We’ve got some writing outside the world of pop music to bring to you this week:

• For Slant Magazine, Joshua Minsoo Kim reviewed the new Phuttiphong Aroonpheng film Manta Ray.
• Kim also, with a number of other writers (including Tara Hillegeist) reviewed, for Tone Glow, eleven films featured as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors / New Films 2019 series.
• Hillegeist also wrote, for Bullet Points Magazine, “Today, I Felt Nothing,” about presentation, compassion, and induced paranoia in the game Anthem.
• For The Cresset, Josh Langhoff wrote about Larry Norman’s Upon This Rock and the history of popular Christian music.
• Langhoff also contributed a piece to Living Lutheran Online, with tips for introducing new songs to congregational audiences during Holy Week.
• Edited to add: In fact, we have even more works to bring you: Claire Biddles appeared on the podcast This Is Your Mixtape and posted a tribute to Scott Walker on Medium. We screwed up not including these earlier for your enjoyment, and we apologize.

Do you think Dustin Lynch wears a hat during sexy time? Asking for a friend.

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[4.25]

Alfred Soto: The drums sound good, and Dustin Lynch isn’t as sodden as his fellow bros, but it’s not enough to elevate “Ridin’ Roads” to much beyond the agreeable. 
[6]

Iris Xie: It’s corporate country like this that I think makes people hate country, or think they hate country. The only thing this song makes me think is that I need to go learn my history of country music and find out what the good stuff is, because this really doesn’t feel like it’s anything except three-day old water.
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The drums sound too dry at times but it doesn’t matter much when everything’s so exquisitely mixed. Even better, “Ridin’ Roads” understands how to utilize its careful mixing in conjunction with heavy reverb to create a wall of sound that’s both dense and diaphanous. The misty female vocal harmonies and periodic space synth accents round out the song in surprising ways, contributing greatly to its ability to soundtrack car rides down country roads. “All I want is your kiss” sings Lynch, but this song’s romance is of a larger scope: the precious leisure of driving with a lover, the evening nothing but uninterrupted bliss.
[6]

Alex Clifton: About as flat and aimless as a wide-open road somewhere in Nebraska. Road songs should make you feel excited about traveling, and this is the equivalent of staring out the window on a six-hour drive, wondering when it will end.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Howdy! It’s me, the sheriff of unpopular opinions and ruining fun, here to puncture this song and the rest like it: riding in cars with boys sucks. There is only one thing that can go right, which happens infrequently, and many things that can go wrong. If you’re at all prone to overthinking then every silence will be excruciating. One of you might learn about the other’s road rage. One of you might talk about their accumulated life regrets, and your passenger’s stuck in the ensuing Sartrean feelingsdrive for however long you’re on the road. One of you might be a dick and hit the curb on purpose “just to see you slide,” or talk about physical affection in creepy terms like “trying to cross the line,” or let slip a neg like “I’m lovin’ nothin’ to do with you, baby” — all of which you have to endure, because you’re in a car out in the middle of nowhere. Or are you? The lyric’s full of country-sounding signifiers that, when examined, are off. What deserted, untrod road has defined curbs and frequent places to turn right? Who steals enough street signs to disorient someone, instead of just the one that says Mile 69 or whatever? (Do neither of you have Google Maps, or if there’s no reception on this very well-maintained back road, Miranda Lambert’s precious Rand McNally?) These, and every other detail on the modern country-song rubric, are done dutifully: the suspended, heavily processed vocals after the chorus (“Downtown’s Dead” is the first other one I thought of); the one novel sound allowed per country song (here, something like a dentist’s vacuum sucking up water); the failing to credit the woman singing — here, Sarah Buxton — and mixing her vocals so quiet it’s like the engineer thought he was playing Operation, and if the waveform got above “properly audible” Cavity Sam would wake up and trash the studio.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: At this point, remarking on the irony of country-pop simultaneously singing about eschewing nightclubs and “neon lights” and incorporating more and more hip-hop production tricks (there’s a very brief 808 break here, if I hear it correctly) is no longer novel. But despite its dissonant feel, “Ridin’ Roads” is so smooth and blank that I can’t dislike it too much. It’s nothing at all, but a pleasant enough version of it.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: My ears pricked up with that opening line: “This town ain’t got no nightclub/We don’t need the neon lights.” But no, it’s just my imagination willing it to be shade at Blake Shelton. I mean, this meticulously produced song is shinier than a new truck! It’s also a fairly uninspired grab-bag of back-road car sexy time cliches, but I am warmed slightly by Lynch’s surprisingly tender delivery, dipped in a touch of surprised disbelief. I believe the computer that made the sounds on this record could probably have also made Lynch sound like a creeper too, so well done to whoever programmedduced this. I mean, I wouldn’t chuck my underwear at the stage, but I’d raise a lighter. Or at least I would if I smoked.
[6]

Ashley John: “Ridin’ Roads” is as transient as the memory it is describing. Lynch’s slow guitars and drawling voice are spacy and broad but untethered to anything with real weight. 
[4]

brb getting Southern Cross tattoo removed

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[7.33]

Ian Mathers: Sometimes the best way to deal with hostility disguised as aggressive good cheer is with, well, hostility disguised as aggressive good cheer.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: “Tricks” has some sharply observed lines, and I’m interested in how a song like this travels because in its own way, the minor details are subtle enough that I don’t think they are immediately graspable to a non-Australian: Southern Cross tattoos signify unsophisticated, oafish patriotism (with some connotations of gang violence and keep-Australia-white solidarity) and Kyle and Jackie O… well, just get rid of “patriotism” and repeat. But it also has some groaners — the first verse isn’t strong, and the “muck”/”laid” rhyme fake-out is the sort of non-joke that makes me think Donnelly isn’t witty, just crassly superior. Whatever those faults, I like her voice, and I like how it has a kind of inherent sunniness but is still capable of getting spiky and mean and her laugh could shrink a pair of balls from across the room. It’s as if people have told her how lovely she sings and she wants to argue the point. And musically she sounds like she’s had a strong education in Australian late 90s indie, which is a fine thing. It’s not revelatory but I like hearing a voice like my own sometimes, and I think there’ll be better to come from her as she refines her craft and self-edits.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Sliding, swinging guitar kick flips over a tranquil river of bass and bubbling drums buoy Stella’s gleeful, excited coo.
[7]

Anthony Easton: These points are entirely for how she leers the line “You’re always wanting a kiss and then you want to get laid/get laid/get laid” with an indefatigable loathing. 
[9]

Alfred Soto: This sports a couple of fabulous riffs, most fabulously in the last minute when the riff is as coruscating as her put-downs. Sometimes her voice and the put-downs aren’t up to the rest of the arrangement, only don’t tell her or she’ll come after me.
[7]

Stephen Eisermann: The best fuck you songs ooze with personality, whether that is expressed through phrasing, vocal tics, laughter mid-track, or, as is expressed here, through all three. Stella Donnelly starts the song with a soft vocal that gets progressively more rough as the song continues, with added flourishes of accents, ad-libs, and laughter to really sell just how over it she is. Petty is my favorite sound and Stella Donnelly is very petty here.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Amazing how fast I went from “we acknowledge only one singer-songwriter named Donelly in this house” to “this rules.” But I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear a highly touted singer-songwriter who’s not MOR or beige or sedate, but bursting with laughter and pulse and venom. Add a twisted guitar line, an exhausted-but-subtle lyric (high point: how she leaches all the plosives out of “tattoo,” making it sound as ridiculous as I’m sure the actual ink looks), and a vocal that’s the gleeful midpoint of Courtney Barnett and The Lovely Eggs, too amused to even bother with contempt.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: It’s such a rare delight to hear a rock song with such purposeful arranging. From the simple framework to the angular guitars to the one-off vibraslap, the instrumentation here is constantly matching Donnelly’s puckish, acerbic delivery. There are so many clever details: the plinking piano melody that appears in the final chorus, highlighting the song’s sarcastic tone one last time; the flagellating guitar riff that underscores “You want all of us to pull you out of the muck”; the heavy reverb placed on the first utterance of “laid,” as if to make Donnelly sound like she’s hypnotized the horndog. It’s funny to think that “Tricks” is about hecklers who wanted her to play other people’s songs — how much music is better than this?
[7]

Iris Xie: “Tricks” contains a level of playful derision is something I vibe with, as it reminds me very much of when I message my friends, “I can’t believe what fucking happened to me today,” and we text and/or get together to vent about the extraordinary levels of stupidity I just experienced. The level of glee when she sings “you tell me I’d look much better if I dropped the attitude,” and the way she launches into the first part of “attitude” is full on delicious, knowing condescension, and the decision to not entertain entitled men, and reminds me of many instances like this ridiculous Yelp review that some douchebag left because the cashier didn’t smile for him. Combined with the surf rock vibes and an irresistible hook, it’s a sunny, breezy, but free take on the sheer ludicrousness of toxic masculinity, but also the amount of fun and joy when you can call it out and pinpoint it so clearly and not feel askew about it. Stella Donnelly has that confidence in spades, and it’s glorious.
[7]

But can you play that sax?

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[6.50]

Nortey Dowuona: A warm, funky bass groove floats in a sea of washed out synths and wheelie popping drums as Burns gently hums about taking heart from his experience to strive regardless.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Not the most vibrant song instrumentally, but this allows for a closer listening of the vocals. What Burna Boy does to make “Dangote” an evocative listen is assign each verse a specific vocal rhythm pattern. He stresses three syllables at first (“No lev-el,” “Dan-go-te,” “Who I be?”), moves onto two (“fo-co”, “col-or,” “so-to”), and then ends with a more fluid section. The most expertly calculated song structures always lead to effortlessly smooth listens. For a song about hustling and putting in work, Burna Boy makes it sound easy.
[6]

Iain Mew: There’s spaced out vibes, and then there’s just hanging around in a vacuum for ages waiting for another glimpse of brass.
[4]

Iris Xie: I always find it intriguing when songwriters make very sweet-sounding songs about oppression, and specifically economic oppression here — it’s very easy to go in the other direction and lean in hard into the complete feeling of anger and injustice, which is valid. But unless you can technically and emotionally commit to it fully, it often falls flat execution-wise. So another decision is to go in the other direction, where you honor the flow of life and that injustice, and provide a respite that touches lightly as a feathery affirmation. There’s plenty of air in the instrumentals for the drums, guitar, and occasional sax solo to come out, but “Dangote” is soothing in a world that needs spaces to rest.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The hook and title indicate an all-consuming, never-satisfied hunger for money, but Kel P Vibes’ smooth electric pianos balletic horn lines that skitter across the track give “Dangote” a higher feeling than most cash-conscious rap tracks. Burna Boy doesn’t get lapped by his producer, though– as he unravels the track through hook after hook, he shows a similar playfulness with his jazzy phrasings and hook-y melodies. If capitalism sounded like this, maybe I’d like it more.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The horns are like a sauce on something that might be bland, but I find that I still enjoy the taste after the flavour enhancer has worn off. 
[7]

Candy Crush do do do do do do do…

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[6.40]

Alfred Soto: If hep cats (okay, me) sneered at Sheryl Crow during her peak for the size of her El Lay Rolodex, wait till Jenny Lewis releases the liner notes to On the Line. Benmont Tench! Ryan Adams and Beck productions! Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner! The strength of her hooks commensurate with her vocal command, she do-do-dos through another day in paradise in which her mother’s heroin addiction and other candy crushes don’t quash her commitment to a distance that deepens with age. She hasn’t made a bad record yet. With these connections, though, it’s a matter of time. Consider the grade a warning.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: As someone whose youth wasn’t wasted so much as spat on, crumpled up, and nuked from orbit, I can relate. The warm, chipper poppiness, doot-doo’s and all, is the musical translation of a coping strategy that I can’t relate to, but can certainly acknowledge. (Though the framing device, “do you remember when [Dad] used to sing us that little song?” is silly — sillier than the “candy crush” bit, which is non-literal and was good enough for Kehlani.) I just think I’d rather hear the song (“Listerine,” maybe) that isn’t the facade.
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Jenny Lewis is an expert in irony, not just when she uses it in the lyrics but also in the way she sings. “Wasted Youth” is a clear example: the “doo doo doo” of the chorus, rather than sounding cheering, us exactly the opposite — like a fake smile, too conscious that life is sometimes too hard
[8]

Anthony Easton: Everyone thinks Lewis is Neko Case, but she’s really Tom T. Hall, a great story teller, an underrated wit, and someone who knows how to swing. This is burnt-out ’70s California, recast as Nashville, and its genial shrug towards addiction takes some aesthetic bravery. 
[8]

Stephen Eisermann: A weak attempt at modernizing Stevie Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac, this has an interesting enough melody but the lyrics leave something to be desired. I’ve never seen Jenny as a master lyricist, but mentioning Candy Crush is a pretty embarrassing attempt at pandering. Jenny can, and should, do better.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I’ve been on vacation for the past week, and I’ve spent most of it reading Inherent Vice. It’s an interesting piece of faux-hippie fiction, willfully obtuse and circular in its plotting and dense and obvious in its drugged out decadence. It’s the kind of book that will at once bowl you over with a moment of deep pathos that emerges from the morass and make you roll your eyes at a too obvious joke about weed or something harder. “Wasted Youth” doesn’t quite ascend/descend to the level that Vice does, but it hits a similar balance between hamfisted drug writing and sincere emotion, all wrapped into a convincingly nostalgic pastiche. Jenny Lewis is a deft enough songwriter and arranger that “Wasted Youth” stays charming and not hackneyed in its early-70s vibes, and her ear for a hook wins out with the endless, “Baby Shark”-esque “Doo-Doo”s of the chorus, which lull you into submission by the track’s end.
[7]

Vikram Joseph: Few songs sound truly timeless, but this genuinely sounds like it could have been released in any decade since the 1960s. Whether this is a good thing depends on your tolerance for plush, classic-sounding piano pop; I’m totally fine with it when it’s done as well as this. Jenny Lewis’s vocals on Rilo Kiley songs always had a frisson of anxiety underlying them, but now, in her 40s, she sounds so at ease here – even while singing wryly affecting lyrics about her mum’s drug addiction, or when stretching skywards into falsetto. The melodies are achingly familiar; “Wasted Youth” feels like a comfortable sweatshirt you’d pull on when you’re not trying to impress anyone.
[7]

Josh Love: This is the sort of song Lewis writes in her sleep — wry Gen X musings on unstable childhoods and drugs both real and virtual, superimposed over a Baby Boomer backdrop (in this instance, it sounds to me closest to Tom Petty). Lewis can pull this off for entire albums because her lyrics are frank and mostly stay on the good side of pretentious while her command of classic pop forms remains sturdy. Plucked out of its surroundings, though, “Wasted Youth” isn’t likely to turn many heads.
[6]

Iris Xie: I find it unfortunate that my first understanding of this type of music is the word “twee,”  Zooey Deschanel, Wes Anderson, Modcloth, birds’ nest earrings sold on Etsy, and all other attempts at a “quirky,” (what a fucked up word, now) retro feminine aesthetic with vintage dresses with swing heels. But, I also haven’t listened to this type of pop-folk/country music since 2008, so I own that I’m a frozen dinosaur. But I don’t know, “Wasted Youth” and its brand of wistful sentimentality, that slight ‘doo doo doo,’ and cliched sayings such as “the cookie crumbles,” only reinforces my initial understandings. When I was 16, I would listen to these type of songs, look at vintage-style fashion blogs, and dream about dressing up in the aesthetics of older, twee, melancholy white girls in perfect pinafores. It was all aspirational, inaccessible, and not-representative to this Asian American highschooler, but it was an escape from going to school every day in a hoodie and jeans and grinding hard in AP classes. Now, I’m more secure in my identities and look, and listening to “Wasted Youth” with its mild rock overtones and how Jenny Lewis sings “I wasted my youth on a poppy,” I understand more. The charm is in the nihilistic chipperness, with the helium of Lewis’ voice catching and carving on her sentiments. It’s a surprisingly dark song, repressing its emotions and leaving me with the feeling of my throat being blocked because the little feathery notes sound like they’re covering up the sadness. Maybe the quirkiness and affectations are to cover up the despair, and that’s Jenny Lewis’ unique coping mechanism. Ultimately, it gives an impression that the song is laying waste to itself. I never really got around to doing that full vintage makeover, but in the end, we all have to find our own, true-to-us aesthetic.
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: It’s so tightly written that its aching lyrics about addiction find poignancy in the accompanying glossy production and whimsical “do-do-doo”s. There’s small, near-hidden catharsis, too: the loping guitar melody that closes the song is a small, private unburdening. It leads into strings as if to celebrate the occasion — onlookers won’t see it as anything remarkable, but to you, it’s something you’ve needed for a long time.
[6]

I can see through time…

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[5.57]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Vaporous melodies surrounded by bare bones Charli XCX/PC Music-isms. What makes “Open My Eyes” interesting is that it’s catchy in the moment but immediately forgettable upon completion. It’s as fleeting as the dreams you try to remember upon waking up. “Open my eyes and you’re gone” proves a fitting lyric.
[5]

Ian Mathers: This needs to be either way more or way less distorted. I’m leaning towards “way more”. As it stands, it’s in an uncanny valley.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Great care went into assembling distortion around a sliver of a melody.
[3]

Iris Xie: Sounds like a compressed algorithm for “Purity Ring radio.” There’s a moment of poignancy with the prechorus: “Waking up from a dream that I had / I can hear your voice in my head,” where the instrumentals sound like fluorescent rock candy shattered by a soft hammer. The outro wheezes its way out, with the vocals getting increasingly higher and the synths simultaneously skittering and the bass wavering. I’m not convinced that she really wakes up at the end of the song, but the atmosphere feels like she is orbiting in the glitches, right before returning to reality.
[6]

Ashley Bardhan: This definitely feels like a PC Music baby, or maybe cousin. I first heard Dorian Electra on Charli XCX’s Pop 2, which was executive produced by A.G. Cook, PC Music’s dad/label head. “Open My Eyes” fits right into that experimental, underground, Soundcloud pop narrative, but I just question how experimental that is anymore. This song features growling, wobbly bass, lots of metallic anti-drops, and almost unintelligible vocals slathered in autotune. So does every Charli XCX song. And lots of SOPHIE songs. And many Let’s Eat Grandma songs. This is the first Ravenna Golden song I’ve heard, but it doesn’t feel like that. At this point, “experimental pop” is really just pop. Read that last sentence in your head with vocoder on it, please. 
[3]

Hannah Jocelyn: “Open My Eyes” is closer to the Chainsmokers than PC Music. I’m currently working on a project where I find all the good moments in albums considered ‘bad’ (somewhat inspired by the channel CinemaWins), and this would have been the best song on Sick Boy, if not quite that different. PC is not inherently edgy anymore, but that means the bubblegum electronica is easier to enjoy without the baggage. It’s not that different from “Starving,” “The Middle,” or even Grey’s new single “Want You Back” – if the production credits were “Grey with additional prod. by Sophie Xeon,” I would believe it. Instead, they’re from Charli XCX co-conspirator umru, which is all too fitting. XCX and PC Music are always dubbed the future of pop, but the future has caught up with that aesthetic. What I’m trying to say is, there is little difference between the Chainsmokers’ newer music and the PC Music sound except for the Chainsmokers’ frequent attempts at Meaning Something, so the slight melancholy tinges of “Open My Eyes” only fill in the gap between the former ‘future’ and the present.
[7]

Will Rivitz: The ceaseless yammering about PC Music’s attitude towards pop music has always been utterly futile, but that yammering’s dying down from its keening fever pitch half a decade ago. It’s the best thing that could have happened to a collective of artists whose quality of output has always been inversely proportional to the number of Resident Advisor comments and Vice profiles published concurrently. Case in point: the present day, maybe three or so years after the Internet collectively stopped giving as much of a shit about whether the label’s Charli XCX collaborations were tongue-in-cheek or not, where PC-associated artists’ recent output has consisted not just of their own best work but the best music over that timespan, no qualifiers required. Even ignoring Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides, Charli XCX’s A.G. Cook-produced “No Angel” is the best song of 2018, period; EASYFUN has made three unassailably perfect songs since last May, particularly the deity on Earth that is “Be Your USA”; and Kim Petras’ SOPHIE-produced “1,2,3 dayz up” is regrettably part of a select group of maybe five songs that render all other music irrelevant. And all that still ignores umru, the association’s most consistently transcendental producer since the beginning of last year, SOPHIE included. If I were to give each track umru has made its proper due, I would receive a citation from the blogosphere police for quintuple-parking in the space I’m allotted, so I’ll save my gushing for “Open My Eyes,” created in tandem with the two singers at the top of this post and co-produced with Dylan Brady. umru’s brilliance hinges on an emphatic affirmation of PC Music’s post-blagoblag stylistic focus: as opposed to the label’s earlier pop deconstructions of ~i r o n i c a l l y~ and ~s a r c a s t i c a l l y~ making music that ostensibly aimed to be terrible but ended up sounding pretty fucking great, his pop deconstructions are literal, pouring acid over a radio single until everything but the most essential bits are eaten away and even those most essential bits are irrevocably corroded. His music, and “Open My Eyes” specifically, is a sunrise after a club night that’s gone on far too long, ears ringing and eyes adjusting to the light and sobriety not due for another few hours. It’s appropriate that he’s chosen Ravenna Golden and Dorian Electra to helm the ship he’s built, too: the should-be-popstars are the rulers of a relentlessly inventive avant-cheese pop realm built around improving on the fundamental tenets of Our Lady the XCX, particularly in their use of Auto-Tune so breathtakingly violent that it puts all other Auto-Tune to shame. They both sound genuinely inhuman here, infusing the production with even more of the bittersweet emptiness of the underpopulated nightlife district at 5 in the morning. Hell, the song doesn’t just evoke bittersweet emptiness: it is bittersweetly empty in and of itself, the nonchalance of the opening “Well, I guess it’s morning again” echoing across its chorus’ desolate bedroom and thereby echoing its instrumental accompaniment. “Open My Eyes” is, in form, content, aesthetic, and everything else, a piece of art that strikes at the heart of such a vast array of emotions so incisively that I almost physically feel pain in my chest; it is a “big mood” such that every other object or moment or vibe that’s ever been labeled “big mood” is retroactively an affront. Excuse me while I pay my parking ticket.
[10]

We tend to like him best on his own…

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[6.50]

Alfred Soto: A steady if often uncomfortable defender of Schoolboy’s queasier moments, I recoiled from this on first listen: trap beat whose dependability obscures Schoolboy’s attempts to stress “bitch” in unexpected places. Time: 1:54
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: For the roughly one minute and fifty seconds in which he is rapping on “Numb Numb Juice,” Schoolboy Q is the only thing that exists in the entire world. He fills up the track with his voice– still defiant and jokey, still radiating poise among the clattering electronic chaos of Nez & Rio’s beat. Q, despite his obvious charisma, has always been an uncomfortable fit on pop tracks, and “Numb Numb Juice” provides an inverse proof– when stripped down to just him and his raps, he shoots his shot and hits every time.
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: In our post “Gucci Gang” world, pop brevity is not so remarkable — “Welcome to the Working Week” would barely earn the repeat play — but perhaps the most arresting thing about “Numb Numb Juice” is its concision: Schoolboy Q’s parsimony is violent in effect. He fits around five discrete movements in under two minutes over a disintegrating slasher flick loop, then closes with a head shot.
[7]

Tobi Tella: This is triumphant, goofy, weird, and brazen all at once, and is basically my platonic ideal for what I wanted the next Q album to sound like. I was so immediately and thoroughly on board with the song that even the fact that it’s called “Numb Numb Juice” didn’t deter me!
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I respect the decision to return after several years with a track so short. Still, it’s densely packed to have the semblance of something longer. I’ve never felt Schoolboy Q was as zany as fans proclaim, and “Numb Numb Juice” doesn’t convince otherwise. That we’re reminded of E-40/The Click doesn’t help.
[4]

Iris Xie: I like the cool danger in this track, how the stabbing bell-like echos buffer the snare roll into a damp, collected atmosphere. I’m also a big fan of the “okay, let’s get it, bitch, let’s get it, woo” extended syllables, that together with the clipped and crisp raps mimic and contrast rhythmically with the instrumentals. Together, they create an atmosphere that reminds me a bit of — and this is going to be the geekiest reference ever — whenever there are final battles in JRPGs or anime, and they take place in so-called sacred locations, like cathedrals or flower fields. Best played on repeat, it’s what Hamilton‘s attempt at menace with the “10 Duel Commandments” needed to accomplish, although that clarity of sound might be too scary for the Broadway crowd. But if you’re talking about having guns and being high on “numb numb juice,” or completely arbitrary rules about dueling, the expression should match the lyrics, no?
[7]

A new Australian singer-songwriter (it’s short for Georgia Flipo), not a new SoundCloud rapper…

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[3.88]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m not sure whether the market can absorb another Halsey — at this point I don’t even know if the Australian market alone can. But “Drink Too Much” is a robust enough piano-chug/bass-scuzz/cheery-irony thing, even if those dolphin vocals need to perish in a lobster trap marked “late 2010s.”
[6]

Iris Xie: The genre of this song is “disaffected indie white girl singer, rebranded to go mainstream.” There is also an extremely twisted missed opportunity at 1:44 where she does faux-soulful vocals with an “oooOOh, two shots!” to a 4/4 beat — she could have channeled her own version of Sesame Street’s Counting Song by escalating it to “oOooh, three shots! oOooH, four shots!” and etc. But really, the songwriting, which caterwauls between the potential Facebook meme tags of “sad sentiments for the SADDEST people” and “tag if you’re a nervous opener for a BIG summer festival (but not Coachella),” inspires nothing but dread and confusion. You have to commit to one or the other or make a great mix of both. Instead, I am left with only concern for G Flip’s well-being.
[2]

Alex Clifton: “I’m sorry if I ever make you feel so alone” is a great line, but I don’t know how to take it in the middle of a bubbly pop song like this. I get the point–bouncy melody/dark lyrics makes for an interesting dichotomy, where you have to slow down and really focus on what you’re listening to. But I wish G Flip had gone a little bit further with the conceit, not as a PSA, but to enrich the song’s narrative.
[4]

Anthony Easton: How this opens up around the second minute, and the almost manic joy of the beats juxtaposed against a moral concern about her drinking, are about as interesting as the “sorry not sorry” coda, which combines emotional distance with desperate need. An allegory of hunger that doesn’t quite work. 
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Not as dangerous or self-loathing as needed, but the one pause certainly makes things exciting. The vocal delivery is just too aloof to successfully transmit any of the emotions the lyrics try to convey. The beefy bassline is almost sufficient.
[4]

Iain Mew: The chugging bass keeps up musical momentum, but crowds out any space to think about what she’s singing. Which might be the point, but if she’s going for presenting the deadening effect of keeping on drinking, it could do with being offset by more of a hint of something, good or bad, to make the effect meaningful.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The beat conjures a gender-flipped “Can’t Feel My Face,” and while I wish G Flip grabbed The Weeknd’s face and hurled it across the room, “Drink Too Much” lacks a scintilla of personality.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: I wanted to like this, and for the first 20 seconds or so I really did — I was immediately interested in and sympathetic to a queer artist speaking about her dating woes and insecurities in a blunt but confident manner. And had the song continued in that vein, I’d have remained captivated. But G Flip’s capitulation to blithe, matter-of-fact dead declaration that she drinks too much doesn’t work — she sings like she’s dismissing it as a concern, sucking the energy out of the song. Worse, it doesn’t take the narrative threads she promises anywhere. I’m keen to see where G Flip goes from here but I want to hear her real story, not one that’s cut off so it can fit in some cliches like a garden Weeknd boredly outlining what a shit he is.
[5]

Google News search exercise: “‘what god gave her’ -rhett”

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[3.44]

Katie Gill: Country music desperately wants to sit at the cool kids’ table with the pop music industry, while the pop industry desperately wants to sit at the other cool kids’ table with the rap industry. As such, for the past few years country has been two steps behind the cultural zeitgeist, and nothing shows that more than this song. “Look What God Gave Her” has such a calculated and perfectly crafted sound that it loses any authenticity or sense of being interesting. The lyrics are generic, the sound is purposefully inoffensive, and Thomas Rhett doesn’t even bother trying to sell it.
[3]

Alex Clifton: Cut out the references to God and tone down the twangy elements and we have a charming One Direction song. I’ll admit I’m a sucker for songs where male singers sound like they actually love the women they’re singing about as opposed to listing off traits of a cobbled-together dream, and the girl in this song sounds like someone we’d all be lucky to know. My worst fear for the song was that the title was going to set up some sort of horrible “she gave her me!!” line, but mercifully Rhett doesn’t go down that road.
[6]

Alfred Soto: When I saw the title I swear I thought, “Please, God, I hope he doesn’t thank you for giving her breasts and an ass.”
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Look, I too have experienced the specific happiness of having a church crush, thinking it might finally be reciprocated (spoiler: it wasn’t), and getting a head full to bloating with the theologically unsound thought that you and God are a team, that he’s specifically rearranging the world for you, that he’s made the very air and ground give you high fives as you traverse them, that only now do the sermons feel real. This feeling is also called “being a teenage girl.” It’s not called “being a grown man pushing 30.” And I haven’t been back to church since my teens, but I’m pretty sure we learned God doesn’t make a distinction between the sin of adultery and the more line-toeing sin of leching over someone who “don’t even want the attention,” of pretending lust isn’t lust if you don’t cuss when talking about it, and of congratulating oneself for only noticing a girl could be slut-shamed (“the way that she moves… I know she’s got haters”). Not to mention Rhett and his writers’ sin of making what’s basically a Sheryl Crow or One Direction song, then singing and producing it like they’re embarrassed about that. If you’re gonna do the blasphemy, then do the blasphemy.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: If Thomas Rhett wants to pick up from where “Sunday Morning” Maroon 5 left off, that’s fine with me. Rhett sounds pretty head over heels as he objectifies the woman in question, though I guess he gets points for objectifying her as politely as possible? I’m sure it’ll play well on both pop and country radio, but I just wish it was more interesting.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Considering the recent scandals about country radio and women, there is something perverse about songs like this, when women are the continual voiceless subject. A set of nested cliches, without the small details or tight rhythms of Rhett’s best work. I remain impressed at how he stretches sounds that are long past their sell-by date. 
[4]

Tobi Tella: Thomas Rhett was always more interesting than many of his other bro-y constituents, but this is a little painful. Nothing interesting happens in the production, and the lyrics borrow from every generic bro-country platitude in the book and explain zero about the “her” referred to in the title. Also, “heart racing like Daytona” instinctively reminded me of “Body Like a Back Road”, and any song that does that can’t be forgiven.
[1]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I despise the insistence to keep the verses’ vocal melodies in step with the terribly antiseptic rhythm section. The “woo hoo!” bits are canned and awkward, the lyrics have been overdone to death, and it all feels rushed to the point of sounding disingenuous.
[2]

Iris Xie: Reviewing these very Christian pop-country songs make me feel bad sometimes, because I grew up so far from white Christian Middle America that I know this song is not made for someone like me. As much as I want to snark on the excessive safeness of this, I find myself conflicted about criticizing other people’s expression of happiness. But when listening to the instrumental’s anonymous guitars, drums, and the occasional “ooh ooh,” it occurred to me: “Look What God Gave Her” is the uncompromising, bland inverse of the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime.” So now when Thomas Rhett is talking firmly about his beautiful wife, his beautiful house, and his beautiful life, I feel a little better. Let him have his seamless devotion to his wife, with the safest possible pop arrangement, in the least offensive style, and how happy they are to be in that extremely culturally specific box — they know exactly how they got here (or do they?). The rest of us who don’t fit into that rigid mold of exacting normitude will have to make do with finding happiness in other forms and wavelengths, I guess.
[5]

Today’s controversy is brought to you by the letter ‘J’…

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[6.12]

Juana Giaimo: Snow Tha Product has been bilingual for years now, and that’s why “Bilingüe” is so genuine — instead of being just another track that follows the Latin American boom. The chorus is a little bit weak, but her extremely fast flow is powerful both in English and in Spanish and she always has the most witty lines — “Ja Ja con J/ Ja Ja with the J” is a amazing punch.
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Very kind of Snow Tha Product to begin the song with a warning: “I really cannot rap.” In all seriousness, her rapping is competent but there’s nothing noteworthy here because it’s a song that lives and dies on its central conceit of being delivered in two languages. I hate when Korean-American rappers do this unimaginative bilingual shtick too. Part of this is how it’s an unhelpful reminder that minorities aren’t given a platform, so we’re out here making songs about the fact that we can speak two languages instead of simply using this as a tool to enhance songs with more interesting subject manner. Even more, having these thoughts is a tiresome act in and of itself.
[2]

Jonathan Bradley: “I really cannot wrap my head around the fact it’s,” is an opening line that has almost no content: these are words that stall and fill space and end with awkward enjambment setting up a slant rhyme for “fantastic.” Snow Tha Product’s delivery is ungainly too, failing to find the pocket. This awkwardness extends to the song’s theme: I have heard rappers switch languages many times before, but they generally don’t do it in service of a song about switching languages. Snow does want to make a point about the coexistence of anglophone and hispanophone cultures in the United States, but it is a point that better rappers have shown and not told: spelling it out like this — almost literally, when it comes to the “jajaja with the j” part — reduces the song to didacticism.
[3]

Will Rivitz: Snow Tha Product, in her inimitably vicious delivery and deathly seriousness, is one of maybe five rappers who can almost sell the lyrical mess that is “Bilingue.” “Almost” included as a qualifier because the Sesame Street inanity of “Bitch, I ‘jaja’ con jota / ‘Hahaha’ with the ‘J’” is both nigh-unlistenable and also the fifth-worst line in the song at most charitable.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: I have a soft spot for bilingual pop that’s about how it’s bilingual, but it can be pretty hokey in the wrong hands. This tune nails it on two levels: firstly, it’s got enough playful code-switching and cross-language rhymes to dazzle and confuse any poor monolinguals in the audience (the line “tú eres cheapy” against “beep beep beep beep” is particularly audacious), but it also recognizes that language is a marker of identity, and having two languages gives you two identities to play with. Caught with ties to two countries that don’t seem to want her around, flitting between two languages is an act of defiance and self-affirmation — nobody tied down to a single nation could ever keep up! I, too, am from two places, but growing up in suburban Texas I never made an effort to learn the mother tongues of either of my parents, which I profoundly regret. This tune stings because it really makes me wish I knew just enough Tamil to confidently shut down anyone that might question my authenticity.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: Bulky, pulsing bass drums buoy filtering synths as Snow pulls glaciers over the Arctic and Antarctic.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Those lamenting the death of technical skills at the hands of The Kids, The Algorithms, The SoundClouds, or whatever is today’s designated scapegoat, could (but probably won’t bother to) find it here. Snow’s skills are buoyed by a healthy, Tkay Maidza-ish amount of goofiness — the only context in which half these lines would work, from the wordplay to the first non-clunky “fuck Trump” lyric I’ve heard since the descent into hell.
[7]

Iris Xie: I am deeply amused that my queer college party scene, which was into “ratchet music” for a few years, has helped contribute to this review, but the first few bars sound akin to Lady’s “Twerk.” Considering Snow Tha Product is making music out in Atlanta, I’m not surprised if she picked up on a few sounds from there, and this beat, knife-like and buoyant, is quite welcome because it has the same fun and free-wheeling fierceness. But significantly, what calls out to me about “Bilingue” is that it literally sounds like it could have come from some of my friends, who are really fierce Chican@s. When I hear Snow Tha Product switch between Spanish and English and ride that beat, it puts me back in a place of appreciation and acknowledgment for how much Chican@ feminism really impacted my world-view and attitude towards loving others. My friends are effortlessly cool and wonderful, but it came from them learning to be unapologetically fierce, analytical, and loving in honoring their histories and families and all the heartbreak and pride that comes with it. Looking up Snow Tha Product’s history, she’s a Chicana from San Jose, San Diego, and Los Angeles, and that energy runs throughout the track and reminds me of the unapologetic attitude about how some of my friends move effortlessly (and not so effortlessly) between speaking Spanish and English. I was enormously privileged to be able to listen to a lot of their stories, and I get reminded of frequent, late night convos of trying to figure out our personal lived experiences between growing up Asian American and Chican@/Latinx American while being nonbinary/women of color, and our specific intersectional feminist differences. For some of those conversations, like in “Bilingue,” the topics would turn to the role of the mom, the cousins, the families, the machismo/toxic masculinity, the micro-aggressions, and the relentless need to prove yourself and be taken seriously, and those experiences are in spades here. Just because you need to dance doesn’t mean you forget about your politics.
[8]