Life, it ain’t easy. It’s so tough.

[Video]
[3.17]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I’d hate to see Lil Duval living his worst life.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Lil Duval remains the unfunniest motherfucker to ever get a career. Always good when a rap song reminds you of the time Snoop took a bunch of pictures asking fans to turn him into a meme, and now he gets to do songs with guys who are too unfunny to even become real memes.
[2]

Crystal Leww: Wow, I love to be dragged by my elders. 
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Pedestrian bass drums, blank anonymous synths and a shrug Snoop Dogg verse. Why does this transphobic dude make music? Also Ball Greezy shows up to waste more time to get his check and leave. The Lonely Island made better music with Snoop then this.
[1]

Julian Axelrod: This mostly brings to mind Lil Rob’s “Summer Nights” — an indisputable classic, but an odd reference point in 2018. It’s an achingly earnest ode to good times and gratitude in an era clouded by nihilism, delivered with full-throated vigor by a semi-anonymous hook slinger over chunky lowrider 808s. Ball Greezy has the name and voice of a guy signed to Bad Boy in 2003, and even Snoop’s verse could have been recorded anytime in the last decade. If there’s anything modern about it, it’s the empty Wiz Khalifa good life platitudes; you can almost hear the ennui soaking into the edges of their voices. But in a year dominated by glassy-eyed wet blankets, I’ll take sincerity over solemnity every time.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Joke rap without the jokes or the rap.
[2]

He was a trophy boi, she was an Avril decoy, he wasn’t good enough for her?

[Video]
[4.60]

Alex Clifton: “Who decided it was a good idea to put these three people together?” I wondered. It turns out that our singers are also the voices for a film called Charming, which looks weird and also features the vocal talents of Demi Lovato (fine) and Steve Aoki (also fine, but unexpected). Normally I view catchiness as a good thing, but “Trophy Boy” falls into  the rare (for me) category of “annoyingly catchy.” I know that Ashley  Tisdale singing “my trophy boy! my trophy boy!” is going to be stuck in  my head for the rest of the day, no matter how much indie folk I try to  drown it out with. In the end, it’s a bratty song from a kid’s movie that doesn’t try to go any further than that. Forget any crossover appeal that we found with “Happy” or “Can’t Stop the Feeling”; if there’s any justice in the world, this one will remain squarely on the soundtrack rather than ever being played on the radio.
[3]

Katie Gill: I love this song in the same way that I love Hallmark Channel Christmas movies: you know the plot, it’s a giant tropey mess, there aren’t any surprises, but it’s like a siphon of so bad it’s good directly to my brain. Is “Trophy Boy” good? Nope! Aside from the first ten seconds, it features absolutely NOTHING that would suggest Patrick Stump’s handiwork: this feels like a song that Maddie & Tae or Kelsea Ballerini would reject for being too on the nose. But this song knows exactly what it is. The lyrics and sound outright scream “we wrote this song to play in a Disney Channel Original movie and/or a low budget animated film.” Lyrics like “he’s like my glass slipper / he fits me so good and he’s such a good tipper” are absolutely stupid and that’s why I adore it. Likewise, Avril, Ashley, and G.E.M. know exactly what type of of song this is as well, and give it the required level of effort (minimal.) And that confluence of everybody being in on the predictability and exactly the right amount of non-effort being put in is like liquid crack to me and the reason I wrote a massive paragraph on a piece of shit song that everybody else will probably score under a four.
[8]

Crystal Leww: I like Lavigne, Tisdale, and GEM, and I get that in many ways, they did make music for girls, but well, this is certainly a song made for a children’s movie. I just hope that we don’t turn this into a *thing* like “Cut to the Feeling” was. 
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: Just as Vanguard Animation has been to Dreamworks – to the point where their advertisements solely hinge on “from the producer of Shrek” – so is this to Carly Rae Jepsen’s fellow animated movie cast-off “Cut To The Feeling.” Except “Trophy Boy” was explicitly written for the movie, by Patrick Stump of all people. It’s hard not to tell – like Ed Sheeran shoehorning timeskips in “2002,” all the most annoying tics of him as a writer are present. Rhymes that spill over to the point where an acapella break is needed (like “I am the opposite of amnesia”) and words that sound clever fall apart just by reading them (for instance “I am the opposite of amnesia.”) Avril Lavigne just released an actual great song, but I’m not complaining that her, Ashley Tisdale, and G.E.M are getting this kind of paycheck.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Although I relish turning young men into the inanimate objects of desire they deserve to be and often aspire to be, these random performers — the Traveling Wilburys of movie soundtrack themes — trade one set of clichés for another. “Trophy Boy” is still a song about princesses for princesses. 
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: There’s some deep, dark horrors to be found when one realizes that the distance between Avril Lavigne and Meghan Trainor is actually a thin red line of irritation.
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Automatically terrible because it’s a song for a 3D CGI film in the Disney mold and the last thing we need is more celebrity-studded children’s films to perpetuate the decline of American animation. Even then, this has little worth to anyone beyond being a possible short-lived guilty pleasure or something that’s posted on Twitter alongside an ironic explanation that “your faves could never,” etc.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: The 1999 Mary-Kate and Ashley movie Passport to Paris, which I am not super-proud to admit my sister and I owned, has a surprisingly good soundtrack, featuring unassailable alt-rock tracks “Sugar” by Stretch Princess and “Mz. Popularity” by Mz. Moxy (also of the Ben 10 theme). But listening to the latter when you’re older than 10, it is very quickly apparent that this song on a tween movie soundtrack is actually an cheery-ironic song about a handjob, and the reputation that asshole popular boys give a girl — i.e. maybe best heard elsewhere. “Trophy Boy” isn’t quite so dark but has its share of moments: the glass slipper line; singing “abs” but rhyming it with “class.” But that’s what happens when adult artists do kids’ soundtracks — over a decade separates each artist from her teenpop years — and as the vindication of Josie and the Pussycats reminds us, if you pretend these songs are written for and not just by adults, they’re often not bad. “Trophy Boy,” a non-confrontational pop “The Boy Is Mine,” isn’t bad either, but not much more. Patrick Stump wrote it, and the arena-stomp verses are recognizably him. But elsewhere the song starts with the RedOne synths of “Just Dance” for some reason, goes into a Southern-rock chorus for some reason, has a piano bridge for some reason. Maybe the movie has some kind of montage to explain it, with Cinderella on a ranch and Sleeping Beauty in a club and Snow White on stage or something — but as a standalone song, it baffles. Avril Lavigne, in particular, tries very hard not to sound too much like “Girlfriend,” perhaps because that is this song done right.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: It’s about time Patrick Stump started using his sellout powers for good and not evil. His soul-punk fingerprints are all over this, from the elastic precision of the drumming to the stretched-out vocal phrases. The bulk of the appeal, though, comes from the unlikely chemistry between the singers and the puckish glee they bring to their roles. We’ve got Avril inserting an oblique reference to the “motherfucking princess” line in “Girlfriend,” a song released before this film’s target demographic was even born. Because why not? This is an anything-goes confessional about surface-level attraction, so the less propriety the better.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Slick trans-national commerce, with a touch of nostalgia, made possible by the sheer self-preserving quality of these three artists. Avril has been working since she was 14, Tisdale since she was 3, GEM since she was 5. The problem with starting this early, especially as a pop career, is that it becomes stuck in a perpetual shadow-land of adolescent desire. Thirty year olds, trying to make hits like they were fifteen, always has this factory sheen, and an ear towards market. It’s robotic, but not unpleasant. 
[4]

#canceled

[Video]
[3.36]

Alfred Soto: Well, it’s short and samples Adele Givens.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: I’m not actually offended by this, like I expected I might be; this feels like a return to old-school, 2000s Kanye, who wasn’t afraid to be silly and ridiculous. And this is more ridiculous than offensive to my ears. What it’s most reminiscent of is his 2007 “remix” of Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s,” which West flips to talk about breast implants. Because of course the future husband of Kim K. would do that, right? The bassline on “I Love It” is phat (whether stolen or not), Lil Pump is fairly irrelevant, and Kanye’s verse is stoopid. The smartest thing about “I Love It” — besides clocking in at just over two minutes — is the Adele Givens sample that opens and closes it. This is a throwaway, but it’s preferable to ye, put it that way.
[6]

Hannah Jocelyn: Contrary to popular belief, which speculates Kanye has lost touch with What People Want and also Reality, it turns out he’s been in touch all along. It’s just not with the adult world, but the always robust edgy middle school one. Hooking up with Lil Pump for a video inspired by Roblox, with lines like “I’m a sick fuck I like a quick fuck” primed for humorless Minecraft rewrites and 10-hour editions? That’s not (only?) desperate, that’s outright savvy. It’s somewhat like Eminem’s pivot to earnest pop-rap on Recovery, with the opposite approach toward the same demographic. This will probably be all the rage at summer camps next year. Only this pairing can make something so tasteless it wraps back around to harmless. Bonus point for the way Lil Pump attempts to fit the word “ignorant” into his flow, a flow that cannot hold more than two syllables.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Who doesn’t like having their dick sucked? I mean, that’s not some shocking thing, is it anymore? Since when is cocksucking and dirty talk scandalous? Seriously. 
[4]

Cédric Le Merrer: Sorry, not my kind of stupid.
[0]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Lil Pump is focused by Kanye’s presence (and production job, which, even though it’s just “Fade” again, is far better than anything Pump has ever rapped on) but what Kanye gets from this pairing (other than chart success) is less clear. Like most of his 2018 raps, Ye seems unconcerned with anything that resembles coherence– and while the whole spoken interlude and repetition routine works better on a song that’s inherently jokey, it’s still largely a waste of time. At least Adele Givens gets a check off this.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: Using a data set consisting only of this song, you could write the sentence “Lil Pump is a better lyricist than Kanye” and be 100% accurate. “Like a lighter, bitch, we ignant” is the kind of studiously dumb shit that forms the lifeblood of Twitter virality, while “sick fuck / quick fuck” is the half-formed thought you type into a fast-moving Twitch chat and immediately regret after doing so. (It’s the latter which has actually gone viral, of course, because we live in a society.) Another contrast: where Lil Pump is focused on making his crudeness as pleasant to the ear as possible, Kanye remains committed to the project of extrapolating his basest impulses onto all aspects of his music. This can still turn up gold sometimes – in this case the airtight production – but mostly it just sounds drained of any forward momentum, an artistic dead-end. If this is what the greatest rap genius of my generation wants to do with his talents, all hail our new SoundCloud overlords.
[5]

Tobi Tella: Points for something resembling sex positivity, and that amazing Adele Givens sample. Points off for being one of the most inane things I’ve ever heard and another desperate move in Kanye’s desperate spiral. Remember when we all still thought he was a genius?
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Truly a turn of events when you spend a majority of a rapper’s verse asking to nobody in the room, in rhetorical despair “Hey, can y’all pull back that Lil Pump verse?”. Unfortunately, such is the case of 2018 Kanye.
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A half-hearted quickie.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: Lumpy, bouncy bass slides in under Adele Givens’ admittedly funny joke about lazy male sex as limp, lazy drums push up Lil Pump’s bored, “done in 20 minutes” raps. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE. NOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHGINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHTINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHING
NOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHING
[0]

Going to listen to this while doing this rn.

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Ryo Miyauchi: After seeing a bit too many girl groups tack solid midnight house-pop songs in their mini albums as a deep cut, it’s so fulfilling to finally have a k-pop act take on the style as its lead single. At the same time, though, the hesitation by others to bet on such a style as its title track can be understood from “Puzzle Moon.” Effortlessly sleek as that bass line unfolds, it feels too light to properly carry a glowing sentiment in a lyric like “all question marks become exclamation points.” But while it may lack hooks or a drop that deeply sinks its teeth, the overall air of mystique surrounding “Puzzle Moon” works wonders to tease out curiosity.
[6]

Crystal Leww: Blackpink were one the more recent k-pop group debuts to have captured Western media’s attention, and their approach stands in stark contrast to what GWSN have done here on “Puzzle Moon. Blackpink put out single after single of stitched together banger, aiming to throw together those 10 second snippets of maximum impact. “Puzzle Moon” gives GWSN a debut that is less flashy than it is just solid. The pop-house production is territory that k-pop covered in 2015, and while it will be very difficult for anyone to top the highs of pretty much that entire f(x) album, this does the trick of giving us something worthy of hitting play again on without hitting a track with every single trick in the book.
[8]

Jessica Doyle: Fuzzing up the background of “4 Walls” and moving the excitement from before to after the chorus: eh, still works. Though if they were going to pay SM for an Amber license I wish they’d gone whole hog and bought the lower-voiced rap as well.
[5]

Iain Mew: The sound of Twice at their most straightforward, filtered through a large bit of “View.” They’re still enjoyable sounds and the song does OK with them, but it seems weird for a new group to start with a song which de-emphasises the group members themselves this much.
[6]

Katie Gill: Well this is cute! The light, breezy, airy feel helps the song out a lot. It’s charming, in a low effort sort of way. I know that it’s not supposed to be a loud, impressive banger in the way of many other k-pop songs, but it still feels like there could be a little MORE brought to the table. This is the sort of song that, because it sounds so samey, you put it on in the background, go to do something else, and wait, it’s finished already?
[6]

Tim de Reuse: An unremarkable template, executed upon competently; its saving grace is that it eschews tension and release in favor of one long, high-momentum streak. It’s effective enough that I can forgive the little bits of trop-house sound design that crept in.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This is precisely the kind of dance-pop that feels designed to stick in my head for the foreseeable future, from the slick, percussion-heavy beat and the hooky synth lines that course over it to the range of vocal textures and deliveries and the lyrics with enough interesting phrasings (the way that they sing “simulation” especially) to draw you in without distracting. The best part about “Puzzle Moon,” though, is that it’s likeable enough to pull all those tricks out of its bag without ever feeling mercenary about it.
[8]

Will Rivitz: Honestly, just pitch any song as “‘4 Walls’ meets Mord Fustang” and I’m legally obligated to give it at least a [7]. Add an extra point for the half-time rap breakdown.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Considering how much “View” and “4 Walls” changed the entire k-pop landscape, it’s hard to believe that they were only released three years ago. While not the only factors at play, LDN Noise and SM Entertainment’s creative director Min Hee Jin have had such considerable impact on the K-pop industry at large that it’s hard to imagine what it would look like today without them. This is exceedingly clear on GWSN’s “Puzzle Moon,” a competent bit of house pop that’s accompanied by a music video that confuses mystique for personality. It’s all fine, which is fine, but any excitement this brings to K-pop fans stems from a contentedness with k-pop’s increasingly straightforward production and songwriting goals. But irregardless of this context, “Puzzle Moon” is also unable to cohere its individual parts. The general conceit — comparing a lover to a moon that shines light on them — is intriguing in and of itself, and the “Make it moon, I want a full moon” hook is the sort of commitment to peculiarity that I’d readily eat up. The singing, however, is too gutless to justify any of it; it neither aches with infatuation nor aims to bolster the song and video’s enigmatic impulses, falling squarely on a blankness that shoots down any desire or curiosity that its lyrics suggest. By the time the rap break comes in, there’s no question that this is also unconvincing structurally (especially compared to “4 Walls”). Earlier this year, Maynine co-produced a forgettable single for Killagramz, Kisum, and Don Mills that was crafted in the likeness of many post-Lil Yachty Korean rap songs (the best of which is still “iffy“). They produced this as well, making one wonder, “Is Maynine only capable of making paltry knockoffs?” It turns out that “View” and “4 Walls” will continue to be important reference points for songwriters and music critics alike. Not just because they were Korea’s first major attempts at proper house crossovers, but because they’ve yet to be bested.
[4]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Coming at this from a complete outsider perspective: this appears to be a cool new song from a new K-pop group. I like it! The verses hold a lot of tension and slingshot you into the chorus, which is a ton of fun and very catchy. It doesn’t inspire any deeper thoughts than that, but that’s OK, man. Sometimes a good song is just a good song.
[8]

And we shall reciproc8.

[Video][Website]
[7.17]Joshua Minsoo Kim: Nearly a decade ago, Julia Holter released an album of quotidian but surprisingly intimate field recordings, one of which was an interpretation of a score by Michael Pisaro–the greatest composer of the 21st century, and someone who Holter studied under while attending CalArts. While she has collaborated with him on his records, Holter has never recorded music that felt obviously aligned with the post-Cagean philosophy and aesthetics of the Wandelweiser collective. She has, however, elucidated the importance of Pisaro’s lessons and experimental music workshops in providing a space for “listening and focus.” Holter described her upcoming album, Aviary, as a reflection on “how one responds to [the cacophony they experience daily] as a person — how one behaves, how one looks for love, for solace.” This song accomplishes exactly that through language reminiscent of classical texts and a delivery that demands listeners to consider its utility. The song is simply prefaced: “That is all, that is all. There is nothing else.” A matter-of-fact decree that renders the following statement as irrefutable truth: “I am in love.” Appropriately, the song spends most of its runtime in a calming trance-like meditation. There’s a thoughtfulness to the arrangement — the soft bed of synth pads, the otherworldly vocoder harmony, the soothing string section — and it helps to capture the subtle flutter and comforting security of finding a partner. The song eventually swells into a beautiful wall of noise that finds the titular line transforming in meaning and tone. “In all the humans there is something true/But do the angels say, do the angels say/I shall love?” she sings. What begins as an elevation of self beyond that of celestial beings becomes a therapeutic mantra of self-assurance — not “I shall love?” but “I shall love.” I’m drawn to Holter’s music  because her compositions and voice are always conduits for intentional listening. The result is deep contemplation, an invitation for listeners to see how the material used can lead to a better understanding of the material itself, or even one’s self. More than simple platitudes, “I Shall Love 2” calls for people to truly understand that they deserve love, even if it requires constant reminding. She models how to do just that, but gives another piece of sound advice: “Who cares what people say.”
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Julia Holter’s music often feels like it holds you at a distance, intentionally breaking from expectations and forms to artificialize its sound. On “I Shall Love 2,” she takes a simple concept — the overwhelming and universal nature of love — and treats it in a way that almost feels like an alien’s view of the concept, talking and singing through these questions and declarations of love as if it the first time she is handling them. But as the baroque-ish instrumentation of “I Shall Love 2” builds from a simple, almost-childlike ambient soundscape to a full, crashing chant of a song, Holter’s inhuman facade begins to melt away, leaving the song feeling like a personal revelation of a sort.
[7]

Kat Stevens: I’ve got a lot of admiration for Julia’s queasy strings but, with one or two exceptions, I’ve always found her songs hard to love. “I Shall Love 2” doesn’t have the immediate menace of “Horns Surrounding Me” or the feeling of stumbling around a maze where everyone is dressed as a Versailles courtier of “Feel You.” What it does conjure up is this image: a woman has escaped to a secluded forest glade for some peace and quiet, when a bird sets alight on her shoulder to tweet a little. Fine, she says. You can stay. But then a steady stream of bunnies and baby deer and pixies arrive to bother her with flowers and schmaltz until the woman finally cracks, crams her hands over her ears and tells them all to either shut up or fuck off. I sympathise, Julia, but I ain’t getting involved with your Bambi beef.
[6]

Alfred Soto: As a sonic experience, “I Shall Love 2” is a trip: a string arrangement accumulating power, cello, backup vocals shouting from a mountain peak to the heavens. I wish Julia Holter had chosen a less discreet vocal approach in the first minute, but she knows her track has surprises.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: Delightfully off-kilter, a little out of tune, unpredictable — It’s delighful to see an ocean of reverb put to use actually meshing together points of interest rather than filling space in its own right! A chant as direct like “I Shall Love” just wouldn’t have worked under a totally clean delivery; here, the finale achieves cathartic impact through the sweeping force of an awkward clutter.
[7]

Josh Love: Holter is a brilliant pop composer and it’s great to have the focus be on her music again after she bravely went public last year with the abuse she suffered while dating former Real Estate guitarist Matthew Mondanile. Admittedly, it’s hard not to hear elliptical lines like “I’m in love / What can I do…Who cares what people say?” without reflecting on Holter’s personal traumas but in the end what buoys this song are its wonderfully unorthodox orchestral melodies and the Velvet Underground-esque sense of spiritual deliverance embedded in the closing refrain, “I shall love.”
[7]

Vikram Joseph: The magical realist dreamscapes of Julia Holter’s songs are always compellingly strange. “I Shall Love 2” feels like waking up on a tropical shore, surrounded by fallen fruit and parakeets, but with the colour of the sky just odd enough to make you wonder if you might, in fact, still be dreaming. It’s a fitting space for a love song, delivered without irony or trepidation; maybe this is what it’s meant to feel like? Julia, dazed and blinded by the sun, wonders “what do the angels say?” and is answered by a celestial chorus; the song builds to a Deserter’s Songs-ish climax of swirling, entwining vocal parts, strings and brass, strands of the entire galaxy uniting in imperfect synchrony to celebrate her newfound love. I mean, sorry Julia, there’s no way this isn’t a dream.
[8]

Ramzi Awn: Listening to “I Shall Love 2” is a bit like discovering a new painting. Julia Holter pairs humor with sincerity in a dizzying arrangement that employs instruments as brushstrokes on a fresh canvas, ripe with possibility. Holter plays with the idea of voice as conductor, threading the different elements together with short, deliberate phrases and just the right timing.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: After listening to this on a loop, I really enjoy the “that is all, that is all” spoken intro as an outro before the song repeats. In fact, I might just edit the audio to make that change. Otherwise, “I Shall Love 2” is so meticulously arranged that I feel like there’s something wrong with me that it can’t hold my attention the whole of its running time, but the layering of vocals and strings — which are lovely but less involving by themselves at first — in the second half is impressive.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: Julia Holter’s left looking pale upon facing the song’s central epiphany, and what really pushes “I Shall Love 2” is her follow-up question: “what do I do?” It peels back how truly daunting it can be to get hit by the feeling when you least expect it, and how you’re never prepared to respond to love’s arrival. The creaking music, too, sighs and crashes on its knees as powerless as Holter. The final swirling of voices that declare her breakthrough to choose love despite its known terror, then, echoes with bravery.
[7]

Daisy Le Merrer: They sound like falling in love, these thousand voices pulling and pushing chaotically towards the same direction. The stomach dwelling butterflies. The social pressure of a million amatonormative songs and films and friends. Your feelings going so much faster than your thoughts. Your will drowned out. Your self tractor beamed like a cow by a flying saucer.
[8]

Rebecca A. Gowns: One layer isn’t enough, but as the song builds, it becomes more and more satisfying, like piling on thin sheets of butter and baking it until it becomes a croissant. What seems thin and threadbare at the beginning becomes transcendent. (Again, like a fresh croissant.)
[9]

Are hamsters halal? Let us know in the comments.

[Video][Website]
[5.45]

Ashley John: “Great” reads exactly like the 15 spiraling texts I send to my best friend late at night every time the news cycle churns out something new to be mad about, even including the hollow shrug at hope to close it out. 
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Fires out the gate like something a la The Jesus Lizard but quickly opts for something more contained, building up tension until the very last second. The thick bass line and cyclical drums build a vortex that’s fit for soundtracking a mosh pit, but it also resembles the headache-inducing frenzy that is life post-Brexit. There’s much delight in the arrangement and mixing, but the sardonic lyrics are just as amusing. Of note is the rhyming of “hamster” with “hand sir” and the interpolation of David Cameron’s “We’re all in this together” remark. The latter concludes the song with a grievous reminder that while not everyone is ignorant, all of us are suffering for it.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The bass growl is the star, the climax as rousing as it needs to be, the spelling not a hot trick.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I’ve been known to be a little cynical about punk rock in recent years despite (because?) growing up on it and loving lots of it. Or maybe that’s not quite it; maybe it’s that lots of it seems to be pretty negative about the world and while I both get and respond to that, plenty of the genre seems mired in it in a way that just feels tiring to me. But Idles make me feel like that problem is more minor than I thought, because all it takes is a song or two (the even more posi “Danny Nedelko” in Idles’ case) from a band that provides both the energetic rumble I want and the big, hopeful open heart I apparently need to make me feel like maybe this is the only thing I want to listen to for the rest of the week. Mind you, as the lyrics of “Great” make clear, that heart isn’t to be confused with some sort of milquetoast, self-defeating tolerance of intolerance, but even when being cutting here something just feels different with Idles and it feels damn good. Listen to more jungle!
[10]

Cédric Le Merrer: I guess I can get behind using the power of The Fall’s Caterpillar track basslines to deliver  I can’t believe it’s not brocialism sentiments — seriously I’ve been assured Idles are sensitive feminist guys so let’s all believe this for now. As far as this very obvious project goes, it is executed well enough.
[6]

Tim de Reuse: A thrilling bassline ties together lines that occasionally cutting deep (A highlight that I will surely be appropriating: “The wombic charm of the union jack”). But chanting “G R E A T” letter-by-letter doesn’t work as a lyrical device, and the celebratory IV – I chord progression of the chorus undermines the dry British disdain that the verses build so effectively.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The beat that Talbot and Co. conjure up, an energetic, burbling thing driven by a faux-jungle bassline, is good enough to cover for the verses’ pop-polisci. What doesn’t need to be covered for is the eminently sincere anthemic stab of the chorus and the outro, which are as pure of a expression of musical hope as anything I’ve heard this year.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: You know The Fall aren’t that Great and neither is this song to be fair, but I suppose points have to be awarded for emulating less thoroughly emulated boring bands when trying to make Big Statements about society. Unfortunately, you can take points away for being 1) Monotonous grinding masquerading as groove 2) tiresome snide sarcasm and 3) boastful self-celebratory booming choruses to show off one’s being smarter than the chodes. If you were the kind of person who ever thought at some point in your life “Golly, I wish I could have Fucked Up back Stephen Colbert” but make sure it addressed UK Politics, then I have something for you.
[1]

Taylor Alatorre: I’m sure most media consumers in Britain are as tired of reading about the causes of Brexit as Americans are of reading about the rise of Trump, so you’d think there wouldn’t be much demand for the aural equivalent of a Jonathan Freedland column. There is a way to tackle broad political topics without being overbroad in scope, and it’s not through sketching phantom avatars of working-class ignorance that can be knocked out in one rhetorical punch. The cleanest jab lands at the end, with a nod toward Britain’s possible future as a low-wage Thatcherite reverie. That prospect alone is worthy of an entire concept album, not just a snappy couplet.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: If this had a chorus that wasn’t spelling, it might be an 7. And if it had come out just after Leave won, it might be an 8. I love how the song starts like it’s been incompletely taped or dubbed from another source onto a tape and there are some good lines, slogans ruing the victory of other slogans, but I can’t get past how these give way to something as banal as spelling out the word “great.” Strictly as an observer from a colony, the UK seems like a deeply flawed institution, but they have some good pop songs, a history of protest and the bacon bap. So there’s hope.
[6]

Vikram Joseph: Thunderous freight-train bass and sloganeering choruses might not bring much new to the punk table, but Idles wring tension from the constant high-wire they walk between bile and wit. Their last single, “Danny Nedelko,” positioned their eponymous British-Ukrainian pal as an immigrant everyman, reclaiming the echoes of the football terraces for left-wing activism. “Great” goes further, brazenly goading Brexiteers with the opening line “Blighty wants his country back,” followed shortly afterwards with the glorious “Islam didn’t eat your hamster.” The chorus, and the through-gritted-teeth outro of “We’re all in this together,” are thick with sarcasm. Is it going to win anyone over? Of course not, but fuck it — this is, as Idles’ album title declares, an act of resistance. There’s been a fixation on the need for the left to understand exactly why gammon-faced white septagenarians want to drag us back in time; Idles, thankfully, do not care. Let them have blue passports for the remaining ten years of their lives; let us, at the very least, have our vitriol.
[8]

Italian singer-songwriter sparks some immediate comparisons…

[Video]
[4.88]

Crystal Leww: I can’t believe that Italy has its own Halsey and G-Eazy. 
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Adult contemporary trap-lite balladry rounded out with pensive guitar strums and moody synth melodies. Annalisa’s flow is well suited for the affair: talk-rapping that’s conversational in tone, able to project an earnest but regretful acceptance of a relationship’s demise. During the chorus, she compares their time together with the ephemeral nature of Instagram stories; the memories and intimacy they once shared are disappearing, and nothing she can do can stop it. But for all the work Annalisa does to build this pained headspace, Mr. Rain’s feature has too much of a presence over the meandering beat. He distracts and derails, revealing “Un Domani” to be a cut-and-paste job meant for chart success.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: I will always love moody power-pop way too much, but how can you not immediately fall in love when you hear those delicious snare drums at the end of the pre-chorus? Sucks, then, when you’re hit with such a limp chorus and even limper rap from Mr Rain. Adding rappers to tracks just to seem more versatile is a bad practice in any language, across any genre. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: Dear me, this is cloddish. Mr Rain is Mr. Macklemore despite the access to Italian’s richer palette of rhymes, and the acoustic guitar flourishes and piano, as they do on so many terrible American hip-hop crossovers, signify sensitivity.
[3]

Ian Mathers: As someone who’s mostly heard rap in English, it’s always neat to hear how other languages adapt to the form. Ever since someone back in TSJ’s Stylus days someone brought up Italian rapper Caparezza (who, other than a shared language, sounds nothing like this song), I’ve wondered why more of it doesn’t cross over; whether you find a decent translation, something about the rhythms and sounds of the language in rapped form just seems intrinsically satisfying. Annalisa does much better than Mr Rain’s more dismissive, negative verse, with the bulk of the song channeling clear-eyed regret and sadness over the end of a relationship that really should be over (but, as we all know, still hurts). The backing is fairly basic — if it was more interesting this would be up a point or two. But as it is Annalisa is justly the focus, and whether translated or not, “I consumed hearts, I consumed shoes” as a description of post-breakup behaviour is a hell of a line.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: Is Annalisa’s pettiness and oversharing of how much better she’s doing without her former lover inspired by the similarly salty hip-hop records from which she borrows her stuffy rap cadence? Or is that zigzagging staccato flow, along with that sparse and colorless beat, just the right format to deliver that pettiness these days? Her Instagram story simile suggests it might be the former, which would be kind of impressive if she also adopted those records’ cheesy, eye-roll-inducing humor.
[5]

Ramzi Awn: Annalisa and Mr Rain unearth a song with a story on “Un Domani,” making good use of a strident melody and a simple beat. Though overproduced, the vocals get the job done. 
[6]

Iain Mew: It’s a power ballad squeezed into an R&B-pop shaped container, and brief shower aside it works out rather well. Each individual element resounds but comes together for something as digestible as it is dramatic.
[7]

No. 1 on Estonian Spotify, at least as of a few weeks ago…

[Video]
[5.29]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Estonian rapper Nublu follows up “Mina Ka” with another minimal track that is mostly enjoyable for how it embraces its shoddy production. The synthesized bassline on “öölaps!” sounds like a cheap recreation of “Like A G6,” and the horns are endearingly fake. Best of all is how the single’s cover art leads you to believe that the squeaking synth stab is meant to be the sound of dogs barking, or rather, the sound effect you’d hear in older games and videos wanting to approximate such a noise. While virtually the same length as “Mina Ka,” “öölaps” is easier to sit through because of Nublu’s casual flow and dorky hook. But it still sounds like a one-off novelty track you’d hear in a Flash game, or something you’d encounter while browsing the depths of YouTube late at night.
[3]

Iain Mew: Forget chiptune, MIDImelody is the future! At least in Estonia, but they’ve long been technologically ahead of the game. I’m not sure if all of “Öölaps!” is a joke or none of it is, but it’s a fun ride either way.
[7]

Crystal Leww: I may not be able to understand Estonian, but even I know that this is music made by rappers who God never intended to be rappers — too precocious in its production, too focused on the technical aspects of rapping, too whimsical in tone sometimes.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: In every corner of the planet, in every era of modern history, rap is rejected in favor of generic electro that sounds like something Spank Rock would’ve done — too “cool” to be mistaken for post-Cataracs grate but not sleek enough to admit how nerdy it really is. Anyway, here’s “Öölaps!”
[5]

Julian Axelrod: My favorite dance music weaves a series of light touches into something big and heavy and undeniable. Nublu’s raps are so offhand they’re almost overpowered by the background conversation, and that bell riff couldn’t be simpler. But when you add some 808s and low end and mix it all together, goddamn does it deliver. “Nuanced Estonian Pitbull wave” is my new favorite genre.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: This track features a fast steady beat, a deep bass line that gives a structure to the song, and fun trumpets. But the voice is just monotonous — the “pa pa pa” chorus could have added more dynamics to the song, but it just sounds like someone not having fun at a party.
[5]

Ashley John: On first listen it feels like Nublu is taking things too seriously, but the tension unwinds throughout the track. The bouncy beat behind slinky, nonplussed rapping feels like standing at the edges of the dance floor, lamenting the music choices, but only because you’re waiting for the moment you hear the song you came out to dance to. 
[6]

Love puts a little under four points on the scoreboard, at least…

[Video]
[3.70]

Anthony Easton: Someone better than me should write a song about Nashville’s obsession with this kumbaya theme — a kind of neo-liberal refusal of anything but the most general, least actionable ways of changing the world. Every time I hear this shit, I return to Vivek Shraya’s brilliant rejoinder: “cause love doesn’t keep my sisters safe/so love alone won’t set us free.” (For the record, this is better than Kenny Chesney’s, but worse than Tim McGraw’s or Luke Bryan’s.)
[5]

Alfred Soto: Ever since Blown Away she’s settled for belting anthems as if from the Statue of Liberty torch. Carrie Underwood could hire the best songwriters in Nashville if she wanted a story about gay couples. The hilarious overstatement of “Love Wins” suggests she stopped seeing people years ago — she sees awards, pats on the back for courage. 
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Carrie Underwood’s bold-type inspirational anthems are generally better-written than other huge-lunged singers’. That continues to be the case with “Love Wins,” a “Humble and Kind”-style song destined to be CMA-nominated for Song of the Year, and additionally destined to be performed on this November’s CMA Awards with a huge gospel choir backing her. But much like Dolly Parton’s “He’s Alive,” there’s nothing keeping this song on the ground, and Underwood’s vocal sends it soaring into the clouds. I generally prefer her more uptempo revenge songs (no one does them better at this point), but this “Love,” in fact, wins.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Heavy, ghostly guitars follow masked synths and twisting organs. Acoustic and slide guitars waft around Carrie Underwood’s authoritative croon as heavy drums ground the clouds with hailstones. Carrie plucks the hailstones while spreading the cloud over the ozone layer, as small shoots of dandelions and grass start growing all over every graveyard and city.
[9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: “Love Wins” is proud to be a rallying cry; it delivers a message, but it’s more concerned with being the messenger. “Sometimes it takes a lot of faith to keep believing there will come a day when the tears and the sadness, the pain and the hate, the struggle, this madness will all fade away.” These words are an allusion to Revelation 21, meant to flip the sacred text of anti-LGBTQ Christians on its head. The references to “brothers and sisters” and the general CCM vibes also inform this. Will certain bigots be appalled? Sure. But the real issue is how Carrie Underwood, David Garcia, and Brett James–all proud Christians–approach the subject matter. “Love Wins” has its foundations in a useless eschatology that encourages a self-congratulatory complacency, ostensibly positing that we should just hold on until we get to heaven. If not that, they’re claiming that spouting platitudes and really believing in them will be–and is–enough. You see, the world only “seems broken,” and to fix it is as simple as reciting a prayer: “Love will, love can, love still, love wins!” It’s so easy!
[0]

Katherine St Asaph: In 2014 “#LoveWins” was a Twitter hashtag about the Supreme Court (pause reading blurb to despair) legalizing same-sex marriage (albeit in legally mushy language by noted clown Anthony Kennedy). But before that, it was a slogan of the Eugene Peterson wing of liberal evangelicals, about whom the conservative Focus on the Family wing gripes that they focus too much on love and not discernment and sin. Specifically, Love Wins was the title of a 2011 book by pastor Rob Bell of megachurch Mars Hill, who caused a furor for, among other relative liberalisms, teasing the possibility that hell doesn’t exist. It is easier for a camel to go through this tiny-ass Overton window than for this context not to collapse, but there’s no way the songwriters, one of whom is a CCM writer, didn’t know it. (If for nothing else, because it’s trademarked and because at least one North Carolina ministry used the name, though it’s closed now after accusations of mismanaging money. For now, capitalism wins.) It’s canny: in two words you’ve hooked both your Bible-belt and secular audiences, both of whom Underwood needs, both reassured by glurge. And in four minutes of balladry, you’ve also reassured American Idol audiences who know every beat — down to the literal beat, that Whitney Houston “I Will Always Love You” drum hit you probably just heard in your mind, which appears at the exact second you think it does.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: As much as it’s easy to play to the choir in liberal fantasy pop, where the least amount of effort can come off as valiant, there’s something to be said about how much current-day society loves to react super-strongly against even the slightest, blandest hint of dissidence. Boomer-era rock icons who would so obviously be against the current administration are met with hisses and jeers from oblivious fans, for dully thick platitudes that feel like returns to the ’60s. Carrie Underwood, an innocuous, middle-of-the-road pop country singer, attempts a similar level of inanity with this record, a generic anthem of little substance and value beyond “Hey… Let’s Be Nice!”, but you know that somewhere, people are going to bare fangs at it. So bleak a time it is that such a vacuous, tepid song requires passionate defense and cagey media sensibilities lest SOMEONE BE OFFENDED and Carrie Underwood of all people have to justify this generalized offering of courtesy. It’s profound, despite being nothing close to that by its own merits.
[2]

Josh Love: No doubt I’m just growing more jaundiced every day thanks to Twitter, but at this point I would genuinely rather listen to a song about building a wall or enforcing mandatory minimums or blacklisting Colin Kaepernick than this mealy-mouthed, put-aside-our-differences bullshit that doesn’t correspond to how anyone is actually living their lives in 2018. To say nothing of the fact that the dewy-eyed singalongs “Love Wins” is sure to inspire in concert will consist almost entirely of comfortable-ass white people. Underwood sings hopefully of a time when “the struggle, this madness, will all fade away,” yet I doubt there are too many people who are going to hear and enjoy this song who are actually suffering through that madness.
[1]

Taylor Alatorre: It goes down easier if you think of it as a Christian song with political overtones rather than vice versa. That doesn’t negate the weird choice to stick the gospel choir in the second verse, but it at least puts that verse’s lyrics in a less hopeless context: if the task of setting up a world without tears, sadness, pain, and hate rests on mankind alone, we’re gonna be disappointed.
[4]

Katie Gill: In this political climate where certain people are actively working to strip the rights and dignity of other people, a song that says “We just need to be sisters and brothers! Kumbaya! Let’s all hope for a better tomorrow!” is a bit thoughtless. Hell, the phrase “love wins” already has a certain meaning in the American political climate: a meaning that was brought along by legislation and fighting for one’s rights, not walking together as sisters and brothers. It’s a powerful song and arranged wonderfully, but the sentiment is trite and woefully naive. Let’s go back to songs about murdering our husbands.
[4]

The Singles Jukebox | TH3 51NGL35 JUK3130X

[Video]
[6.62]

Crystal Leww: Ah, a rap collaboration that actually feels like a collaboration where every person brings something different to the table! I love the contrast between the textures of Denzel Curry, JPEGMAFIA, and ZillaKami’s voices. Denzel Curry’s bouncing up and down on his snarl, JPEGMAFIA has the cleanest sounding voice, while ZillaKami’s got a rasp that sounds like the dude’s been smoking cigarettes for a week straight. And yet “Vengeance | Vengeance” is completely stuffed to the brim with a consistent high-level of terrifying energy. Consequently, I could do without the outro.
[7]

Alfred Soto: What a racket! The bass eats through the muffler, the timbre each distinctive enough to savor, and the acoustic guitar wanders in from a college radio station. I don’t get it but I can hear how something is at stake.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Heavy, thudding bass drums rain down as Denzel Curry slides in-between the sharp slits and curtains of synths while JPEGMAFIA barrels through, bellowing smoke but no fire, while ZillaKami bites down on the drums and doesn’t let go until he is crushed beneath. However, a drifting, gentle ladling of guitars and crisp, unstarched drums lifting a rumbling, humming bass washes away his toothless body along with Peggy and Denzel paddling along after him.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: If you’re gonna try to sell me on this strain of yell-rap, you better have as much charisma and as few South Park references as humanly possible. Denzel Curry drops the ball on the latter, but fares slightly better with the former — he’s inherently listenable, even when his music actively pushes you away. Ideally his guests could offer some variety, but while JPEGMAFIA’s approach feels slightly more human, ZillaKami leans all the way into Curry’s aggressive screamo approach. This feels less like a posse cut and more like a Red Bull variety pack. The tastes may vary slightly, but they all make me anxious.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Of the various provocations offered on “Vengeance,” only JPEGMAFIA’s Drake-taunting and Mickey de Grand IV’s murder ballad of an outro register as anything more than noise and empty threats. It’s fortunate for Denzel Curry and ZillaKami that even their less interesting material sounds compelling — it’s almost ironic that a track so based around lyrics that aim to shock works best if you tune the words out and let the better defined production take over.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: This is somehow the second Denzel Curry video to feature gameplay from Yandere Simulator, a slice-of-life Hitman clone whose one-man production schedule can best be described as “extremely cursed.” Taken in isolation, these visuals make for an excellent complement to the giddy stylistic violence that is at the heart of Denzel Curry’s music. This is horrorcore as Three 6 Mafia had envisioned it, where the content of each homicidal threat matters less than the brazenness and potency of its delivery. Even the illegibility of the chorus works in its favor, transmuting the aimless notebook scrawling of “feel the pain, feel the rain” into an endlessly replayable chunk of rhythmic stew. And just in case you weren’t sure what the proper level of detachment is for absorbing all this, the extravagant outro serves as a good calibrator.
[9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The best song on Denzel Curry’s TA13OO because it coheres three rappers’ distinct styles without letting their obvious flaws get in the way. The production and conceit allow for Curry’s goofy voice and juvenile references to feel endearingly cartoonish. Peggy’s experimentation is refreshingly reigned in, and he sounds like a 2010s version of a 2000s scene band doing a rap cover on Punk Goes Crunk. This would be off-putting in most cases but he’s right at home on a song that aims for an Invader Zim-type of creepy. And then ZillaKami’s post-DMXXXTentacion mania caps it all off with an aggression that demands respect because it doesn’t come off heavy-handed. At the end of the day, “Vengeance” is just a bunch of dorks cosplaying as murderers, trying less to convince you that they’re scary than a group of friends who know how to have a good time. The chorus acts as the perfect mediator between them, and the outro is a reminder that it’s all in good fun.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: Sometimes, I like to think about the fact that rap-rock group Saliva has direct links to the Hypnotize Minds camp. When you think about how ZillaKami’s solo “squalor” is a more overtly-metallised version of the XXXTentacion knockoffs he was doing with former friend 6ix9ine (back before said nemesis discovered playing pretend gangbanger) and how XXX himself was incredibly indebted to Raider Klan affiliates such as Denzel and BONES, a record like “Vengeance” with its harsh squeals of crude riffery turned into junkheap post-Three Six moshrap makes absolute perfect sense. Easily the lightest verse comes courtesy of JPEGMAFIA, whose own form of abrasive rap is more inexplicably indebted to Death Grips than the Raider Klan Continuum so he feels a bit slight but one has to be obliged that he’s the one rapper happy to send subliminals at the aforementioned pedophile. That said, it’s absolutely Zilla’s Disintegrating Drama (of “Left, Right” fame) flow that steals the show here, a nice moment where Denzel rewards a distant progeny for taking their particular spiral of rap madness another step further. For better or worse.
[7]