First J Balvin, now James Blake… the Justin Bieber collab can’t be far behind…

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Alfred Soto: Over James Blake’s distorted loop, reminiscent of a Vampire Weekend arrangement circa 2013, Rosalía tries to out-etherealize Valerie Armstrong, whose “Fíl a Run Ó” forms the spine of “Barefoot in the Park.” Singing at the top of her range doesn’t suit this tinkly traffic; it forces Blake to pour the sap.
[5]

Ian Mathers: When Blake’s first album came out, some of the best bits sounded genuinely otherworldly, but not as much, or as wonderfully, as “Barefoot in the Park” does. A large amount of that is Rosalía, of course, who starts off the vocals here so compellingly that on first listen I wouldn’t have been disappointed if Blake had stuck to production (done with Mount Kimbie’s Dominic Maker, it’s colourful, woozy, vivid). Instead his own more diffident tones wind up entwining with hers in a way that perfectly suits the narrative about a transcendent experience, romantic or otherwise. It’s so immediately and repeatedly compelling I started looking for every other song from Assume Form I could find, but nothing works quite like this.
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Abdullah Siddiqui: The production is impeccably nuanced, the melody is Orphic, and James Blake singing in Spanish makes me feel like Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give. 
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Thomas Inskeep: This would be a lot better if Blake would stick to production and not sing. Though his production here is only so-so.
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Will Adams: The combination of Rosalía’s nimble, precise vocal with James Blake’s marble-mouthed drawl makes “Barefoot in the Park” a confusing listen. No matter how appealingly the track flutters, the two sound completely disconnected from each other.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: As exhausted as I am with the music industry’s compulsion to overexpose its breakout stars via out-of-character guest spots in every genre and context but the one where they were great, the idea of a James Blake-produced Rosalía single isn’t bad at all. Unfortunately, this is a James Blake single with Rosalía on it, performed with James Blake levels of liveliness and vim. The tiny, one-decimal-from-mumbling voice both singers are forced into is quite possibly James Blake’s vocal ceiling. But if it isn’t Rosalia’s vocal floor, it’s far closer than she should be; one iota more of energy and she’d completely dominate the track. So many duets (with some exceptions), from indie to pop to R&B to country, have this flattening effect. Why must she be brought down to his level, instead of him brought up to hers?
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Some of the most interesting production that Blake’s done in a while, only to be ruined by his frog croak of a voice. And yet, the bigger issue is how it all sort of meanders with no clear goal. Blake used to tastefully utilize silence in his work. Nowadays, he could use more than a little restraint. Rosalía is fine but she’s treated as an extension of Blake’s own self-indulgence.
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I’m still mostly unsure what James Blake is doing on any given James Blake song, but even as he begins to drag Rosalía into a ballad-y morass she lifts up the material on “Barefoot in the Park” to a point where it makes Blake almost seem charming.
[6]

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, so…

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Thomas Inskeep: Karen Fairchild co-wrote this song about “looking for a God for the daughters,” and it’s a gut punch of a listen every time. “The Daughters” is a reminder of how we don’t value women in our culture — especially young girls — and the song’s arrangement (subtle) and production (quiet) serve to honor its lyric. Sound-wise this continues LBT’s use of a more hushed palette, à la 2017’s The Breaker; that helps it succeed. But ultimately this song comes down to its powerful, heart-breaking lyrics, and Fairchild’s delivery thereof, and those are killers.
[9]

Stephen Eisermann: There are numerous Instagram accounts popping up that basically repeat stereotypes about certain cultures, but there’s one I’ve seen titled something like Shit Mexicans Say that is frighteningly accurate. There tends to be at least one post a week about how Mexican daughters have to ask permission to stay somewhere over night at the age of 23 if they’re unmarried, but the guys can leave home at 16 and show up the next day with little more than “que sea la última vez, menso!” They also go on to mention how many Mexican mothers body shame their daughters but let their huskier sons live their lives simply because the women have to be better. I saw it growing up with my sister, the youngest of five and the only girl, and hearing this song brought back so many flashbacks. I remember the conversations with my sister where she told me she was ugly because she wasn’t thin, the conversations during the peak of her illness when she was thin because of her disease, yet she was overjoyed that she finally lost weight. I remember how confused I was at her happiness amidst the pain because she finally felt pretty. This song brought back those terrible memories, but it needed to; I have to make sure that my future daughter doesn’t experience that, or that her future daughters don’t experience that. This song, with the haunting vocal and piercing lyrics, evokes a visceral reaction, but goddamn if that reaction isn’t needed and welcome. Sometimes being body positive isn’t enough, sometimes we need to remind people of their mistakes. And all of the asks in this song are mistakes that parents have committed, and continue committing to this day. 
[8]

Tobi Tella: A tender, beautiful mess of contradiction, illuminating all the different hoops women have to jump through and boxes they’re asked to fit inside. I would be completely fine with “Woke Country” being the new trend.
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Tim de Reuse: Succeeds in the specificity of its grievances; falters in the awkward bombast of the movie-trailer orchestration that creeps into its second half.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: Little Big Town understand the heavy weight carried by their message of “but what about the girls?” While they build a country-song vessel as tall and poised in posture as demanded by the issue, the result is more bloodless than spotless with the band approaching the very struggles at a remove. The lyrics draw upon traditions and religion to match the scale of the matter at hand, but the immensity shrinks the personal in favor of a one-size-fits-all narrative with systematic problems that shouldn’t feel this easy to sum up.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Reciting a litany of rules is among the dullest of songwriting cliches, especially when executed with the unyielding good taste of Little Big Town’s careful and boring “The Daughters.” The arrangement forms part of the gentility that the chorus (mildly) condemns.
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Katie Gill: It’s really interesting how Little Big Town’s perception of things that inhibit and oppress young women are signs of traditional femininity like trophy wives and domestic chores. Then again, their audience is white suburban parents, so it only makes sense that the things they think oppress young women fall right in the zone of what your average white suburban soccer mom thinks oppresses her child. A modern day god for the daughters has a lot more things to be concerned about than lipstick.
[3]

iiO was already taken, and neither Ganymede nor Callisto rolled off the tongue as well, so:

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Ashley Bardhan: For some reason, the more names there are featured on a track, the more I hope I’ll hate it. Maybe I just hate when people have fun in groups. Like, I hate scavenger hunts. But I don’t hate this song, unfortunately! It sparkles with hi-hats and hyperactive keyboard hooks characteristic of most EDM-adjacent club music. Madison Beer’s vocal delivery makes “All Day and Night” sound like a Dua Lipa deep cut, which is to say she sounds like most chart-topping white pop stars who cite an R&B influence (all of them). The nucleus of the lyrics lie in the chorus, “All day and night, you keep me up / Non-stop, I’m so done, yeah.” There’s nothing innovative or exciting happening literally at all. Literally. At all. I’m irritated by how boring this song is and that I still don’t hate it. But it sounds fun to dance to, and that’s probably all it’s meant to be. Sometimes, I think I need to just let something be. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: Like a prominently mixed Dua Lipa, Madison Beer gets front and center despite not contributing much besides emphatic blankness. Europa’s festival-seasoned keyboard breaks and percussive tracks know whereof they speak.
[6]

Iain Mew: The punchier Eurobeat underpinning this is a pleasant surprise to hear in 2019, and works pretty well with the compressed EDM piston synth sound. It’s undercut by the vocal and writing being just a ratcheted down version of previous Jax Jones collaborations though. Madison Beer brought more to promoting the work of morally bankrupt video game companies.
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Will Adams: This is otherwise a carbon copy of “Breathe,” so thank goodness for Martin Solveig. His presence, namely the deployment of the peppy trance synths of “Encore Une Fois,” saves Jax Jones from formula.
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Thomas Inskeep: I generally like Jones, am ambivalent on Solveig, and find Beer a worthless vocalist (think a less-interesting Bebe Rexha. Yeah, I know.). Nothing about “All Day and Night” changes my mind on any of these opinions, though I do like how Solveig’s trance stabs overwhelm the proceedings.
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Actually impressive how those snappy synth stabs have considerably more personality than anything else here.
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Scott Mildenhall: Europa isn’t only a fitting name for this project’s cross-Channel combo, but also how it conjures the heady internationalism of Sash!. With a few tweaks, you could reduce this to a few spoken words in a Latinate language of your choice. Toute la journée! Toute la nuit! On the other hand, you could actually give your vocalist something to do, and faced with that Madison Beer rises to the occasion. Everyone here seems to have played a part in ensuring her multiple layers of anguish interplay with each other enchantingly, as well as that most blunt force of aural centrepieces. In varietate concordia.
[8]

Ashley John: “All Day and Night” is a hodgepodge of sounds that are fine on their own — the clinky bump a of ’10s EDM beat and the hypnotizing droll of Madison Beer’s voice — and together are really nothing more than the sum of their parts. A collaboration of artists across continents provides nothing new or eclectic, but rather a gradient on existing shades of gray.
[3]

She’s doing big things in Chile and big things on here, too…

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Julian Axelrod: “Fingías” is a dense thicket of contradictions: a voice of yearning flecked with bile, a measured pulse against a polysyllabic barrage, a would-be summer smash that sounds like a cloudy day. But filtered through a voice as nuanced and assured as Paloma Mami’s, it’s not a muddled mess. It feels nuanced and unresolved, a gem you keep turning over in your hand even when you forget it’s there.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: “Fingías” is sultry, but deceptively so; this is really a song about holding in bitterness and sorrow, expressed perfectly by a subtly undulating reggaeton beat. The topline is perfect: listen to how Paloma Mami crams in a bunch of syllables before releasing each line with a breathy word, her rightful accusations dissipating into a cloud of reverbed instrumentation. She wants you to feel how tactile this love once was, and how quickly it vanished. As she sings, the beat keeps moving and moving and moving, every snare hit making clear how inescapable the world feels to her. When you’re paralyzed from loneliness, the dancefloor can feel harrowing.
[8]

Iain Mew: A telling off so fine and light it’s the feeling of holding your own fragile sadness in front of you disguised in your hand, then turning that hand over to present it as an offering to be taken. The faint hope is that if you feel it hard and quietly enough they might take it away and put in somewhere and then turn around one day and find that it’s consumed them whole.
[7]

Ashley John: In a single track Paloma Mami elegantly provides a space for every possible emotion. The track shimmers with moodiness while still upholding the feeling that she is just a bit too cool for the rest of us. The sturdy beat keeps the track upright while Paloma Mami oscillates back and forth between anger and indifference, sadness and revenge. She commands attention, and “Fingías” is a display of her masterful control. 
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: In 2004, when I heard reggaeton for the first time, I was excited, but also wondered how a genre built on a single rhythm could find enough variation to sustain itself. Fifteen years later, reggaeton has proven more versatile than I imagined — and I have a richer understanding of musical history — but I have never heard a song build its sketch of “Dem Bow” into something like “Fingías.” The beat barely anchors the song, but floats away from it, drifting in a dream. It’s like reggaeton dressed up as deep house: it has the same liquid sense of dislocation that never quite negates lucidity, but shifts it into new perspectives. 
[7]

Alex Clifton: The production on this is ethereal and quite lovely. Paloma Mami’s voice floats on top of it so effortlessly — there’s a lot going on here but nothing ever sounds strained or overdone. I will listen to this whenever I want to feel leather-jacket-and-heeled-boots cool.
[7]

Will Adams: The track doesn’t build so much as it oscillates: percussion filters in and out, and Paloma Mami’s vocal drifts like a fog. It’s a nice complement to a song built on conflicting emotions. On one hand, she bitterly congratulates her ex for how good he played her, but the fragility in her voice shows that the pain is still there.
[7]

Iris Xie: This is one of those rare songs, where reading the lyrics actually made it harder for me to pay attention to and understand the song, because the songwriting decisions here are so tangible and felt. In reality, Paloma Mami could’ve just ad-libbed or sang nonsense lyrics, and the clear, palpable feelings of coming to terms with a disappointing breakup would shine all the same. The intro is stunning: “It was all a lie” and a sharp intake of a reverbed, pained breath, which then launches directly into the impassioned, personal message that she is addressing to her ex-lover. Her vocals are lonely with a bitter longing with an occasional burst into a pressing but self-assured urgency, as it is complemented by the pulsing reggaeton beats and the airy backing vocals. I’m especially impressed by the two different usages of strings here, both which are short, blithe strums that are plucked to express a forlorn, despondent heart that echoes both her quiet frustration and her sharp intake of breath from earlier. All of this combines to create a vulnerable and private atmosphere that is humid and immense, like after a thunderstorm, followed by the brief, crackling pressure right before the heavy rains start. Here, one could take a deep breath, fill your lungs, and then swim in the familiar feelings, of being abandoned and left to process the sharp pains of being heartbroken by unsaid lies and passive detachments. What really nailed the loveliness of this song was the verse that starts with, “Ahora por tu culpa no me enamoro (-moro)/Now it’s your fault I don’t fall in love.” The melody gains a harder edge to its sadness, and Paloma Mami’s voice tenses a bit as she makes her defiant declarations to push back the narrative, for it was her ex-lover who lost out. Afterwards, it goes back to the chorus, where it starts to take on a cyclical sensation with the revolving beats, like we’re being pulled and carried across a journey of a developing acceptance of the situation. This is a documentation of moods shortly before, after, and during pitiful, private cries, where one alternates being strong while turning to pieces, of biting your lip to contain the sorrow coalescing in your throat, of a burning desire that alternates between wanting to seek revenge for your wounded ego and positioning yourself as one who could’ve fulfilled all of those desires, were that person wiser to understand what a mistake they made to leave. The ending of a song is a bitter, sudden exhale. “I know, I know you still want me” closes out the cycle perfectly, but leaving the listener with a feeling that her grieving process is not over yet, and will repeat again until extinguished.
[8]

Good job, Beychella!

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Alfred Soto: Lionized by black radio and concert scene stalwarts, Maze remain unknown to white audiences; the band never scored a crossover hit. They specialized in silken ardor, with the electric guitars forming a warm quilt under which Frank Beverly called upon his vague inamoratas. The RIAA has certified gold every one of their eight studio albums. No doubt the Knowles family grew up with Maze. Covering live favorite “Pride and Joy” would’ve been too easy — a move by the young Beyonce for whom pyrotechnics were often an end. Instead, by speeding up the horns to keep apace with the drum machine, she extends Beverly’s encomium so that it encompasses her relationship with her audience (“You make me happy”) and, in a hubristic gesture that only she could have made, situates her as part of an R&B lineage. Finally, she has awarded Frank Beverly a helluva pension. 
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: If you want a history of R&B from 1980 to now, you’ve got it here: Diana Ross into Michael Jackson into Frankie Beverly into Cameo into Aaliyah into Ty Dolla $ign into Tay-Keith, with a recursively referencing Beyoncé, resplendent in glory, at its center. It’s a victory lap on a victory lap on a victory lap, but it feels earned for two reasons: (1) Beyoncé is still Beyoncé, giving a performance that fully showcases both her vocal ability and sheer charisma (2) its awareness of history and reverence for its precursors makes it less a definitive statement than a piece of living history. It’s an archive of sound within itself, wrapped in Tay-Keith’s insistent drums and Beyoncé’s own drive.
[10]

Thomas Inskeep: So Beyoncé took what some would argue is, if not the Black National Anthem, then damned close, and made it blacker. How? By adding in the melody line of Cameo’s “Candy,” which is “the unofficially official Electric Slide wedding song.” Ms. Carter covered “Before I Let Go,” the classic by Frankie Beverly and Maze, did that damn thing, added in marching band horns and drumline, and made it Blackity-Black. And you know what that is? It’s a testament to her — yeah, I’ll say it — musical genius. Fifteen years ago, I never could’ve believed that we’d be where we are with Beyoncé’s art. But here we are. This is one of the smartest cover versions I’ve ever, ever heard, and it’s just in time for cookout season.
[10]

Ashley Bardhan: I want to have a steamy, spicy take but honestly, this song is hot as fuck as it is. I’m sorry. 
[8]

Stephen Eisermann: This cover is full of dirty, muddled vocals and ends with a welcome wink from the queen, which feels so right because if anyone deserves to serve some swagtastic, raw vocals just for the hell of it – it’s Beyoncé. And we’re just lucky she lets us even have this. 
[7]

Pedro João Santos: Sounds like Beyoncé doing a first take on a (rebuilt) classic she reveres: high performance with little varnish added, and that’s how “Before I Let Go” achieves its balance of celebration and poise — even if it should go even more all-out, like it does later on. It does an excellent job — an admittedly hard one — being an appendix to Homecoming, even if it dials down the fanfare when it could do even better by keeping it epic. But Bey still manages to get transcendent on our asses, during the Coachella-referring, “Get Me Bodied”-nodding verse. Pure joy.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Hearing Tay Keith’s (truncated) producer tag at the beginning of a song that celebrates decades of Black music? Yea, it’s poignant and beautiful. The rest of the song is joyous too, and “Before I Let Go” succeeds because of how tightly the arrangement helps Beyoncé navigate it all. Even then, a part of me wishes this sounded even more full and bombastic. Regardless, it’s still a victory lap that knows it sounds like one.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: The drumline, the infusions of “Triggaman” and Cameo, the building sense of joy throughout: it sounds like this cover would have been a highlight at Coachella. Standing alone, however, it is perfectly inessential: a bonbon between Beyoncé projects.
[6]

Iris Xie: It is quite a gift to have a relaxed Beyoncé, who I initially thought was just going to grind herself into the ground right after “Formation,” and suddenly retire in an abrupt disappearance. Beyoncé has a lovely and warm mood to her singing here, where she seems to have finally “let go” and found her sunny spot. It’s like she decided that she longer needs to prove herself as a superhero who can power the energy of a thousand suns with intense, brilliant determination. Good, because, how boring and exhausting to upkeep that level of superhumanness, for Beyoncé surely has far more facets than just that persona. “I want to be comfortable” feels like her intention for this song, because it is so full of exhalations and exaltations. When she sings, “Before I let you go” and glides effortlessly from “go/Oh, oh, oh, oh,” she sounds so free, like she managed to find a way to connect all of her music together to a core, the fierce her, the fun-loving, silly her, and the her who loves passionately, trusting herself to be without having to do the most-y most-est most. Now Beyoncé lets her voice do the work of expressing what is going on with her and enjoying it, rather than trying to make a point to you, the in-awe listener, of how to perceive and understand her power. In comparison to “XO,” which sounds like a song designed for the radio to exalt the importance of joy — if constructed by a Type-A overachiever who decided to read 100 texts on joy and video chatted with the Dalai Lama before recording her final thesis — “Before I Let Go” rides on an easy syncopation of trumpets, drums, claps, and crowd exclamations. She still pulls on all of those sounds and elements that are familiar and so loved by her, but Beyoncé isn’t trying to integrate Sasha Fierce into her singular being anymore and force it out in order to prove something to everyone anymore; the pressure is all off. Instead, she’s going to relax with her friends, family, and community and express how happy she is to do so, and she’s just gonna do her thing. It’s soothing to hear someone go, “I am enough and I like this” and make a good song based on that self-affirmation and self-care. I’m happy for her.
[8]

May 28: EXO-K – Overdose

June 13: K.Camp ft. 2Chainz – Cut Her Off
How much does a song’s message matter? Can a song be transformed by its audience? Should songs with offensive messages be criticized independent of context, and which critics should be listened to? TSJ wrestles with these kinds of issues all the time, but rarely so memorably as in Crystal Leww’s blurb and the responses to it.

December 17: Wang Rong – Chick Chick
From this entry, we learned what white people like, and also that pop songs usually have a singer or a rapper on them, except for this one, which has a chicken.

We’re prepping the comment section for ARMYs as we speak…

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Ashley Bardhan: This is kind of sick, like, the good kind. I resent Halsey because when I was 13 I got annoyed that her name is Ashley (my name), but she made it Halsey (different name). I really can’t stand the flow of the rap sections in this song. Triplet, triplet flow. This song reminds me of mayo. Take from that what you will. 
[7]

Iris Xie: Tastes like Melona-flavored soft chews, chased down with mini matcha Kit-Kats. The “ooh-wahs,” the clipped melodies, and the gentle and easy “oh my my” hook, combined with Halsey living out her K-pop girl group dreams with her exclamations (“I want it!”) is a breezy, sugary, feel-good mixture. This results in something that sounds both like a throwback to older K-pop (Sweetune’s guitar-heavy productions and the chewy, brusque-lite rapping style come to mind here), but it also sounds slightly newer, since the production decides to go for relaxed, airy grooves to balance out the hooks instead of 2011-style pop maximalism. The only thing missing that would elevate the song is a reworking of the rap flow so that it would sound less like an intrusive interruption that competes with the song’s hooks, which hold it back from launching all the way into its 2019 vibe. The summer songs are blooming and ready for the picking, and “Boy With Luv” is prepared to launch for your next pool party. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: The lilt in the chorus is closer to Latin pop circa 2000, which shows BTS’s stylistic fungibility. Meanwhile, an organ whistle adds a welcome note of discordance. 
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: They can do better, they’ve done better, I expect better, and they really don’t need Halsey.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A poorly mixed and awkwardly shoehorned rap break. Extremely basic disco-lite instrumentation that K-pop has been doing for ages (and with far more gusto). A totally unnecessary Halsey feature that only exists to perpetuate BTS’s continued reign in the West. It turns out the nondescript title is perfect: this is innocuous, confectionery pop that appeals to the masses because it doesn’t have the guts to double down on anything particularly interesting. Even if you didn’t like “Fake Love” and “Idol,” you couldn’t complain that they sounded so devoid of ambition.
[3]

Katie Gill: It’s a very ballsy move for Halsey to attach her name to a song where she might as well be a session singer and a music video where all the BTS boys blow her out of the water with their dancing skills, but a paycheck is a paycheck. At least she’ll get a cut out of the proceedings when ARMY spams this play-by-numbers, middle-of-the-road song all over the internet, turning something just okay into something annoyingly inescapable.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: For the past several days, BTS stans have been tweeting furiously at me, and I assume other music writers, despite my having written literally nothing about their new material except a joke about the acronym “behind the scenes.” There’s currently a flare-up of Discourse about musicians vs. critics, but it doesn’t account for the confusing but ongoing scenario of being yelled at about a review I didn’t write. So it comes as an actual relief that this is a very enjoyable neo-disco song, and I can honestly tack a nice, reassuring big number on to this blurb. May whatever applicable god please accept this sacrifice to restore my mentions.
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: After the past week, I am afraid of BTS stans, so I’m very glad I like this. The guitar line reminds me a lot of early 2010s pop, but the rest of the production has the restraint inherent in this part of the decade. Genius tells me this is like a victory lap after their earlier song “Boy in Luv,” and as someone who is a sucker for meta-references, I can get behind that.
[7]

Jessica Doyle: On first listen this was a hard [0], Jimin’s Cathy Dennis channeling notwithstanding. There’s fanservice, and then there’s publicly disavowing your previous save-the-world ambitions to better love ARMYs, which rings thoroughly hollow. There’s fanservice, and then there’s trying so hard — grins, winks, pastels, trap interludes, even Jin cooing “Come be my teacher,” for Christ’s sake — that it ends up calling attention to the very set of circumstances it may be designed to obscure, which is that BTS has become the best-known product of an industry steeped in corruption, exploitation, and rape. (To preempt the reply: no, the guys haven’t been accused of anything, and no evidence has surfaced against them. But if they really are worth billions to the South Korean economy, then a lot of people have a lot of incentive to block even innocuous reports about them, let alone the potentially truly horrifying.) Having read more — though I haven’t gotten to RM’s breakdown of the lyrics yet — I don’t think the most cynical reading is the best one. I think BTS is trying to convince themselves as much as their audience. “Boy With Luv,” while still not my style, feels less now like a total misfire and more an effortful, deliberate commitment. (Meanwhile I choose to believe they’re not all sadistic rapists using the group chat to make fun of the women they brutalized. But then, I would.)
[5]

Alex Clifton: I saw BTS last October and ended up having a very expensive panic attack. It wasn’t my first BTS show, but my friends and I bought pit tickets together and we were all determined to have an Extravagantly Good Time. Between purchase and show, though, I went through a bout of extreme depression. I cared about running, petting stray cats, and making it to the end of each day, in that order. Listening to music was particularly painful, as my brain punished me by taking away the one thing in life that has always kept me afloat. I forced myself to go because I’d spent so much money already, figuring going through the motions might help me feel better. In the pit, though, I left my body; I was surrounded by people who were incandescent with excitement while I couldn’t conjure any joy. I saw doom lurking in every face around me, telling me you’re not a real fan if you’re not excited, you don’t deserve to be here, how dare you even show up, you ought to be ashamed. I considered leaving the show but stayed (again, money) and spent the entire time numb, observing rather than participating. For me, the most devastating part was thinking I could never love music — or anything — again. BTS had seen me through a depressive spell in 2017, and suddenly one of the brightest things in my life was slipping out of my grasp. It was a scary, weird night. But I’ve been doing better since October. I’m on different meds. I stopped insulting myself constantly. Music no longer makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I was wary of listening to “Boy With Luv” as the first single After the show; some BTS songs can still trigger anxiety responses and teleport me back to a bad time. I prepared myself for disappointment. But for the first time in months, I woke up with excitement at 5 a.m. to watch the video as it premiered, actual butterflies in my stomach. And I fell in love with this song. I love the “oh my my my” hook. I love the disco-funk. I love how it makes my heart light up like summer. I love the fact that Halsey sings in Korean (!!!) so this isn’t a Justin Bieber “burrito/Dorito” “Despacito” disaster. I love that this is a counter to “Boy In Luv” which is such a macho take on impressing girls when “Boy With Luv” shows that the strongest relationship happens when you love yourself. Most of all, I love the fact that I can hear a song and feel happy once more. It’s the greatest gift I could ever receive.
[9]

August 21: Jake Paul ft. Erika Costell & Uncle Kade – Jerika
They say that the best friends are those who hate the same things. “Jerika” is astonishingly bad but produced some very fun writing from our contributors, particularly Copperman’s “Post Malonious-thunk” and Scott Mildenhall’s “send help” message. Sadly Jake Paul will never make it to TSJ’s Team [10] but we’ll be here to comment when he tries again.

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