much, but maybe it’s the sense of entitlement that underpins his protestations about how much he misses her. The guilt-trip of the line “woulda gave you anything, woulda gave you everything” gives the game away, and not intentionally either – this is nothing more than a petty man-child playing at being mature about the situation, and the facade’s crumbling.
[2]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This works better than the rest of his singles, mostly because his sad sack demeanor finally matches what he’s singing about. Unfortunately, a more fitting choice of topic doesn’t make Post any less annoying. Credit where credit’s due, though: “I seen you with your other dude/He seemed like he was pretty cool” is maybe the only interesting couplet he’s ever had.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Well, it’s not nearly as gross as his other hits, just dull as fuck. But boy, does this asshole have a problem with women. 
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: How many pop music fans refuse to admit that this is essentially a Taylor Swift song?
[7]

Today TSJ is split by their resistance (or not) to tweeness.

[Video]
[6.00]

Ryo Miyauchi: “Travel” comes from the same diary pages of “Some” with the latter’s teenage innocence informing the former’s wide-eyed gaze as well as its acoustic-pop bounce. Yet Bolbbagan4 loses some of its magic by broadening its sights to the point of reduction. While its previous hit charmed with a series of cute specifics, the duo is generic as it can be, from its made-for-ads chorus to a one-size-fits-all brand of small-town boredom.
[5]

Katie Gill: This is the cutest four minutes you’ll hear all week. Bolbbalgan4 give us a song that’s soft, gentle, and absolutely adorable. It perfectly captures that sort of ennui of being stuck in one place, but replaces anything sad and doldrums with a chill and relaxed beat. And those handclaps! That pumped up chorus! This sounds like it would score a montage in a romcom and I am LIVING for it.
[8]

Iain Mew: New York, London, Paris, my-y youth/Everybody talk about… pop rock music that needs a sweet tooth.
[5]

Ian Mathers: Setting a reminder right now to put this on my phone the next time I have to take a plane somewhere.
[7]

John Seroff: Like a candy bar left on a car seat too long in the summer heat, “Travel” is sweet, unctuous, and a solid minute to the left side of unpalatable. If you need a quick rush, I suppose this will do in a pinch.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Boasting the piano-drunk exuberance of the Corrs’ “Breathless” and Shuma’s “What’s It Gonna Be,” Bolbbalgan4’s bauble could sport a faster pace, perhaps a remix to unleash its potential. In its current form the sweetness is earned.
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The sterile, stock music-esque instrumentation has a simple sincerity to it that’s slowly revealed with every vocal melody. But as arresting as these verses may be, the chorus finds “Travel” stepping too far into the unabashedly corny to stomach.
[5]

Josh Love: As much as I enjoy the kind of K-pop that bounces giddily around between genres from moment to moment, there’s something to be said for the charms of this relatively straightforward slice of pure pop. Even setting aside the English earworm of “Take me to London, Paris, New York City,” this song still feels especially infectious and immediate. Am I crazy or with its lightly galloping guitars this is essentially a great pop-country tune?
[7]

Vikram Joseph: I can get behind the giddy excitement and adventurous spirit they’re trying to convey here, but it’s much too twee to convince. This is largely down to the polite, restrained production – that chorus needs to lift the fuck off, but instead it just simpers. It’s a shame, because there are some lovely vocal melodies here, but it’s in desperate need of a jolt of energy.
[5]

That’s right, Argentinian trap! And we like it.

[Video][Website]
[7.43]Alfred Soto: Argentine trap! Singing and rapping, stretching syllables, Cazzu is so vivid that it wouldn’t surprise me if the label flew her to L.A. and stuck her in a studio with Migos. We want to avoid this.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: In a male-dominated scene, Cazzu brings up in a female figure who is usually denigrated: la chapiadora (something like a gold digger). Cazzu’s chapiadora has something men historically thought they were the only ones to have: the ability to think. “A mascara, lipstick, perfume and calculator in the purse” she says in the first verse and in the second one “I’m intelligent/ I negotiate with stupids.” The chapiadora has money not because she seduces, but because she calculates. There is no room for feelings here, and that’s why her rapping turns more aggressive on most of the song. The “chapi, chapi, chapi” makes it catchy but not repetitive, thanks to all the variations in her flow; she becomes louder, but can also go back to her high-pitched singing voice, and there is a sudden change of the beat in the second verse which amazes me every time. It’s as if she also calculated how to make this trap song a hit.
[8]

Julian Axelrod: In a just world, this would be a huge viral hit with a Takeoff feature for the crossover remix. Chappie Gang 2018.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: The threatening, pared-down beat exists solely as an environment for Cazzu to show off, which was a wise decision; she shows a huge technical range and packs a lot of magic tricks into three minutes. It all exists to serve as a build into a brief but dramatic reggaeton change-up, which sounds like a cheap gimmick when the surprise of it first registers but turns into an absolute delight when you’re waiting for it to hit on all subsequent listens.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: A beat? Cazzu’s got it, but she doesn’t even need it; lesser artists could record their verses using her impressive, percussive flow as a guide.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Cazzu’s the highlight of every track she’s on, so it’s nice to hear a solo rap song that proves she’s one of the best Spanish-language rappers around. “Chapiadora” features blown out production a la Lil Pump but Cazzu doesn’t aim for mind-numbing repetition. Instead, she lays down rapid fire braggadocio that effortlessly transitions into prim singing. There’s a biting snarl to both sections, but it’s the sudden dembow beat — a switch-up that brings to mind her “Hello Bitche$” — that violently asserts her dominance.
[7]

John Seroff: The echoes of “Versace” are overt but Cazzu’s delivery elevates “Chapiadora” above pastiche. This seems primed for a quick summer Spanglish remix (presumably featuring Bad Bunny? And, if the money is right, Cardi?) that I will likely tire of quickly; even so, I’m willing to buy in before the market correction.
[7]

Bitches give them what they want, but is this what we want?

[Video][Website]
[5.57]

Julian Axelrod: The Armageddon to Rita Ora’s Deep Impact: bigger, nastier, simultaneously cynical and sincere, more obsessed with oral sex. (Note: I haven’t seen Deep Impact or Armagedon.)
[7]

Alfred Soto: As much as I want to embrace a track with this line-up and an impressive first verse, the chorus exhales such a whiff of enervation that it’s hard to keep focused. I want more from what looks like the Traveling Wilburys of Electronic Female Empowerment. 
[4]

Alex Clifton: Imagine if “Cool For the Summer” had ever been explicit about sex. Despite being stuffed with a roster of who’s-who in Nordic pop (plus the ever-present Charli XCX), “Bitches” never feels bloated with its guests, which increasingly feels like a rarity with some of these multi-feature tracks. After the superstar disappointment of “Girls,” “Bitches” is an assault of raunch and confidence and sex appeal in a way that could only Tove Lo could deliver. Guess it helps when you’re not pussyfooting around the subject.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: The guest names don’t really matter much when they all end up sounding relatively alike. Like many of her songs, “Bitches” derives character from Tove Lo’s one-layer-removed approach to chart pop, like she learned American slang and attitude strictly via pop songs. But the charade also makes the aggressive sex talk fit rather awkwardly as it goes down the line, and it echoes more and more hollow with each guest tackling it from a similar in-your-face mode of delivery.
[5]

John Seroff: I’m torn: on the one hand, anything that adds to the positive normalization of a broader spectrum of pop sexuality strikes me as positive. Even so, everyone involved has done better work and comes off vaguely bored with the entire exercise. I can’t help but hear this as a pedestrian, try-hard cousin to, say, even the least interesting track on Plunge.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Even after the novelty of the song’s conceit (which doesn’t feel all that provocative in 2018, if we’re going to be honest) wears off, “Bitches” holds up decently well — the synths cut in the right way, laying an almost-imperial scene for Tove Lo et al. Maybe 5  Euro-pop singers on the features is a bit repetitive, but it lends to the song’s dominant mood (and unlike certain other songs with similar ambitions, they all sound like they’re working towards the same goal.)
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The power of juxtaposition: a song with the frequently repeated hook “bitches, I don’t trust ’em, but they give me what I want for the night” is called empowering. Maybe it’s just because Tove Lo set out to write a jaded song, as she does, but nobody else thought or cared how jaded it was. What they offer instead varies. Charli XCX basically does her “Drugs” verse, Icona Pop miraculously out-explicit Tove Lo, while Elliphant and Alma less impressively sling woo and mispronounce Aphrodite. (Did “Dark Horse” teach us nothing?) If only this remix were the guitar onslaught Tove’s verse so clearly calls for — what Kesha’s Warrior could have been, were she not surrounded by assholes — rather than a songwriters’ showcase.
[6]

Why did nobody tell me her middle name is PIRATE? PIRATE!

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Tobi Tella: It’s a weird combination of artists, especially for a song from the 13 Reasons Why soundtrack, but it works much better than it has any right to. The production is lovely and orchestral, the lyrics are great, and my god, that vocal arrangement. Hearing something this beautiful from two (relatively) mainstream artists was a very pleasant surprise.
[8]

Will Adams: A study in other shoes dropping; after an odd, confronting record that demands attention, we get a drippy piano ballad complete with tacked on feature to maximize clicks.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The string arrangement guarantees that the track will honor the title, and the worried wrinkles of the vocals provide a touch of dissonance. A soundtrack trifle to watch as accompaniment, not enjoy on the radio.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Wow, despite the constant flourishing of the “featuring” or “with” credit I can’t remember the last time the interplay of two voices was this essential to the beauty and impact of the finished product. Even without that this would be a gorgeous, despondent undertow of a song (the fact that it starts off sounding a bit like one of my favourite Massive Attack songs isn’t a minus), with the way Eilish and Khalid merge and mesh and push off of each other it really does take the results to another level.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Khalid isn’t an artist I think too much about, but between this and “Love Lies,” I think he may have a calling as Guy Who Sings With Female Singers And Sounds Good Doing It. This is a better song than “Love Lies” for the most part, with a lovely orchestral arrangement and packing a lot of drama into 3 minutes 20. That “isn’t it lovely” chorus is a moment of ghostly tweeness that does dial down the drama in a bad way, but for the most part it’s pretty captivating, and all the more when Eilish and Khalid combine.
[7]

John Seroff: After a few blind listens, I was pretty certain “Lovely” was a last, stale leftover from the 50 Shades Freed soundtrack. Not to be too trenchant, but finding that it instead hails from Netflix’s teen suicide drama 13 Reasons Why was more depressing that surprising. A crashing wave in search of a shore or (more likely) a Zales commercial.
[3]

“Surely Skepta will be better-received than Moby,” one might think, and be wrong…

[Video]
[4.67]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Just as he was swallowed up by Moby on his last single, Rocky takes a backseat here to Skepta, who not only gets hook duty but also produces. Perhaps that’s an intentional move on Rocky’s part, who has always positioned himself as a too-cool curator-type rather than a pure rapper, but on “Praise The Lord” he just comes off as out of his depth. Fortunately, Skepta provides enough material for the both of them, drawing from both DMX and Total War: Rome (on the hook and the beat respectively, though perhaps the other way around would have been more interesting) to cobble together a scrappy piece of battle rap.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: No one does diminishing returns like A$AP Rocky. Every release is touted (by Rocky himself) as a visionary, game-changing instant classic, and I always find myself believing the hype. But by the third replay, it’s lost its luster. “Praise The Lord” carried a similar sheen upon its release: Beyond the acid trip backstory, it’s one of the most immediately striking tracks on an album more concerned with Jonathan Richman homages than bangers. But once the initial thrill of those medieval flutes wears off, you realize how little Rocky and Skepta bring to the table. Ideally, a beat this simplistic would allow for more complex bars. But the DMX interpolation feels simplistic and hollow, another elementary gesture from an artist who’s convinced he’s operating at a higher level.
[5]

Will Rivitz: The artists make it clear that X’s “Who We Be” is an inspiration for this song’s structure, so a word about what makes the former excellent but the latter middling: DMX’s stop-start flow is vicious, brutal, and the underlying beat’s power chords emphasize just how jagged the song is. “Praise The Lord,” while cribbing the flow’s idea, lifts nothing else, leading to a chorus and two verses as anemic as the half-baked panpipes.
[4]

Tim de Reuse: Apart from the crimes inflicted upon the word “conquer” to twist it into a rhyme with “velour,” the first minute is passable if unexciting, buoyed by a sprightly flute melody; then the flow sinks into a jerky duple groove and doesn’t budge an inch for the remainder of the track. This might’ve been cute for half of a verse, but Rocky and Skepta commit to the bit 100 percent and, crucially, fail to do anything fun with it.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The choice of rhyme stresses — coming down hard on the last monosyllable in each verse — dovetails with the song’s insistence. It also means the song has nowhere to go after the first third.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: The flutes are a smooth relief from the usual street-noir filter that Rocky likes to add to his songs for style points. It reminds me of how “Goldie” from 2012 gave his style a bounce not found in his other syrupy tracks. But the rapper hasn’t grown one bit since. The rhymes may hit the right melodic pockets, but his best asset remains no more than the designer brands he owns.
[5]

Not a Daya/RL Grime cover, but honestly, isn’t *not*…

[Video]
[4.75]Will Adams: That 2018 has already had an EDM sad-banger with this exact title demonstrates how we’ve reached peak saturation. There are fine elements here — a Shontelle cadence and the guitar licks tucked into the mix, for starters — but they add up to a song that’s mostly glitz without any lingering excitement.
[5]

Josh Love: This pop-house pairing is essentially replacement-level “Zedd + Maren Morris” or “Kygo + Selena Gomez.” So I don’t know if it’s an indictment of the marquee purveyors of this particular sound or a sign of its resilience that “I Wanna Know” lands pretty close to the mark set by the higher-wattage stars of this subgenre. I imagine many of my colleagues will chalk it up to a deeply mediocre formula, but to me there’s a certain high floor of quality that makes this kind of stuff quite durable no matter who’s making it.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m not against this festival cottage industry of rising pop stars getting work on Chainsmokers-esque EDM tracks. In theory it brings them listeners they wouldn’t have otherwise — Bea Miller has released four EPs and two albums, including one, Aurora, released this February to press silence. But the distribution of prestige (and credit, and money) granted to singers (usually female), topline writers (also usually female) and the EDM producers (almost always male) they’re paired with is fundamentally backward. Producers get top billing for functional music, but it’s the vocalists who bring them listeners, indeed are chosen for that — despite being on NOTD’s channel, the comments on this video are almost all about Bea Miller or the lyrics, penned by uncredited Jason Gill, Sara Hjellstrom and Nirob Islam (“All We Know“). And lyrics are what people relate to, despite made of such interchangeable things as “hooks” and “words.” (Be suspicious of anyone who says “lyrics don’t matter”; they’re often people who have taken music sites’ copyright-law concerns as prescriptive gospel, or people who don’t care about things said by women.) NOTD, whose anonyname Acronym Finder suggests might stand for “Nail of the Day” or “Night of the Deceptacon,” Chainsmoke away just fine. They don’t do much, but they do everything they need to; no extra effort would noticeably improve the track. But giving vocalists and songwriters more credit also means acknowledging that they can do more, and should. Bea’s vocal is fine, with appropriate cracks on “I wanna know,” but hardly distinctive. And Hjellstrom et al’s lyric is fine, uncomplicated longing, but the stock image of a T-shirt could be the incredibly specific images of “You Oughta Know,” or the barely-concealed bitterness of Natalie Imbruglia’s “Want.”
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s best not to dwell on the detail, because lyrically there is pretty much none, save for the description of wearing a shirt — which you used to like! — misguidedly laden with such significance that it is somehow the most Chainsmokeresque thing about the song (if not the most redolent of a million unofficial YouTube uploads illustrated with semi-cropped, sepia-tinted models). No, the dwelling is all done by Bea Miller, and deftly too, inhaling at all the right moments while NOTD project her internal mood wave. Such focus obviates detail.
[7]

Juan F. Carruyo: Bea has a lovely, expressive voice that is put to good use in this unassuming yet pleasant track. The lyrics are a non-entity, but Bea does her best to emote her way into meaning.
[5]

Stephen Eisermann: The huskiness of Bea Miller’s voice carries an expressiveness that most artists can only strive for. Here, her voice simultaneously soars and lilts, adding some much needed nuance to an otherwise average dance track. Damn if she doesn’t sell the hell out of the idea of longing for someone.
[6]

Iain Mew: I appreciate the in media res approach of starting with “Is she the one? The one you’ve been waiting for?” in a way that could easily be the chorus. The lack of buildup turns out just to make room for more repetition, though, and the compressed electronic shuffle doesn’t make that very rewarding.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: Banal lyrics and unoriginal production make for a garishly generic track from NOTD and Bea Miller. It’d be better off if it were truly awful — at least then it would be memorable.
[1]

More like a high [6]…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Julian Axelrod: At its core, pop is just ecstasy or agony writ large, and few do maximalist misery better than Sigrid. While “Strangers” was a desperate grasp for connection in the face of isolation, “High Five” is a bleary dance atop the wreckage left in the wake of fake friends. They’re two sides of the same coin, deeply felt declarations of loneliness in an era where you’re never truly alone. But like its predecessor, “High Five” hitches its ennui to a humongous hook that sounds like a confetti cannon shot into the sun. It’s a joyous ode to the liberating act of screaming into the void — think “It’s My Party” for the millennial age.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Predictable developments and a voice that sounds unconvincingly self-regarding do not solid dance pop make.
[4]

Ian Mathers: I slightly underrated her “Strangers” at the time, but between that and “High Five” it’s clear that Sigrid is good enough at weaving humane yet unflinching rebukes into total bangers that she will hopefully one day write her generation’s “You’re So Vain” (with more synthesizers). Also, the “ooh, everybody loves a show” bit makes me think of this as the equally dark inverse of Lorde’s “Liability” (Tove Styrke’s version too), especially since Sigrid has described “High Five” as self-critical as much as anything else.
[9]

Scott Mildenhall: It follows that Sigrid says this is somewhat self-directed, a warning to oneself of roads to not go down, because that accounts for its tough love approach. It’s obscured, but there is sympathy: sick of angst-screen sycophancy, she sees the fragility it belies, quietening down temporarily to attend to it, before reaffirming belief that the plaster is best ripped off. Those in the business of doing so could easily take it as a Searing Critique Of Celebrity, but its applicability seems so much wider than that. The person being addressed doesn’t sound all that powerful when the room goes quiet, and all that comes to mind is that they probably get their high fives not from apparent achievement, but through knocking others down. Perhaps for everyone touched or even bound up in the invasive and all-pervasive kind of bland judgmentalness that seems borne of a fear of being judged, this is a cue to relax.
[8]

Will Adams: An admittedly familiar concept — anti-bullying message that drifts dangerously close to piety — elevated to glorious heights by a bracing chorus and a bridge that unexpectedly divulges a Regina Spektor influence.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: The most expensive atrium-fountain drops and inventive machine whirrs money can buy, but the defanged lyric, weirdly young for a 21-year-old, and epic-shaped but empty song that the production encloses renders it all unimpressive. The piano breakdown could be interesting if it A) weren’t another “see, she can do real music” acoustic redux most pop artists employ, just this time plopped into the actual song, and B) didn’t remind me of why those Lorde-Kate Bush comparisons never quite worked for me. Bush’s strengths don’t lie in being arch and precocious — few female singer-songwriters’ do — and if you’re making pop-pop music, arch and precocious will kill.
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Several amusing and quirky ideas that are rendered meaningless by a standard stadium-ready chorus.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: When pop artists are willing to get experimental with production, singing styles, atmosphere, and song structure, it always makes for a more enjoyable listen — even if the song doesn’t always stick its landing. The piano breakdown during the bridge came out of left field, but it made an already interesting song about the yes-men in your life even better. To me, it was a metaphor for those times when you want to be honest with yourself and go against the grain and against what will get you the most attention. It’s probably way simpler than that, but that’s the fun of weird songs — you can read way too much into them while you listen to them on repeat for hours before finally giving up and enjoying the song for what it is: good pop music.
[7]

Juan F. Carruyo: This song is the aural equivalent of dropping Mentos in Coke: appropriately epic.
[7]

Katie Gill: The way this song builds is downright beautiful — I didn’t expect it to just LAUNCH right into that chorus of sound, but man, am I glad that Sigrid chose to do it this way. This clocks in at less than three minutes, but it’s so tightly edited and pieced together that it makes the most out of each beat. It’s a damn good and damn fun pop song for a time when we reeeally need a few more damn fun pop songs.
[7]

We’re certainly charmed…

[Video]
[7.00]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Bích Phương teams up once again with Tiên Cookie, Phạm Thanh Hà, and Dương K to create what is arguably the best song from any of their discographies. Bích Phương’s vocalizing is at once hypnotic and desperate, seductive and lonely. The song’s structure is marvelously in line with the lyrics, and it even ends with a spacious synth pop section that’s appropriately underwhelming. Sometimes, waiting for a lover isn’t worth it; you’ll only end up feeling empty.
[7]

Nicholas Donohoue: This is a masterful con job: alluring, disconcerting, passionately aloof. That the song denies expectations and keeps playing hot and cold makes knots in the stomach. That the coos echo like an aftershock is a brilliant clash in play. That the words read a little too easy, but the music comes up in apprehension both calms and warns. It’s a lovely time for something that’s built to raise red flags.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: A carefully constructed web of contrasting textures and sounds, with plenty of negative space so that the plucks and coos reverberate all the more, building slowly up through winsome choruses and finally crescendoing in plosive ’80s drumpads and half-buried vocals rising through the fog. Phương’s vocals are chilled ice, suspended weightless within the song’s superstructure where another singer might have bulldozed through it, destroying its delicacy.
[7]

Josh Love: I kept expecting “Bùa Yêu” to really take off but it just keeps resolving back to a pallid bit of coffeeshop guitar. We finally detect a pulse around the two-and-a-half minute mark but it’s basically perfunctory. The lyrics translate to a lovesick vow that includes the testimonial “I love being home, and I cook so well / I’m good at sewing and embroidery,” so unless I’m missing a layer of irony here, at least it can’t be said that the demureness of words and music don’t match.
[4]

Julian Axelrod: On an intellectual level, I can appreciate the choice to withhold the chorus drop until the 2:30 mark. But that leaves me half-engaged for half the song, and when we finally get the goods it’s hard to justify the wait. For a song that’s so well-executed in every other aspect, it’s frustrating to see it undone by such a simple oversight.
[6]

Frank Kogan: The lyrics on closed-caption announce the young woman’s availability, while her very precise and contained singing slides deftly away into the international pop distance. As courtship this is utterly gorgeous, even if it has has nothing to do with life, or love.
[8]

Iain Mew: Back in the days of dialup internet and having to wait for family members to get off the phone before I could take my alotted internet time, I told an online friend via email that I thought I loved her. It only took a day to hear back but it was the longest and most unproductive day ever. This experience came to mind in listening to “Bùa Yêu,” which in its setting out of cooking and sewing credentials has the feeling of submitting an application for a romantic role and waiting for the results. It’s not about the drama of something happening, but the moments in between when you have time to think about it and can’t help running through every way it could turn out. The song draws out the wait exquisitely, never resolving but staying as elegant as it is tense. Bích Phương’s performance is full of nuanced feeling, and the result is a controlled emotional detonation.
[8]