French-Algerian singer moves to New York, meets Dev Hynes, ends up on the Jukebox…

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[5.86]

Joshua Minsoo Kim:
My words spilt out
in splotchy blues.

You trace their path,
stake the ground,
claim the earth,
auger deep.

I writhe like
worms on
rain-fed mornings:
I could never hide
from you.

[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Simultaneously featherweight and tense, understated and intricate, “Jade” sounds both like the ’90s — the whispered interludes, the nocturnal guitar solo, the percussion line that tiptoes toward drum and bass — and like today’s more forward-focused R&B. Blood Orange continues to quietly impress, and Zouaï recalls a Jhené Aiko whose bloodstream hasn’t been fully replaced with cannabis.
[7]

Iris Xie: This song didn’t start making much sense to me until I sang all the not-quite melodies in order — none of these verses are meant to merge at all, and they’re in eternal disconnect. It’s ironic, maybe intentionally so, that “Something to hold on to” is one of the crux lines of this song, considering that Lolo Zouaï and Blood Orange sound like they are singing and walking around an empty core of a song, with the strums, whispers, and ad libbing swirling around them. Even though flourishes burst when Blood Orange enters, especially with that kickdrum, one can’t help feel there’s a feeling of hazy detachment that calls into question the strength of their relationship. As the outro fades away from Lolo Zouaï’s ad libs and Blood Orange’s crooning, the instrumental warps and starts like if the track was going to start erasing itself. This drives home the point that these are lovers not on the same path, but rather, two weak winds trying to lead each other, only to fade out into a murky territory of their personal unknown. 
[5]

Juana Giaimo: “Jade” lacks something to join together all the different parts of the song. As it is, Lolo Zouaï’s very delicate voice, the jittery prodution and Blood Orange’s tense fast rap make quite a mess where none of them can shine. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: The charm of a demo, the amorphousness too. It opens bit by bit, reluctantly. 
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Decent pop record that improves when Blood Orange gets on the mic and the rhythm track doubles/speeds up. This is the essence of ethereal.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: Loose constellations of events overlap and bounce against each other, over a rhythmically unstable beat and synthesizers that feel like they might stumble and fall over on the next downbeat. It succeeds as a gimmick because the runtime is kept concise, and because there are precious few elements in the mix that distract from that central sense of interplay — though, cutting that chessy dream-pop guitar snippet entirely would’ve been a strict improvement.
[8]

But do they buy their own diamonds and their own rings?

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[4.86]

Katherine St Asaph: If Hailee Steinfeld’s “Love Myself” were a country song and actually chaste. The rhymey list-song structure of the chorus — “I can buy my own drinks, I can pay my own tab, I can call my own cab” — makes this sound concerningly like a children’s book. It also leaches it of emotion. I don’t ever get the sense this woman particularly gets anything out of bars, whether solace or tears or a fun night; she makes going out drinking sound as routine and joyless as taking Unisom. The buried harmonies, barely perceptible in the mix when they should be highlighted, don’t help.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A song that doesn’t make any attempts to capitalize on its lyrics. Runaway June talk about a recent breakup, about dudes approach them at bars, and not having friends who want to go out with them. They sound appropriately unimpressed, but the lyrics indicate a wider range of emotions. They sound like bad actors reading a script.
[3]

Alfred Soto: This assertion of independence does well with the spiked guitar interludes, but this results in a polished and less convincing Pistol Annies track. The lyrics are a list, not much animated by the singing en masse. 
[6]

Iris Xie: “Buy My Own Drinks” is the two seconds of delusional okayness that bursts in your heart after crying about a breakup for several hours, when you are so dogged to recover because “I don’t need nobody else!” While fulfilling its role as a pick-me-up anthem, this song bothers me because this is the sound of cheery, forced self-affirmation when you don’t really want to admit that you’d rather not be alone — but you’re going to be so powerful and so self-reliant that the optimism suffocates the pain. It’s evident in the song’s decisions: the myriad imagery of being all alone, the animatronic guitar and backing band, and the practiced phrasing that gives the impression of a blank, brave face with a front-facing smile. The harmonies are effective, because it reinforces the strength of that image projection. The relentless chorus that starts with all “I’s” as to assert an agency held up by self-love Instagram quotes, and it’s concerning: “I can walk my own self to the front door/I can take my own self to bed/I can medicate my own headache/I can be my own boyfriend.” Is she talking about codependency or the aftermath of tolerating neglect from her ex? I’ve bought my own drinks after a breakup, but it was while venting to friends right before my first Rocky Horror Show. Even though I wasn’t alone, I was so ashamed of feeling so dependent after, that I stopped hanging out with my friends in order to manifest my desire to not be a burden on anyone, and weaponized positivity against myself. “Buy My Own Drinks” reminds me of those times. (Advice: Don’t isolate yourself!) As the instrumentals build and the vocals become more staunch, I just want to tell the protagonist that it’s fine to cry and it’s absolutely shitty that this is happening, and while it’s great she finds some symbolic messaging in buying her own drinks and being alone, don’t try too hard to cover the tears. 
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Two things about this feel-good but forgettable trifle: Firstly, it should have been a Lady Antebellum song — Hillary Scott would have given it a nice, sour kick. Secondly, it’s more fun if you switch out the titular phrase with “Buy Me a Boat.”
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: I love the intent, a little bit “Girl in a Country Song” but recontextualized for a bar — but I wish the song were better, because this doesn’t get across the finish line, it’s far too average all around.
[5]

Josh Love: A drinking-alone song from…a harmonizing trio? Definitely a unique approach; I have a feeling Pistol Annies would have tackled this song by having each Annie take a solo turn with a different part of the song (and I know it’s an extremely retrograde sentiment but I’d also love to have heard Merle Haggard’s version). Instead, the effect is that Runaway June’s “Buy My Own Drinks” comes across as more empowering and anthemic when a different gloss on the same lyrics might have been heartbreaking. The apex comes with the “tonight tonight tonight” response in the chorus, which really sends this song into the stratosphere.
[7]

A band named after an act of animal cruelty makes its fourth appearance. We’re thrilled.

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[3.43]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Sticks so firmly to its tepid structure and instrumentation that the idea of this band “letting go” of anything seems overly ambitious.
[2]

Alfred Soto: To let go of what — this coiled, echo-prone early ’10s production?
[3]

Iris Xie: I was all ready to embrace my inner dive bar hipster with the intro with the drums and low backbeat, until the plodding vocals came in. The chorus melody is unpleasant and has a curious quality of lacking a relaxed rhythm that makes use of the instrumental’s groove, resulting in an effect of listening to styrofoam rub against sandpaper. For the chorus, the end of each line seems to end on the top of the next line, resulting in a clenched sensation that feels like you are holding your breath for a competition, and then forgotten halfway through by a self-absorbed facilitator, who you give a side-eye to while you gasp for air. It seems extremely antithetical to its message, but also interesting because if intentional, it provides a subtext that betrays the actual feelings of the singer. Still, I feel pretty stressed listening to this repression – I truly don’t think the protagonist of “Ready to Let Go” is actually ready to let go.
[4]

Ian Mathers: I can’t be sure I’ve never heard these guys before, they’re one of many modern rock….ish? bands with crappy names and sounds that are less generic than almost denatured. Sure, I have no association in my mind with their name other than a faint general negative one, but they probably had some hit that I didn’t recognize when I looked up their discography but would make me wince in recognition if you played it. I’m not going to seek whatever that was out, because this is just as gormless as I would have guessed sound unheard.
[3]

Josh Love: It’s kind of amazing that I’ve been hearing the name of this band for a solid decade now and still couldn’t hum one of their songs. In fact, I perpetually get them mixed up with the superior Foster the People, who I know had at least one really good tune. I also just realized the band’s initials are CTE, which is appropriate since you probably have to be suffering from concussion-induced symptoms to get excited about “Ready to Let Go.” I also know CTE is touring with Beck and Spoon this summer; I’m fairly interested in buying a ticket just to see those latter two acts (albeit Beck mainly for the nostalgia), and it’s an outright travesty that these dudes are getting billed above Spoon, who are still proving you can make great rock music that isn’t necessarily sonically progressive through a mastery of groove and an emphasis on tension and release.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The surest sign we are living in a glitchy-ass, godforsaken parallel timeline is that Cage the Elephant has been a fairly big rock band for over a decade but has virtually zero cultural pull. It’s as if they score another hit — a genuine hit, if not “Thank U, Next” then at least Weezer’s “Africa” level of zeitgeist — the universe’s elephant will become uncaged, as it were, everything will unravel, and the world will revert to (opens Google News, where Michael Cohen is quoted saying “over 9,000”) not this. I’m giving an extra point just for that.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: I’m not sure why this song vaguely nauseates and irritates me, because listening to the verses, they’re perfectly tuneful and pleasant. The chorus is not so much bad but predictable and the mood at the end is not one of release, but just that it ended because… reasons? I will give it credit for being only three minutes long and I won’t run out of any venue I happen to hear it in, but that’s about it. The score would be lower but I’m hedging in case I find myself singing it in the shower tomorrow.
[5]

Pop of 1991, to two decimal places…

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[5.50]

Katie Gill: The Elton John Revamp & Restoration project caught people’s attention because established musicians were putting their own sound on Elton John songs. The Killers cover sounded undoubtedly like the Killers, the Willie Nelson cover sounded like Willie, and the Ed Sheeran cover, unfortunately, sounded like Ed Sheeran. It showed just how much of a good songwriter Elton John was that each artist was able to put their own sound to his songs. An album of reworked Brooks & Dunn songs should give the same effect. Brooks & Dunn are a classic country duo for a reason — their songs are just THAT GOOD. And though country radio might say otherwise, there are certainly enough sounds in modern country and folk music that there’s potential here. A Kane Brown song doesn’t sound like a Kacey Musgraves song doesn’t sound like a Brothers Osborne song. But the problem is that Luke Combs doesn’t HAVE a sound. He doesn’t bring anything to the song except for a vocal line and a sense that really, he’s just happy to be here, he’s singing with Brooks & Dunn, y’all! And this isn’t a full cover: Brooks & Dunn are singing as well. So what you have is a classic Brooks & Dunn song that’s re-recorded, sounds slightly modernized, is a little bit busier, and that’s it. If this song is going to change so little, what’s to stop people from listening to the original instead?
[4]

Alfred Soto: Alas, I missed B&D during their remunerative decade-plus run; now I’m playing catch-up to their tautly observed and well-sung ballads, Tim McGraw without the blarney. However, I don’t hear the point of a “Brand New Man” cover other than to make money off it again. Luke Combs, step the fuck off.
[6]

David Sheffieck: This is extremely unnecessary, but kinda cute about it. Luke Combs — and modern country, for better and worse — don’t exist without Brooks & Dunn, and hearing him duet with them is a fun reminder that they had some real jams and a long shadow. But it’s also a reminder that music production isn’t a linear evolution. Layering the guitars thick and the handclaps thicker don’t make this pop more than the original nearly three decades ago, but it does manage to scribble over the hooks that made it so irresistible to begin with.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: B&D crank up the guitars (and drums) on this rework of their first-ever hit single (#1 back in 1991), and Combs fits in perfectly with his gritty, twangy vocals. I actually prefer this to the original, as it’s got more heft to it. Play it loud.
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: More or less the same as the 1991 original, this new version of “Brand New Man” throws in some arena-friendly drums and Luke Combs to ensure a more robust sound. Because of this, the chorus can fire out the gate and have its energy sustain the entirety of the song. The biblical imagery doesn’t hold up as well — woman-as-savior metaphors are both tired and unsavory — but it almost doesn’t matter when it’s all so spirited.
[6]

Iris Xie: “Oh how I used to roam / I was a rolling stone” is a cute image, and these singers actually sound happy and believe in what they are singing. The energy continually pumps and amps up with the driving dynamics. But what I don’t understand is how all that energy gets sublimated into a neat, unfussy song that seems indistinguishable to me. Even though it’s about being a “Brand New Man,” it just makes me wonder what was left behind in the process of becoming this person.
[5]

Presumably they’ll have a webpage at some point that isn’t that of this Italian band…

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[6.64]

Katherine St Asaph: Unperfect is a new Xenomania girl group, or as the Fader puts it, “the British pop equivalent of a new royal baby.” At least it would have been in 2009. What 2019 will make of it, I don’t know, though it’s a bad omen that a whole damn Mutya Keisha Siobhan album went up online last month to silence, as did other singles by their girl-band peers. It’s also a bad omen, but shouldn’t be, that “Gots to Give the Girl” isn’t a banger but a languid outing like “Overload” or “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”, full of sprawling solos, little vocalises, and an actual bridge. The singers’ verses don’t vary melodically but do build on one another — note how Siobhan’s “when she says jump” morphs into Chloe’s “you ask how high” — and the resulting lyric is slyly, more uncompromisingly independent than the blaring likes of “Bo$$.”
[9]

Josh Love: Listening to tons of wannabe chart-toppers with hooks and choruses that are precisely spring-loaded for maximum attention-grabbing impact gives me great appreciation for any pop tune that takes such a distinctly indirect approach. “Gots to Give the Girl” is refreshingly moody and unhurried, organically flowing from a coffeehouse ’90s Martina Topley-Bird vibe into something a little more conventionally R&B (nodding to how conversant Unperfect antecedents like Girls Aloud and Sugababes were with that genre) and then tossing a sinuous guitar solo into the mix for good measure.
[7]

Pedro João Santos: Sugababes’ debut One Touch never fails to amaze me at how sobering and antithetical it is compared to their (some brilliant, some passable) remaining discs. I wouldn’t be shocked to see its cover sleeve hanging on the walls of the studio where Unperfect recorded this–or attic, judging from the deliberately lo-fi feel, which carries on to the sweetly awkward, unintentionally hilarious video. It’s earnest, sobered-up and self-conscious, but unfortunately for these new girls, their vocals really don’t gel, like they were joined together in Audacity. Not every girl group can arrive as neat and tight as the Sugas, but they have time. (Also, another reminiscence of MKS is very “thanks, but painful.“)
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: “All Saints on a handful of Xanax” isn’t what I expected from Xenomania’s latest discoveries. Or what I wanted.
[2]

Alfred Soto: The pseudo-musty mix given the rhythm section is a mid-’00s affectation, and the Bee Gees falsetto calls needless attention to itself. A lot of care went into creating a song this annoying.
[4]

Iris Xie: The falsetto that comes in is infectious and provides some acidic sweetness and contrast to the woozy guitar and casual vocals. The best part about this song is how it constantly rolls forward, from an “ooh ooh” that makes you do a little shoulder dance and head sway, to a guitar solo that adds some bright texture. I also appreciate the lower, smooth tones of the singers — they sound at ease and comfortable in their own bodies and attitudes. This is music for a post-brunch stroll amongst the Mission District murals, then hopping over to Dolores Park to chill out on the lawn and watch the sways and rhythms of folks relaxing, all the while eating strawberry balsamic vinegar ice cream sandwiches.
[8]

Iain Mew: A slow-mo skeleton of a banger, with sonic elaboration mercilessly removed to 1) imagine anything you like in its place 2) notice all the structural elaboration more easily. I prefer not having to do so much of the work, but at least what is there is interestingly unpredictable. When this train comes I don’t know the destination. 
[5]

Will Adams: I’ve got to give it up for the confidence in having a girl group’s opening statement be this reserved, at least on the surface. “Gots to Give the Girl” is challenging in the best way, setting off pop fans’ alarm bells and subverting expectations — where’s the chorus? The arrangement stays the same throughout! It just trails off into nothing at the end! — in a way that beguiles the listener, proving there’s power in subtlety.
[7]

Ian Mathers: I hate to be a sucker for Xenomania, but the only mark against this for me is that the closed loop(s) of the production feel so perfectly, hypnotically stripped back and yet complete (and all four singers sound so great over it) that when they start changing it up at about 2:30 I was the slightest bit disappointed. This is also why the instrumental outro, which could easily not have worked, is just fine with me. Even with a mark this high, I suspect I might be underrating this song.
[9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A song that makes you hate the world because a debut girl group single that’s as understated as this could never find major success. I love how the vocals are mixed, how carefree they sound. “Gots to Give the Girl” is so unconcerned with making a major statement that it makes me care all the more for its existence.
[7]

Danilo Bortoli: Glenn McDonald ran his The War Against Silence column for several years. It started out as a sort of consumer guide, but slowly became a collection of essays intertwining music and life, in which the former was contextualized by the latter, then a place where life was a mere excuse for music, as it should be. In my favorite piece, he likens pop music to some sort of Cartesian plane: there are different axes for different qualities, but perfection resides over at a corner “where songs sparkle conspiratorially like diamonds tossed on the bubbles of champagne at the first perfect picnic after the thaw, where voices are silk and silver and magnesium flares, where guitars are the sound of angels’ wings strumming the bars of the mortal cage.” That is not my definition of “perfect pop™” though, which shows how pernicious and individualistic the concept can be. Mine is synonymous with Xenomania: exuberant and almost ridiculously nonsensical bubblegum pop. But it is also classicist (Girls Aloud were closer to the Supremes than the Sugababes were to All Saints), which is to say that the usual Xenomania style of production and craft looked forward to the future as much as it looked behind at the past. (“No Good Advice” and “The Loving Kind” act as proof.) So it’s weird to listen to unperfect’s “Gots to Give the Girl” and perceive the nostalgia in a sound that was already nostalgic. The single is glossy and calculated as can be, but still contradicts what you’d expect from a girl group in 2019. Just as indie was trying to create its own variation of popstars back in the beginning of the decade, pop was busy adapting and branching out. And branching out now, for Xenomania, means saluting an era that then seemed innovative and now strikes as minimalistic. Perfect pop might not always be that fixed point on that Cartesian plane. It’s cyclical. And this time around, perfection might reside in recontextualizing the epitome of yesteryears in more palatable ways, making you long for something you had never heard before.
[9]

Last night I said these words to my girl, I make money moves…

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[5.22]

Thomas Inskeep: After working his way through Jam & Lewis, LA & Babyface, and Teddy Riley through the 24K Magic album cycle, it’s time for Bruno to move into some platinum ’90s R&B — in this case, Jodeci. I am a noted, hardcore Jodeci stan, so it follows that I would fall hard for a Devante Swing homage. “Please Me” thumps, bobs and weaves like the best of them — those layered-to-the-heavens harmonies on the bridge alone are worth at least a 6 or 7. And Bruno’s chorus is pure cream. But then there’s Cardi, going for hers so hard. These sex rhymes sound so natural from her, talking about how she’s got “no panties in the way,” “dinner reservations like the pussy, you gon’ eat out,” and the coup de grace, “better fuck me like we listenin’ to Jodeci.” (She’s smart.) Between her verse on City Girls’ “Twerk,” her Grammy moments (performing and winning), and now “Please Me,” Cardi’s making it clear that she’s gonna own 2019 just like she owned ’18. Bow down.
[10]

Rachel Bowles: This should hit somewhere between Jodeci and TLC’s “Red Light Special” but is so off the mark, and when something is this unfit for purpose, why ref Jodeci at all? “Please Me” is a not-so-slow jam ’90s pastiche with an awkward tempo for bumping and grinding, and that’s if you can stomach Bruno Mars screaming at you. Cardi B builds momentum in those repeated “Let me hear you say!”s on the chorus, flipping the heteronormative porno power dynamics of who begs whom. But Bruno is the letdown, and whereas powerhouse vocals may satisfy some as a corny preamble to sex, they’re no replacement for real jouissance.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Bruno Mars does his usual one-man Billboard chart history re-enactment; he’s still doing 75% more singing than necessary, and thank god for it. Cardi is an anachronism, her flow so clearly of the late 2010s and not of the early 1990s, but her talent remains bursting into songs and situations she’d seem out of place, then immediately charming the whole room. She sings too, and what she lacks in range, she nails in pop-R&B timbre; given the Moore’s Law speed at which her technical skills have improved, she could be Chilli in a couple years. The call-and-response at the end of the chorus, Cardi playing Phantom to Bruno’s passionate, melismatic Christine, is worth at least half the points.
[8]

Jessica Doyle: The most interesting aspect of the song is the inversion of traditional assignments: Bruno Mars moans ineffectually, clearly the second-billed, while Cardi at times sounds like an impatient fifth-grade teacher. She’ll run through the requisite promises of sex and ’90s nods if that’s what you demand, but she sounds far more amused by her own “hor-cha-ta” than by anything a potential partner offers her. And more power to her! The lady’s had a rough first few months of motherhood; for her to sound so self-contained and cheerful results in a song less sexy but more triumphant for it.
[6]

David Moore: Even the horchata can’t save this one from Bruno Mars’s pathological fussiness, the way he turns sexy lifeless, missing even the brute earworming that at least guaranteed some Stockholm syndrome in their last collaboration.
[5]

Iris Xie: “Please Me” is walking in on someone at the refrigerated aisle and seeing them lick off the underside of the plastic cover of a Greek yogurt container, taking their time to finish before snapping the lid back on top. They neatly place it back into the empty space from where they took the gentle dairy, now soiled, and walk away after looking at you, once. It’s you narrowly dodging dog poop on a sidewalk, only to look away momentarily and somehow stepping onto another one, and taking time to let it (and you) sink into the magnitude of what you have done. Like seeing a palm tree with no leaves, feeling new rain that tastes like dust and oil, and touching rags that emanate fumes of mildew and turpentine. Eurgh.
[0]

Will Adams: A collab so lacking in chemistry I almost forgot “Finesse” exists.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: On “Finesse,” Cardi B’s relegation to feature status meant that her verses elevated the pastiche-and-nothing-more tendencies of Bruno Mars. With the roles reversed, Mars can’t reciprocate: his words are uncharismatic dross compared to Cardi’s ability to exude sensuality and charm in both her singing and rapping. Despite all the work she puts in, Mars thinks his simple vocalizing is enough. It’s a familiar relationship dynamic — do we deserve such a precise portrait?
[6]

Alfred Soto: As intellectual exercise and pop spectacle, “Please Me” presents a fascinating collision of sensibilities: Bruno Mars can’t quash his devotion to sentimental pieties, and Cardi B’s curt monosyllables, her stresses like daggers in the back, have a cut-this-crap ferocity. She’s dealt with his type before, he has no clue. 
[5]

Not, as it turns out, the name of Marshmello and Roddy Ricch’s new tech startup…

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[3.33]

Iris Xie: Did Kaiser Permanente decide to put out a rap track? Roddy Ricch is damn excited at least, and it’s not hard to be caught up in his infectiousness — he has a sing-songy flow, which brings a sensation of someone who is absolutely wired to dance turns and skips on top of a slumbering skywalk. The almost heart-rate pace that oscillates up and down serves as a platform for his rap, resulting in an assured pace that doesn’t sound particularly distinguishable, but is serviceable.
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Marshmello gets a G League YoungBoy to rap over some cutesy, multicolor synth flutters. “Project Dreams” is of no worth beyond the fact that it’ll keep Marshmello on people’s minds. And just as we saw Marshmello’s Fortnite concert become eclipsed by the rise of Apex Legends, let’s hope another artist comes out to keep this mediocre producer out of our collective consciousness.
[2]

David Sheffieck: He may be the big name but Marshmello largely coasts here, turning in an autopilot beat while Roddy Ricch takes the spotlight. And Ricch hits his mark: if this isn’t quite a starmaking performance (he’s basically one note throughout, though he does it well) he’s tuneful and memorable enough to make the most of a short track. It’s more than enough to make you wonder what he might do with a stronger producer.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Figure a couple points for Roddy Ricch’s enthusiasm — he thinks he’s Biggie, or, more accurately, J. Cole. He won’t shut up about his rote dreams long enough to hear the synthesized flutter of Marshmello’s beats.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Roddy Ricch likes to talk a lot about his “bitches.” Marshmello has never made an interesting beat in his life. And at long last, they’re together!
[1]

Stephen Eisermann: Marshmello’s production has never been anything stellar, but it’s especially mediocre here, only sounding worse with Roddy Ricch’s terrible flow — punctuated by weird inflections and very random phrasing — and a boring brag fest of lyrics. A song with “dreams” in the title really shouldn’t be this… below-average.
[3]

Brother and sister pump up the volume…

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[6.14]

Jessica Doyle: Things that warm my ignorant Francophile heart: the existence of a Belgian hip-hop artist with the nom de plume Roméo Elvis; Roméo Elvis’s butt wiggle; Roméo Elvis’s voice; Angèle’s voice, pitched dark enough to let her know which side of the song’s “but just be happy!” debate she’s on; the different shapes, sizes, ages, and skin tones of the skeptical beach-goers; the beach-goers all being credited in the YouTube notes; the “I Am Brussels” assertion snuck in via what must be a three-year-old issue of Euro Dragon News; the inclusion of a Chinese-language Brussels-based newspaper; that “Tout Oublier” is continuing an argument that goes all the way back to Candide; that I am not the first person to come up with the Candide comparison. Is the song, warm as its production is, memorable enough to sustain all this love? Maybe not, but it’s hard to care.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Midtempo French pop whose synths do the emoting while the mismatched vocalizers hang back. 
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Arguably the most enjoyable song from either of these siblings, “Tout Oublier” stands out amongst Angèle’s other quaint synthpop tracks because of the contrast between its two vocalists. Angèle only provided harmonies last time, so this makes this track feel more collaborative and, consequently, lively.
[6]

Iain Mew: It’s almost as light and fluffy sounding as light and fluffy can get. That could mean nothing-y, but the contrasting verses give something to hold onto in following its ascent on a thousand tiny synth-bounce steps. 
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Sonically, the doubling up of octaves is the most interesting thing about “Tout Oublier.” And thank goodness for that. According to Angèle, sadness is overrated, and happiness isn’t complicated. It’s a lovely sentiment, and long overdue. As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss. Or more specifically: forgetting is bliss. It may not be as easy as it sounds, but it’s sure worth the reminder. 
[7]

Iris Xie: The flute-like sound in the back that weaves back and forth between Angèle and Roméo Elvis’s is lovely and helps wrap up their message of the chorus of forgetting all expectations in order to find actual happiness that is not beholden to others. There’s a soothing, relaxed melancholy and reassured comfort to this song that I enjoy, that gives the experience of the two singers finding for themselves what will cause them to rise into their own beings. I think the last time I felt like this, I was with some friends and we took a sunset walk. Coming to a park bench, I laid my head down for a little bit on my friend’s shoulder, and woke up around half an hour later to realize that my friend didn’t budge at all, and my friends were still very nicely chatting, but carefully not waking me. That’s stability and comfort, when you expect it the least.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Light, perky pop, akin to Robyn-lite, with Angèle singing (I wish her voice wasn’t quite so cutesy-sounding) and Roméo Elvis kinda-rapping, kinda-singing. They mesh well, the track is cotton candy, and I’ll likely forget I ever heard this thirty minutes from now.
[5]

No, we adore YOU…

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[6.50]

Alfred Soto: I’m bored with this streak of marvelous tracks. What happened to the uneven Jessie Ware of yore? A slowburn with plinky-plonky keyboard work, “Adore You” avoids the mawk of her recent work by honing a sound. 
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The rare Jessie Ware song wherein formal recitation coexists meaningfully alongside beatific coos. The titular line is repeated with awkward stiffness, but this act serves as important clarification. It’s Ware being sure that, yes, this is love. “Adore You” thus serves as inspiration — for the apprehensive lover, the previously hurt, the perpetually unsure. “I think I’m falling for you,” she sings, despite all signs pointing to the obvious. Deep down she knows it’s true, which is why she sings that he — we, even — can “tell everybody” before expressing such half-doubts. She intentionally expedites the public dissemination of her tryst, forcing herself to find shelter in the one thing that currently provides comfort: ecstatic thoughts of her infatuation. The undulating beat supports her every move.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: I really love songs about falling in love — Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away with Me” or Rae Morris’s “Atletico” — and “Adore You” is a beautiful one. Jessie Ware’s voice sounds celestial while the dancing beat gives it a very physical feeling that makes it more earthly. It captures that moment when your head is up in the clouds thinking about your loved one, but you still have to keep going with the routine — because unfortunately, falling in love is not a societally acceptable reason to pause daily life.
[8]

Kat Stevens: Oddly melancholic bibble from the head girl at the Lisa Stansfield School of Dance Music for Grown-Ups. I say “odd” because lyrically, it’s a love song to her unborn baby, which you’d think would inspire strong feelings of euphoria (see Kelis’s “Acapella”) or perhaps anxiety (that Fever Ray album). It doesn’t feel like a topic suited to gloomy wind chimes? Maybe she’s just knackered?
[6]

Pedro João Santos: It’s like Kelly Lee Owens gone rogue, this affable post-disco ditty. And even if it fails to live up to the unrelenting anthem that is “Overtime,” it does further to secure us that Glasshouse 2 is as much of a possibility as that rumour tabloids press every two months about Rihanna being locked in the studio readying Loud Pt. II.
[7]

Ian Mathers: I suspect I may be in the minority here for strongly preferring the more ethereal first half to the more dancefloor ready rest of the track, but neither are bad… I’m just too enamoured by the way bits of the former evoke Julianna Barwick, just a little. 
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: This isn’t downtempo house, this is sleepytime house. And accordingly, I zzzzzzz
[3]

Iris Xie: The sound of an electric fan blowing makes me more excited than this. I know there are many things that are in here that are supposed to make me feel a certain kind of way: oscillating, silver house beats that set to “bouncy but not too intimidating, there are no demands here,” laying the landscape for a smoothly honeyed voice that coos and beckons effortlessly. That could be fine, but then “Adore You” takes it further, and all of those elements are dialed down to a 1 and caulked in gauze. It’s engineered for maximum inoffensiveness and doesn’t have the extra element that is meant to connect with me, the human aspect of this listener-singer collaboration. There’s so little to grab onto, that I feel I’m being duped into listening to this song to the end, and with Jessie Ware’s demands, I feel I am being softly coerced, not seduced, by Siri to give up my brain for AI research. “Lean in, move slow, Don’t go” — false reading, I already walked out of the room.
[3]

William John: Joseph Mount brings similar soft thrills to “Adore You” as he did to Robyn’s Honey, punctuating Jessie Ware’s voice with bells and whirrs that undulate irresistibly. Most critics are loath to defend the mawkish Glasshouse, but as one of its staunchest champions I am pleased that Ware hasn’t let go of all her sentimental tendencies even as she moves in this sublime, velvet-lined direction, where “the club” serves as synecdoche for escapism and sensuality.
[9]

Will Adams: The gauzy arrangement recalls “Honey,” but where that track throbbed, “Adore You” glistens like a lake dappled with sun. It’s the perfect space for Jessie to breathe life into sentiments — “I think I’m falling for you”; “I wanna tell the world” — that are otherwise rendered trite by the likes of The Bachelor. Here, they sound like the truest words ever spoken.
[8]

Going along for the ride…

[Video]
[5.00]

Thomas Inskeep: Because this is Rodney Atkins, he of “If You’re Going Through Hell” fame, I expected this to be fairly trad country, especially with a title like “Caught Up in the Country” and lyrics that back up its conceit. But this is instead more like Kane Brown on coke and steroids, fast as hell and amped up even more. And then add into the mix a pickin’ contest kinda banjo, a “We Will Rock You” footstomp backbeat, and — because it wasn’t already enough of a mélange — the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an HBCU choir dating back to the late 19th century. Which is all to say, this record is kind of insane. And even more insane is that against all odds, it works. And works. And is in and out in 2:41! This isn’t lightning in a bottle, it’s a Mason jar full of fireflies, and I think I’ll hold onto it for a while.
[9]

Iris Xie: Katherine St Asaph: “Bro-country is the closest thing pop music has to power ballads anymore.” I need to start off with that, thanks Katherine, because that holds super true for this song. Also, I’m impressed that songs still dare to start out with lists of descriptors, considering “The Fox” exists. Those crunchy synths with the claps and stomps at 1:50 are disorienting, and honestly exactly like another pop song bridge I can’t pinpoint at the moment, but I do think if Max Martin made country music, he’d make a bridge like that. But this sounds like one of those pop-country hybrids that are meant to be nonthreatening to those who are unfamiliar with country music, but ends up watering down hard-won tropes for meaningless mass appeal. I know country can be so much better than this, but this is about as inoffensive as the vanilla ice cream cups you receive at school twice a year — it’s not quite real ice cream, but it’ll work if you are looking for the flavor of the fake approximation.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Those are some thin “whoa-oh” chants and cheap-sounding stomps for a song this overproduced. Even then, wow — this song so confidently traverses double-time, half-time, and spoken word sequences all under three minutes that it actually makes the countryside feel like more than a list of cheap signifiers. It’s in the little details too; Atkins employs different instruments sparingly — rapidfire banjo, serene lap steel, a quaint four-note piano melody — to evocative effect. You feel how vast the countryside is in the song structure, but it’s in the instrumentation that you sense its richness.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Some tunes don’t even deserve the moniker “advertisements for themselves.” John Deere prefers sycophancy less fulsome.
[2]

David Sheffieck: All the character of encyclopedia entry’s worth of signifiers — lyrical, instrumental, and vocal — crushed together and piled up into a twisted mass, finally bursting into flames somewhere around the pseudo-EDM breakdown. Impressively cheap and breathtakingly cynical, an algorithm’s idea of country music.
[1]

Jonathan Bradley: There are no people in Rodney Atkins’s “Caught Up in the Country.” He reels off his list of rural Americana signifiers like he’s cribbing the Kanye flow on “Two Words,” but though he finds artifacts of humanity — tractor paint, domesticity, agriculture — not a single human being enters the lyric. It’s just him and the almighty; when he says he’s caught up in the country, it’s like he actually means nature. The depopulated landscape is a bit eerie — where have all the people gone? — and a bit unusual, because when country usually talks about country, it doesn’t usually mean country, it means a culture: one that’s implicitly but not definitely Southern, implicitly but not definitely rural, and implicitly but not definitely white. Take Brad Paisley’s “Southern Comfort Zone,” which overflowed with lived experience in its attempt to capture the duality of the Southern thing. Or take Jake Owen’s “American Country Love Song,” which imagined that the soul of a land could be trapped inside a single heterosexual romance. The man on “Caught Up in the Country,” however, sounds like he wants to get away from everyone — to where there’s only creek and sky and stars. But then there’s that feature credit, and no white country singer puts the Fisk Jubilee Singers on his track if he has no interest in people. The group doesn’t overwhelm with its presence, which makes it seem an adjunct; a stomping coda awkwardly acknowledges their contribution. Maybe Atkins wanted to pare country back to something that he thought could be universal. Paisley’s effort was more deft, but, on the other hand, his had “Dixie,” not an HBCU ensemble.
[7]