Not the best score, but then we haven’t heard the Kris Allen version yet…

[Video][Website]
[4.71]

Alfred Soto: As usual with this well-meaning avatar of social media queerness, his commitment to projecting to every seat in the Rose Bowl reminds me of the chromosomal similarities between self-dramatizing queerdom and the ambitions of your average metal rocker. As usual his material doesn’t go far enough: not metal enough, not queer enough.
[4]

Isabel Cole: Lambert’s attempts at grittiness have never quite lost the vibe of an enthusiastic liberal arts major attacking “Out Tonight” — even here his performance feels like it carefully lacks enunciation — but he comes closer here than he usually has, assisted by production which grooves not particularly memorably but wisely without overselling itself. Still, my favorite part comes as the chorus crests and we get to hear, briefly, the almost supernatural prettiness of his uncluttered voice.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Not opposed to Lambert bearing his sexuality in an overt, almost aggressive way, and in fact welcoming the idea of him rubbing his crotch all over my headphones, I’m nonetheless disappointed with what a low-impact growl the chorus is. Lambert’s greatest skill is for rollercoaster emotional drama, as if soundtracking slash fiction of his own life, and this one just doesn’t overwhelm me with hysterics, pulpy romance or dirt. If this were a movie, all the good bits would be pixellated or cut for a child-friendly showtime.
[5]

Will Adams: The same ersatz grit as Niall’s “Slow Hands,” with the added benefit of 100% fewer references to dirty laundry. But Lambert is as polite as ever vocally, and the proposed impact turns out to be a blank.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: If someone had to take up all the BØRNS songs that will no longer be released, it might as well be Adam Lambert. “New Eyes” fits him like a glove, reiterating his huge versatility as a performer, but is perhaps too slight to be as satisfying as it could be.
[6]

Alex Clifton: It’s funky and smooth, two words I never expected to associate with Adam Lambert. I think it works? I do miss the brashness of “Whataya Want From Me,” a song that crashed down to earth from pop heaven. In the end it gets more thumpy than sexy, but it’s not a bad pivot at all. I just wish it had a little more oomph.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: On paper, I like the idea of tricking boomers into thinking that Adam Lambert song on the radio is something they heard while playing foosball at the student union back in 1974. In practice, I wish he would focus less on getting extra credit for historical fidelity and just let his vocal range do its job.
[4]

We think it’s rather pleasant, actually…

[Video][Website]
[6.43]

Katherine St Asaph: A chorus as if Pink hadn’t pivoted to chunky rock potatoes, a couple lines (“I’m no sweet dream, but I’m a hell of a night”) as if Taylor Swift hadn’t pivoted to children’s theater, and the kind of frantic, unfocused, omnidirectional angst that’s like one sustained AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, which is to say a mood. Could stand to be maybe 25% more extra, but these days what song couldn’t?
[7]

Isabel Cole: Has anyone coined “Gone Girl pop” yet? If not: dibs!
[6]

Ian Mathers: Given that to my ears the most successful thing Halsey had done before this was the much lower-key “Eastside”, it was a pleasant surprise that given the right material (for the production, the current moment, her own biography, etc) she’s a great belter. The quick shift from the surge and scream into the floaty bit is an old trick (and YMMV), but it works wonderfully here, and if some of the lyrics feel a bit on the nose… well, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people who could stand to hear them, again, screamed in their faces.
[8]

Crystal Leww: If this kept up the intensity and aesthetic of t.A.T.u.’s best, it would easily be an [8]. But alas, Halsey takes the time to slow this down and do her signature whisper, and that takes it back down to earth. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: When Halsey settles into ruminative mode, her worried wrinkle of a voice suggests we’re eavesdropping on a conscience of unusual clarity. When she’s shouting over electronic clamor as she is here, she can’t match Sky Ferreira. 
[4]

Iain Mew: What came across sometimes around her first album as a lack of musical identity increasingly seems instead like superb adaptability. This is both obviously Halsey and a fine answer to the question of what approach to take in a post-Billie Eilish world, taking the dynamic shifts and applying her own kind of bitter intensity and some electro-punk, because why not.
[7]

Will Adams: There’s unfortunately too much weight given to the post-chorus breakdown of “I’m no sweet dream but I’m a hell of a night,” as if the song’s still growing out of the drop-focused EDM era. Still, “Nightmare” is a killer setting for Halsey, who sells the muddled frustration of being told from all angles how to act — smile for us, be acquiescent, be perfect. The crunchy rock sound reflects that angst and offers the most compelling evidence of Halsey being a voice for her generation. 
[7]

Most of us are the heart eyes, but Tobi is the rest of the expression…

[Video]
[6.29]

Ramzi Awn: “Pop Out” elicits a sweet rhythm from Polo and Lil Tjay, and even though none of the production tropes sound new, they get the job done. The piano on the beat is properly ghostly and there are hooks strewn about like diamonds in a trash heap. Pick them up and move on. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: With his melodic cadences and skill with internal rhymes, Polo is a delight to listen to as he unrolls his catalog of antisocial behavior. Lil TJay, the one with the conscience, is the less interesting rapper.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: I first heard “Pop Out” in the middle of a Lil Tjay binge, on a sunny afternoon when I was convinced he’s the future of rap. (If you catch me on the right day, I still am.) But this listen made me appreciate the craft and nuance in Polo G’s delivery, the way he can create a symphony out of a three-note run. While Tjay’s solemn and unhinged, Polo’s brash and sensitive, his bars never ending quite how you expect. The whole affair is meticulous and menacing, and the vibe is so well-sustained you can listen three times in a row without realizing. The future of rap is bright.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: JDONTHATRACK & Iceberg’s beat sets the tone well here, its mix of pianos and stabs of guitar leaving “Pop Out” somewhere between celebratory and ominous. Polo G and Lil Tjay have little more to do than make that subtext text, with Polo’s straightforward, clear-eyed flows and Tjay’s more Greedo-like performance balancing spite and joy and allowing them to mix together.
[8]

Nicholas Donohoue: There’s a nerdy choice of description going on here that personalizes the track in a cool way. It’s a hint of an intellectualism that isn’t so much digging up grit, but more going toward mechanical and lock step in the lyricism. This isn’t an elevated rags-to-riches track, but it is one that is going about itself in a different way and that’s enough.
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: In a year strangely bereft of rap crossovers beyond “All Glory To The HypnoRoad,” “Pop Out” does, in fact, do that. I love Polo G’s charisma, actually delivering the kind of wordplay that feels refreshing after years of mumbly, murky trap (not a bad thing, just omnipresent.) Rhyming “poverty” and “animosity” alone is enough, but even somewhat basic bars like “The way that I been ballin’/should make the cover of 2K” stand alone on the Hot 100, in that they are bars at all. Lil Tjay’s verse kills the momentum with “Both my hands can do the job and I ain’t talkin’ masturbate,” but the line is an exception. It won’t inspire thinkpieces or memes of its own, and it’s certainly not as memorable as some of the aforementioned trap, but “Pop Out” is purely enjoyable and even promising.
[7]

Tobi Tella: Oh, jesus christ. Actually, this was less painful than I was expecting from the first few seconds; Polo G was at least actually rhyming on a beat, even with extremely derivative lyrics. But then the other guy came in autotuned and I had to hear these guys brag about being killers a fourth time and I suddenly felt myself age from 18 to a 50 year old white lady who hates “that rap music!”
[2]

Unimpressed…

[Video]
[3.50]

Alfred Soto: In these uncertain times it’s nice to know that Slipknot can still keep up that adolescent churn.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: Double-checked my monitors, listened on headphones, got my hearing re-tested just to be safe; no, it really sounds like that. The drums have been strangled by the mix so profoundly that the kick registers as a shrill, metallic crunch. I’ve got a well-documented soft-spot for full-hearted adolescent edgelordism, but no amount of personal reflection could ever make me love something so disgustingly over-engineered.
[2]

Ashley Bardhan: Oh, Slipknot! I have a huge cock and work at a Hot Topic in Bethesda, Maryland. This song is like someone’s upper-middle class father got a piece of crab stuck in his throat at the Red Lobster and he had to scream it out while the local choir performed to the other people eating crab.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The first 30 seconds or so are, if not exactly my brand overblown choral-rock opera drama, then closer than my self-image can really take. The rest is… not.
[4]

Will Adams: The choir that bookends the song at least adds some needed melodrama. What lies in-between is an assault of compressed-to-hell drums that verges on unlistenable.
[3]

Nicholas Donohoue: Thank you for auditioning, but the verses are a little too harsh for our Fall Out Boy cover band, though the chorus was pretty good!
[3]

Keith Urban loves the NBC drama “This Is” and the untitled Jordan Peele film from earlier this year…

[Video]
[5.83]

Alfred Soto: Honey-baked nostalgia about bein’ a teen when “Pour Some Sugar on Me” ruled and Keith and his girl’s feet dangled from the top of the water tower. He’s still thinking about this girl, which is his idea of romantic. At least the guitar break functions like a thunderclap. 
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: The specifics constantly remind this is someone else’s dreams: a Harley-riding, us-against-the-world relationship is an experience out of my comprehension. But the reminiscences in the chorus still resonate as a bittersweet aftertaste lingers with each flashback, and Keith Urban lets the ellipsis of the titular phrase conclude the look into the past with poignant effect.
[5]

Stephen Eisermann: Even the best love songs have moments of cheese in them and although I wouldn’t say this deserves anywhere close to that descriptor, it is a pretty little ditty about love lost. It’s charming, corny, well-sung, a bit verbose, but overall it is a pretty refreshing track from an otherwise stale artist. 
[6]

Edward Okulicz: I’ve got lots of problems with Keith Urban, mostly that I find him a dull narrator who can’t enliven his stories of other people’s lives or even convince me they’re his own. But this song, which I think is his best single in nearly 20 years, has a pretty melody, a believable feeling of regret and a tasteful sound. The lyrics are well-constructed, and it unfolds its nostalgia with skill and tenderness. And Urban’s old hometown of Caboolture was basically a dairy town back when “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was on the radio, so it rings true historically too — fields, water towers, the whole thing.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: A sweet, easy-going reminiscence of the kind Kenny Chesney used to do in his sleep, only with some Urban touches (especially a few spicy guitar licks). I can tell after only a couple of listens that this one’s gonna sink its hooks into me over time and just get better, and isn’t that the best kind of sign?
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Words over words over logorrheic wordswordswords over an arrangement trying to walk the “Fields of Gold.” The details in those words are plausible enough, though slightly less convincing when you remember Keith Urban’s cut an entirely different song called “We Were Us.”
[5]

When we’re blurbing then we’re blurbing enough…

[Video]
[5.00]

Alfred Soto: The Definition Of and Side Effects of You remain two of the strongest albums of the last decade, but she remains a steady member of the adult R&B cohort so long as she releases mediocre singles like “Enough,” in which Poppy Bush-era synths sparkles pave the sensual gravel of her voice.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: Fantasia has one of the most colorful voices in R&B, so I was very disappointed when this track thought otherwise and the producer put that weird, distancing effect on her voice. The stale production isn’t the star, and I wish all involved knew that. 
[4]

Will Adams: The arrangement manages to be lush without being crowded — it easily could’ve gone there, with all the guitars and synth twinkles and backing vocals. But Fantasia gets lost, both via a blurring chorus effect and simply being too low in the mix. If anyone deserves to be front and center of a surging soul song, it should be her.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The guitars and pianos provide enough counterbalance that it doesn’t feel like Fantasia is pulling too much of the weight here– she’s still the star, obviously, with a performance that is both technically skilled and emotive, but it’s altogether a good song, not just a good vocal.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Fantasia’s vocals here remind me of Anita Baker more than ever before, and there’s something compelling about the way they don’t quite seem like a natural fight for the dramatic flourishes of the music. By the end, natural fit or not, she’s absolutely sold the combination.
[7]

Iris Xie: The mental image that first rose and has remained throughout listening to this song is a retired Cinderella, singing and tired after divorcing her first Prince Charming, and throwing herself after a second Prince Charming. The sparkly twinkling guitars sound faded and worn, and the backup singers and finger-snaps are very Boyz II Men, but then the electric guitar comes in and highlights how Fantasia seems to be phoning it all the way in. While she may have excelled at singing this type of material in the past, Fantasia is also most likely a different person from the American Idol winner she was so many years ago, and should be given material that exhibits where she is now — a similar complaint I had with Monica’s “Commitment.” Disconnected singing about your greatest love of all only creates dissonance in the listener and takes you out of the immersive experience of believing in the rapture of deep love. It’s more the machine of a love song than real love, with no meaningful commentary, just sad discoveries.
[3]

We’re sorry, “Ms. Jackson”…

[Video]
[4.20]

Will Adams: Is he for real? Making SZA sound so uninspired, swiping ’90s hits has gotten tired.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Why Khaled, who assembled/commissioned/signed off on a a decent R&B/rap revue record, thought he could fool us with an SEO-designed Outkast interpolation with SZA is a sign of the times.
[5]

Ramzi Awn: SZA makes no mistake getting her message across on “Just Us,” and the song manages to suggest Alicia Keys without becoming her. Everything works, down to the jangled beat. A surprise summer smash. 
[8]

Stephen Eisermann: The sample is prominent, sure, but it offers nothing other than a brief smile as you remember the (far better) song it comes from. SZA’s voice sounds painfully forced in the chorus — a sentence I never thought I’d type — and the melody is all over the place.
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A sample whose wasted potential is increasingly clear as the song progresses. SZA’s topline meanders aimlessly, and the chorus is as corny as it is lifeless.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: If you’ve decided on sampling “Ms. Jackson,” and are set on not revisiting that decision, could you at least make it sound like “Ms. Jackson”-for-real, and not like a knockoff sample replay? SZA, ambling around the beat almost freestyle, does her best.
[4]

Iris Xie: I love middle school prom music! It’s so anonymous but “emotional,” with a pretty cliched hook fit for an iMovie montage before everyone splits for graduation. (Do teens even do that anymore? Aren’t they all amateur film professionals now with the amount of film editing apps on their smartphones?) But really, what on earth is going on with the drums in the background? They’re so freaking loud and compete with SZA’s vocals, but this would be very audible above the din of an amusement park. I’m trying really hard to find things to say about “Just Us,” but “WE THE BEST MUSIC!!” crowds out everything else.
[2]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: It’s not that “Ms. Jackson” is untouchable– no sample is, really. It’s just that this does nothing interesting with it, in the manner of those big solo Puff Daddy sample flips that mostly demonstrated budget rather than creativity. SZA, for her part, sounds perfectly fine, without any of the weirdnesses that made Ctrl so compelling.
[4]

Ian Mathers: At one point there’s a pause, and the terrifying spectre of DJ Khaled actually rapping rears its head. But mercifully he mostly sticks with catchphrases and leaves SZA to do her best with a big, uncooked slab of “Ms. Jackson” (pretty good, enough so that even the regular amount of Khaled seems intrusive). The video’s hilarious, but for the wrong reasons.
[5]

Tobi Tella: Proof a “Ms. Jackson” sample and SZA can never make a bad song, even with DJ Khaled actively trying to ruin it.
[6]

Frustrated with America Online? Perhaps you would prefer a competitor whose installation plays a tune with the incisive lyric ‘‘Just too stupid to stop!”

[Video]
[4.78]

Scott Mildenhall: Credit where it’s due: Ellie Goulding may have written the first big English-language song to retrospectively reference MSN. By 2019, that’s surprising; unfortunately it’s also the only surprising thing about the song. While it’s not beholden of artists to draw solely from autobiography, this all feels far more legit than “ten dollars was a fat stack,” as reminiscences go. It’s good to have a bit of evocation with the blandness.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The clatter of the percussion and the bold keyboards conjure the rush of a year when submitting to her hormonal urges required a trigger, preferably one cute enough to share shirts with. Although the lyrics are specific, some of them don’t ring true: I knew nobody who planned their lives at sixteen beyond college. And beyond those flourishes the up-to-the-minute production functions as a straitjacket. Troye Sivan’s “Seventeen” conjured the mess and horror with less strain. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: If I ran a pop culture site, I’d commission a huge bracket to settle once and for all the question: which age can claim the best songs? There are two problems with this idea. One is that I don’t run a pop culture site. The other is that, between “Dancing Queen” and “Edge of Seventeen” and Ladytron and even Repo: The Genetic Opera, the winner is clearly 17. 16 has a lot of creepy classic rockers, Liesl in The Sound of Music, and this, which doesn’t move that dial.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The chorus betrays everything “Sixteen” has going for it. The tropical house beat and vocal edits reset the song, like the sudden insertion of a montage in an already-existing (and far more detailed) one.
[4]

Iris Xie: This is a song of mistaken identities and multiple faces, but instead of surprises, it’s more basicness. When I first listened to this song, I clutched my face and went “oh my god! This song has been haunting me!” and then I kept listening and I was like “wait, it sounds like this song…and that song…and this song…” Then I realized that this sounds like an insert song for a Netflix film and that they both fit in the same mediocre aesthetic that has been taking all the tropes of previous pop classics, relentlessly mining and polishing them, and sending them out to be consumed over and over and over again.
[2]

Jessica Doyle: This is basically “Young Turks” updated, which means more online chat, less teenage pregnancy, and more background vocal effects–which in this case seem to suggest that no matter how clear Goulding’s voice sounds to the listener she’s still perhaps not reaching the one person she wants to talk to most. I respect the result, even though the vocal muddle makes the song harder to listen to, and the old fogey in me refuses to acknowledge that “Two kids who kicked it on MSN” might work just as well as “Billy pierced his ears, drove his pickup like a lunatic.”
[4]

Isabel Cole: If you’re going to build a song around such a specific declaration of teen nostalgia, it ought to capture something of the wide-eyed wonder or sparkling melodrama of adolescence–or at the very least its total idiocy. The only teenage feeling this brings me back to is being sixteen on a lazy Saturday afternoon, opening up a mediocre YA novel in the hopes of feeling understood and inspired, and finding instead the disappointment of a voice which wore too baldly the strain of an adult trying to channel a kid: palpably calculated, gracelessly “fun,” entirely too staid to be lifelike.
[3]

Iain Mew: Both Ellie and I were about a decade past sixteen when “Firework” came out, so that’s a bit of melodic resonance that doesn’t straightforwardly work. The alternative would probably just be one more song quoting Britney though, and the bridging in time goes with the rest of the song. What I appreciate about “Sixteen” compared to other bits of nostalgia is that it’s not just focused on looking back. If the present-day concerns merely extend to wondering why there isn’t any time anymore, that’s all too real, and even when she is looking back, much of it is looking back at looking forward. As the repeated pulse slowly takes over the song, it’s the sound of determinedly picking through the past and dragging it forward, not just remembering counting stars but doing something to feel starry eyed again.
[7]

Alex Clifton: I’m a sentimental so-and-so with a long memory. I’m the kind of person who reads through teenage diary entries once every two months to remind myself of the person I once was. I have to ration it out, though, because in a lot of ways it hurts. When I was sixteen, I was in love with my best friend and hoped we’d have a long future together of being in each others’ lives. That didn’t pan out. I had dreams of getting a Ph.D in English by winning an international scholarship to Cambridge; that also didn’t work out. I figured I would have a short story published by the time I was 20 and a novel ready to be published after college, in hindsight a very ambitious pipe dream. “Sixteen” hurts in a lot of ways because it reminds me what it felt like to dream, back before I had constant depression and anxiety issues that impeded my life, back when I was a person confident in who they were and what they wanted to do. My life has taken me in a different course–new friends, different locales, an entirely different career as a librarian–and I don’t regret any of that. But I do regret losing the ability to dream and hope with recklessness. I’ve grown a lot since my adolescence, but that’s one skill I wish I could get back.
[7]

Missed opportunity for a [4] Loko pun…

[Video]
[5.50]

Alfred Soto: YG going mariachi? It’s better than expected, but it’s a hook adrift, a song in sight but far enough away.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: YG going full mariachi is better in theory than in practice, but the practice is pretty fun too — he seems much more comfortable here than on last year’s Stay Dangerous, and the production is the most inexplicably beautiful thing I’ve listened to this year. As for the guests, they mostly cancel each other out, with Tyga’s smooth skeeviness and Jon Z’s chaotic energy acting as counterweights to YG’s poise.
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Instrumentation so delicate and exquisitely mixed that even the bedspring sound effects end up being tasteful. YG and Tyga blend right in, but the second half of Jon Z’s verse takes one out of the song’s humid atmosphere. Thankfully, the extended instrumental break brings one back into a transfixed state. I feel prepared for 2019’s upcoming heat waves.
[6]

Will Adams: A fine production from Mustard (apart from those damn bed squeaks) that recalls the humidity and moodiness of “Havana.” YG and Tyga are also fine, but their subdued energy is too in line with the track; only when Jon Z shows up does the song approach something dynamic.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: This is really just Mustard showing off that he can turn a mariachi guitar line into a Mustard beat, in case you were thinking that he couldn’t. Even if he’s only interested in the surface-level aspects of Mexican music, as evidenced by the placement of a Puerto Rican rapper on the track, it’s integrated so seamlessly into his production style that it avoids coming across as a gimmick. The sex-obsessed rapping ranges from passable to forgettable — let Tyga’s verse disabuse anyone of the notion that he’s actually sorta good now — but that can be forgiven on a track that’s more about easing you into its atmosphere than generating verbal heat.
[6]

David Moore: Mustard at least dependable here, YG less so, with the combination of pretty guitar figure and tired sex boasts making this sound a little like a demo for an unfinished beat. (Jon Z has a bit of fun with it.) There’s plenty of authentic YG/Mustard alchemy on the new album, though; try “In the Dark.” 
[5]

Julian Axelrod: In 2016 YG and Sadboy Loko released “Blacks and Browns,” an imperfect but impassioned screed against the evils ingrained in America and their effects on black and Latino bodies. That latter part was important; the dearth of mainstream Latino rappers made Sadboy’s scowled soul-searching feel like a revelation. Just three years later, YG released “Go Loko,” the musical equivalent of an ironic sombrero at a Cinco de Mayo brunch. It’s almost morbidly impressive how many tone-deaf Spanish signifiers YG stuffs into the song, from low riders to “mamacitas” to a goddamn Santana interpolation in the first two minutes. And while Sadboy offered a much-needed change in perspective, Jon Z’s verse only answers the question “Wait, so there’s a Latin trap Tyga?” Obviously I don’t need subtlety or political correctness from a YG song. He’s an artist who works with big, bold primary colors and occasionally finds deeper shades within. But it’s sad to see him go from the next Ice Cube to the next Sir Mix-A-Lot in just three years.
[3]

Iris Xie: I appreciate this song, because anyone who has pre-gamed with Four Lokos before going out for the night knows how much of a bad idea that is. (I learned from one night and that was enough. Why and how are they only $2.50?? And I had the caffeine-free version…) “Go Loko” is an extremely good sonic description of what kind of night that is — a cheesy, messy, trying-to-have-composure-when-you-have-none-but-you-will-still-try kinda night. The relaxed mix of Spanish-sounding guitar riffs and some cheesy stereotypical Latinisms create a song that would be suitable background filler at a random house party. But its true potential is not fulfilled — I absolutely would dig the censored version and what that would do to the song, because it reminds me of all the rap songs with constant blips and interruptions that would play from the loudspeakers during my high school lunch period. Overall, “Go Loko” is proficient for a sedate party song.
[5]

Alternately, will we ever get over “Need You Now”? Probably not, but that’s fine…

[Video]
[5.88]

Alfred Soto: It’s possible Lady A will write a memorable single after stumbling over the great “Need You Now” a decade (!) ago. They have the equipment: boring singers who generate a frisson when harmonizing. Yet the chorus is so generic that I expect a producer’s interpolating ACME like Mike Will Made It does his name.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Much like my recipe for chicken soup never changes, the recipe for Lady Antebellum’s heartache country-pop remains the same. The ingredients are as shopworn as they are lovelorn, but the way they harmonise always warms me up. Comparing it to “Need You Now” illustrates why that’s a 10 and this is a 6, though — that song had a huge emotional wallop when the drums and guitars came in at the chorus, whereas here the drums are insistent, slightly stultifying. The ingredients here always combine in a way that’s good, but no more than that.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The drums keep pounding as if to telegraph the ceaseless worrying brought on by a breakup. Paired with a line like “what if time doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do,” the humdrum nature of the song almost seems charming.
[5]

Ian Mathers: There’s a little bit of Tom Petty to the verses; I wish there was a bit more to the chorus. Not bad, though.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Like “Need You Now” and “Teardrops on My Guitar,” this achieves a kind of stately, pristine, prefab sentiment: the McMansion of heartbreak.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Chilled, almost elegant production serves this breakup song well, as do Lady A’s always crystalline vocals (both solo and harmony). The bridge lyric “What if I never get closure?” especially stings. Their best single in years.
[8]

Taylor Alatorre: The bridge, overwrought though it may be, is what transforms this from a generic emotional comfort blanket into something slightly more memorable. Not content with romanticizing the song’s premise, they instead take it to its logical and terrifying conclusion — this is an irreversible loss that will permanently alter who I am and affect all of my relationships going forward. Whether this catastrophizing is true or not is beside the point, because they sing it in the same way one has a panicked realization right before falling asleep, which is exactly what the moment calls for. The sense of fatalism may be more overt here than it was on “Need You Now,” but that doesn’t make it any less welcome.
[7]

Alex Clifton: In 2010, when “Need You Now” came out, I worked at my university’s bookshop. The managers would exclusively play Top 40 hits and modern country radio, which meant that Lady Antebellum were suddenly inescapable. I vowed to hate them forever because “Need You Now” felt overly dramatic and stupid and played during literally every shift, but time seems to have mellowed my opinion of Lady Antebellum. “What If I Never Get Over You” is also dramatic, but here it feels earnt: it’s certainly a terrifying thought about a feeling that could, indeed, last forever. I’ve been there. I wish they had leaned in a little harder into the fear of never letting go and gone a bit further. It’s pleasant as is, but maybe could’ve gone a little more high-stakes. As it stands, though, I guess I no longer hate Lady Antebellum, and that within itself is a minor miracle.
[5]