A fair tribute…

[Video]
[6.71]

Alfred Soto: The drip-drip of the beat accentuates Ty’s multi-tracked melancholy. This elegy to the late Mac Miller is by colleagues still in shock; not a hint of “celebrating a life” and all that rot. Stages of grief can be hell on the rest of us experiencing it secondhand. 
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A formless masterpiece — “Fair Chance” floats in on a bed of bass riffs and lingers for four minutes, never quite cohering into a song structure. It feels like a vocal version of a free jazz jam, with Thundercat providing the core loop and Dolla $ign and Lil B taking their designated areas into completely different territories. The former’s Mac Miller interpolations are corny but heartfelt, transmuted on the strength of his voice into a profound tribute. The latter sounds like how the meme of Lil B sounds rather than the actual rapper, a bit smoother than usual but still in his own world. And yet, “Fair Chance” ends up melding together well, a supreme vibe record that works on the strength of its disparate parts.
[9]

Ryo Miyauchi: A disparate elegy strung together mostly by the strength of theme but also maintains in loose orbit through the music that swirls like cosmic soup. I prefer Ty Dolla Sign’s almost stream-of-consciousness-level of soul-singing than Lil B’s probably-actually stream of consciousness rap-singing. If any of the three seems off their axis, it only feels more honest of a response to their friend’s death.
[5]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I’m not familiar with Mac Miller’s music, but I am familiar with the grief that comes from the loss of a friend — and this song captures it perfectly, unfurling with the gentleness and gravity of lightly drizzling rain.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The title is especially ironic, because anything like this, this porous thatch of guitar lines soaked through with nostalgia and wistfulness and hazy summer — is probably going to feel, for now until who knows when, like a relic of another world. And not just because the track has Lil B. (This already feels like it happened a century ago.) Under normal conditions, or at least under non-blinds-dimmed summer sun, this would be at least a [7].
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: Smoothie bass drips down the thinly constructed drums that hold up the wall to Mexico with little guitar titters drill through them as Ben Shapiro takes people on a tour of it, making the wall collapse, as Ty Dolla watches it crumble. Meanwhile, the Based God pulls out the drilling Mexican folx to the other side, allowing them to walk into the town to be greeted by Khalid, who says hi to his new constituents, with Ty helping the new residents settle in, while Thundercat keeps pouring his mango smoothie on the rest of the wall to let the drillers know that it’s safe to come up through the drums to the surface.
[9]

Tim de Reuse: The big-name features are just a trick to keep you hanging around as Thundercat weaves his typically gorgeous arpeggi around them. It’s weirdly hook-less for a lead single, though, with no structural direction and no change in energy level from beginning to end; a victory lap in atmosphere establishment without any real meat on its bones.
[6]

Some upbeat thoughts…

[Video]
[4.71]

Scott Mildenhall: A big idea, perhaps the biggest idea going, conveyed with an equivalent lack of imagination. Powfu expounds on death with lead rather than gravity, while the unwitting beabadoobee paints an almost absurdist picture of domesticity. All of this is elevated, though, by the rote effects applied to her sample. Reframed as a distant spectre of a 1950s American TV housewife, an unearthly tension arises between her and her purloiner. “Death Bed” works better than either would on their own.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: The impossibly sweet meets the drowsy. The sampled chorus from “Coffee” is so crucial to the song’s appeal, because just about everything good comes from there. It’s not that Powfu brings nothing, it’s just that the only bit of his I like is when he’s drawling along with beabadoobee on her own song. She’s likely made bank from this becoming a hit, so good for her.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: I truly thought the 2020s were too irrevocably irony-poisoned to ever allow a Kimya Dawson revival. “Death Bed”: The Bed That Repeats.
[3]

Tobi Tella: It’s no surprise this went viral, being the exact intersection of chill pop and emo rap. The sung chorus is undeniably soft, no matter how macabre the context makes it. And while the lyrics often flirt with melodrama, I was taken by the amount of honest sentiment. The support toward an ex-partner and reckoning with one’s own mental health without falling completely into angst is honestly pretty impressive, and it’s nice to see a breakaway from the tropes of the genre.
[6]

Camille Nibungco: beabadoobee’s honeyed refrain salvages this ChilledCow lo-fi hop hop beat from what could easily have been another unmemorable SoundCloud emo rap song. The lyrics have apparently struck quite a chord with the TikTok community because of the darker undertones, but personally I find both the message and method overdone. 
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: I only chose this to shit on it. Then I read a bunch of the sad comments about this song helping them though the inevitable nature of death, and I thought, more people should be listening to Scarface.
[5]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The lyrical story is lachrymose and affecting, the vocal delivery from beabadoobee is effectively tender, and the accompanying Tik Tok is cutesy–but it’s still not enough to make up for Powfu’s meager rapping. 
[3]

But where does Best Coast rank?

[Video]
[3.57]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Boyfriend < Boyfriend ≤ Boyfriend < Boyfriend ≤ Boyfriend ≤ Boyfriend < Boyfriend < Boyfriend
[3]

Leah Isobel: There’s something particularly dispiriting about a song that calls to “all my girls around the world” but can’t come up with a use for that unity beyond, uh, heterosexuality. It’s not that Mabel shouldn’t sing about desire or sex, but putting it in these faux-empowering terms feels alienating and renders the sample cheerily hollow in a Seven Dwarfs way. Turns out modern love is just capitalism, babes!
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Another case of Mabel’s talent wasted on retreads, this time of “Soldier” by Destiny’s Child. Her songwriters felt compelled to qualify a song that goes “I want a boyfriend” 12 times with “a man ain’t something I need”: a sign of the times, perhaps good for girls, not good for convincing music.
[3]

Alfred Soto: On first listen a not charmless retread of a Dua Lipa track; on second listen the trop house cliches chase Mabel out of the room. 
[4]

Tim de Reuse: How do we justify tropical bells in 2020? Uh, double them over the kick-bassline, I guess. Yeah! That’s a cool effect. Don’t think I’ve heard that before. What else we got? Oh, a scatted melodic hook? Uh, wait, hold on, are you sure —
[5]

Katie Gill: Steve Mac is a writer and producer who’s very good at creating generic yet kind of obnoxious pop songs that seem destined to shoot to the top of the charts because they’re annoying enough to be memorable but inoffensive enough to middle of the Spotify playlist fodder. “Boyfriend” is not gonna win any awards or be on anyone’s Top 10 list, but there’s a high chance that the song might make it big and stick around based on predictability alone. The song’s biggest crime is that absolutely annoying drop but other then that yeah, it’s okay, I won’t skip over it when the algorithm shoves it in an auto-generated Youtube playlist of hot pop songs that Google wants me to listen to. It’s white bread pop music.
[5]

Nina Lea: Every new Mabel single slides her further down the hill into algorithm-optimized, generic tropical house pop mindlessness. The lyrics sound like they’ve been written by a bot, like they should be piped through the dressing-room speakers of a Forever 21. The music video has Mabel computer-generating her dream guy, but really what’s been computer generated is this entire song. 
[2]

Please don’t party next door…

[Video]
[3.00]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: With his stolid and unremarkable delivery, it’s easy to think of a dozen other artists other than PARTYNEXTDOOR who would have been more charismatic on this track. The only way to endure “Believe It” is by thinking about it as Rihanna’s potential warm-up for a surprise release of R9.  
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Rihanna’s presence could probably elevate most things to single status, but that’s not to say it should. Her contributions here seem so cut-and-pasted that they could have been derived from a hoax chorus-loop MP3 flooded onto Kazaa by her record label. Were it not 2020, that would even be plausible — everything about this is that clinical. PARTYNEXTDOOR, meanwhile, does everything in his power to make his relationship troubles sound boring, with the casual invocation of PR possibly representing the moment at which celebrity has finally gone too far.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The latest version of “Cry Me a River” Except It’s Actually a Different Song, this one with the melody scooped out and replaced with overheated mush.
[1]

Nina Lea: I can’t help but feel that when PARTYNEXTDOOR got Rihanna to agree to a feature, he should have given her more to do. Rihanna is one of our greatest living pop goddesses, due in no small part to her ability to effortlessly toggle between projecting vulnerability and utter bad-bitchness, all delivered in her trademark rasp. But PARTYNEXTDOOR just has her singing rather boring lyrics over a soothing-yet-lukewarm track that goes nowhere; he could have gotten any up-and-coming R&B vocalist and the result would largely have turned out the same.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: Sincerity works better for PARTY when it feels like a secret, like you accidentally uncovered his true core under his shallow asshole guise. “Believe It” reveals that sensitive side to the forefront both through his earnest pleads for forgiveness and an R&B beat that really lets the sun in. He’s anonymous in this environment without much of the song distinguishing his level-headed, heart-on-sleeve passions apart from other abundant crooners like Khalid.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Sub-mediocre sadboi Auto-Tuned R&B that, frankly, probably wouldn’t be getting any attention were it not for the presence of Rihanna on its chorus. PARTYNEXTDOOR sounds like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of Frank Ocean, albeit one who’s unfortunately been taking too many cues from the Weeknd’s sexual politics.
[2]

Alfred Soto: I’m not sure whom to believe: PARTNEXTDOOR’s predatory sadface routine or Rihanna singing as if she can’t persuade herself she liked the fucker to begin with. No one here gives a damn.
[2]

A little harsh a title for a [4.50], don’t you think?

[Video]
[4.50]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Overwrought, with a surfeit with pavaler references (“kilt like a Celt,” “Bollywood song,” “Tiananmen Square”), “Persona Non Grata” is an unprepossessing first offering from a band starting to release music again after a nine-year hiatus.  
[4]

Tobi Tella: Almost collapses under the weight of its own self-importance, with references to Tiananmen Square popping out of nowhere, but Oberst’s melancholy vocal performance ties it all together and the jumble of lyrics does at least hint to a narrative. The betrayal of structure is what ultimately works — the repeated last lines wring out more emotion than anything prior.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: I am predisposed to dislike Bright Eyes for reasons I know better than to elaborate on (it turns out the Internet is A-OK with shouting writers into hell with, essentially, “let people enjoy things” if the things are not by Marvel but beloved critical icons). But this is fine, I suppose, Christine Fellows without the charm and a Tiananmen Square verse that I hope we can agree is ill-conceptualized at best.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Disabused of the supposition that Conor Oberst was a man who avoided aftershave and cologne as if they were spilled drinks, I accepted “Persona Non Grata” as another of his wobbly-voiced visions of Johanna, more art-damaged than usual (bagpipes?).
[4]

Katie Gill: Bagpipes? Okay, bagpipes. Bagpipes. The song feels aggressively plodding, trucking along in an almost monotonous manner, and then bagpipes. The mixing is odd, and I almost ended up turning this off, but bagpipes! Remarkably under-used bagpipes that kind of feel more like a gimmick than a well-crafted part of the song, but bagpipes all the same.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: I expected my annoyance with a Conor Oberst song would be from obnoxious pride shown for his collection of bookish, passive-aggressive lyrics, or maybe how his rage flows out of his overly enunciated voice. But the rhymes here are actually rudimentary, and the melody he builds around it even more so. It’s not unrelieved tension as much as it is just lack for trying.
[4]

• Nortey Dowuona is releasing two albums on Bandcamp in the coming week: listen to Samfl3’s For Taya, out April 30, and Caracal Sneakers, out May 1.
• The newest issue of Tone Glow, Joshua Minsoo Kim’s newsletter about experimental music, features an interview with saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, as well as the writers panel (including Kim, Ashley Bardhan, and Ryo Miyauchi) covering four new albums from the Longform Editions collective.
• For Pitchfork, Ashley Bardhan reviewed Ambar Lucid’s Garden of Lucid.

Challenge acceptable…

[Video][Website]
[5.67]

Ryo Miyauchi: The synth leads are chunky like a fat streak of crayon, and the production tricks are a lot more simple. The lyrics, too, read like a script shouted by a cartoon hero. But if Perfume sounds more regressive here, it’s because “Challenger” dates itself all the way back to the beginning of their history: they salvaged this from an early demo that Nakata first made when he was approached to produce for a teen pop unit from Hiroshima. The song highlights all the tremendous changes since, Nakata’s still clunky English lyrics notwithstanding, but it does better to point out what has remained the same.  Perfume has always been singing this same song about looking at the challenges ahead, and so “Challenger” could’ve come out any time in their long career.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Why did “Hurly Burly” feel like an escape, a little bit of stowed-away-in-hammerspace comfort, where this just feels saccharine? The lyrics are nowhere near as peppy as the music, yet nowadays, In These Times™, I can’t.
[5]

Jessica Doyle: That “we-are-challen-ger” refrain is the weakest part of the song, and unfortunately the first; get past it and you settle into a competent and enjoyable, if unremarkable, Perfume song, with a chorus that manages to be affecting despite its repetitive quality. Everything about the packaging of this — the Make My Video challenge, the winning of the challenge by an 11-year-old, the news that Nakata actually wrote the song a couple decades ago — seems designed to say, “Don’t expect another ‘Polyrhythm’ or even ‘Pick Me Up,’ you’re not getting it.” But even with lowered expectations, the song’s merely okay. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: The sustained mournfulness of the intro synth sets the mood for a track incorporating Apollo-era Eno and, well, the sustained mournfulness of The Visitors-era ABBA. When the tempos intensify, I hear no lessening of the funereal mood. 
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Kinetic yet somehow static, “Challenger” treads water for longer than it can withstand. The story behind it might give it an extra edge for fans and followers, but as layered as it quietly is, it isn’t quite so engaging without that investment.
[6]

Will Adams: Perfume tend to get sentimental with their milestone anniversaries, and “Challenger” is no exception. There’s plenty of charm here: the zooming sonics are a welcome return to form after some inconsistent dabbles in future bass, and it’s sweet to commemorate the very first song Nakata wrote for the trio. But with that comes the clunkiness one would expect from the very first song Nakata wrote for the trio: the titular refrain is earnest but awkward, and the key change feels tacked-on. On paper, “Challenger” has designs for great cosmic exploration; in practice, the song is content to wait at the station.
[6]

If funk is exuding from your bones, you may be being used to make stock…

[Video]
[5.56]

David Moore: This song has everything: Seinfeld slap bass, cartoon elephant ribcage percussion, multi-tracked falsetto approximations of exclamation points, audible pixelated firework GIFs, smeared squeals, spirit week clap ‘n’ stomp, huffs, puffs, boings, sproings, terrible rapping (blame Jacob, I think), competent rapping (thank Tank, I’m sure), time signature fuckery of the highest order, and the thorniest chord chart this side of a Steely Dan parody. What it lacks, unfortunately, is any semblance of funk, despite repeated invocations of the stuff.
[4]

Kylo Nocom: Jacob Collier, notorious for making music theory a brand, collaborates with pop’s biggest studio genius and a Tiny Desk Concert winner to release this. It’s likely to be dismissed as NPR-sanctioned Fun, a tasteful enemy to the more vulgar forms of genre-blending that populate Minecraft music festivals. And I get it! The last time we talked about something like this, everyone who liked it had to qualify themselves because nobody wants to admit to sincerely enjoying Berklee funk. So much of “In My Bones” makes me want to hate it immediately, but somehow, they deliver something great! Kimbra’s squeals and yelps counter Collier’s nerdier impulses and push the song into nerd-crush song territory, while Tank’s rapping launches the song into a higher plane of ridiculousness. That’s not to mention the fantastic rhythm section, the interpolation of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” and the ridiculous usage of “tintinnabulation.” Every possible negative description I can come up with (“the regressive children’s show indie-quirk that would’ve been fashionable in 2011,” “mistakes sound effects and showing off polyphony for actual songwriting,” “the shit that will have us suffering through more Bill Wurtz”) just sounds like something unmistakably up my alley.
[9]

Oliver Maier: Collier hits on the same problems as usual, aiming for a kind of proggy, pan-musical utopianism and instead arriving in Wackyland. His approach incorporates feats of musical theory that I have no doubt are technically brilliant and far beyond my grasp, but the effect is exhausting 1080p slapstick, desperate to entertain but without any sense of feeling, let alone a funky one. Collier includes a reference to To Pimp A Butterfly in his pitched-up rap verse alongside Tank (of the Bangas), but their main takeaway from that album seems to have been that sometimes you can rap in a really annoying voice. Kimbra is charming when she and Collier aren’t duetting Windows startup jingles.
[1]

Alfred Soto: The smug polyphony is the intention and problem: fun and/or Meghan Trainor singing 1983-era Heaven 17. The slap bass runs, massed harmonies, and disregard for melody lines might be cool to stage, I guess.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Like you handed a couple of kids “Sat In Your Lap,” “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” some Prince stems, a couple dozen gecs, and a defective blender, except — much like the actual Kate Bush/Prince collaboration — not as good as that sounds. When (not if) you find something in this song obnoxious, fear not; it’ll be gone in five seconds. Of course this goes for the parts you like, too, and while it’s hard to latch onto them in this cacophonous GamemasterAnthony maelstrom of an arrangement, the obnoxious parts come through just fine. Everything good — that descending riff I swear is the demo song from an old Yamaha, the crush lyrics that at least match words to whirlwind — is fleeting. And everything bad is hyper-amplified: the barrels of quirk poured into what might have been a groove, the vwoips and squeaks crowding out what might have been a throughline, and the main vocalist who wants to be Craig David but actually is soulDecision.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: I don’t like Jacob Collier. He seems like another Robin Thicke, and I thought we learned our lesson the last time. But at least the bass and drums spin into a swirly mix that presses him against the glass, while Kimbra sinks in and gets stuck as Jacob tries and fails to find his way over to her. As I wonder how Jacob has been trapped in this expensive Tyler Perry house, I see MonoNeon and Tank chillin’ outside, Tank spitting silly rhymes quickly, before hopping in her tank to blow up the house and send Jacob and Kimbra high into the clouds. I say all this to say: as long as he doesn’t show up to the YouTube Music Awards with Rowan Blanchard twerking on him, I approve of Jacob Collier.
[8]

Katie Gill: This is exactly what Justin Timberlake wants to do but is too mainstream to actually do. “In My Bones” takes the self-referential, 1970s-flavored, falsetto-tinged skeleton of songs like “Can’t Stop This Feeling” or “The Other Side” and blasts it into its full, dancing glory, rather than keeping it neutered enough for Kidz Bop albums, end-credits dance parties, and family-friendly radio stations that only play modern music by people the color of copy paper. This is fun, weird, catchy as hell, gives off some proper funk vibes, and yet still cannot get that coveted [10] as it criminally underuses Tank Ball. Still, it’s enough of a jam that I can mostly overlook that sin.
[8]

Juana Giaimo: This is seriously one of the most annoying songs I have heard in a long time. It doesn’t have the carefree, happy feeling of funk. Instead, the lack of balance makes it sound like a ball of nerves about to explode. 
[3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Futuristic and atavistic, structured and unpredictable, earthbound and phantasmagorical, referential and errant, maximalist, camp, funk, chaos: I’m running out of adjectives to describe this! The percussion in this track feels like the mad machinations of a sentient robot. There are so few times as a music fan that you can genuinely say something sounds like nothing else you’ve ever heard before, but when it happens, it feels like being knocked off your feet in the best way possible.
[9]

Against all odds, we still have puns to spare…

[Video]
[6.50]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Damn, in the middle of a respiratory pandemic, she really did just rap, “Now they can’t breathe, somebody get them a ventilator,” didn’t she? Points for sheer audacity. 
[7]

Will Adams: The thunderous bass helps justify the title, but the segmented hook makes the song feel even more like scattered showers.
[5]

Oliver Maier: Rico is unstoppable when she goes throttle, but still has a tendency to flounder when she slows things down. “Lightning” exhibits this neatly, with an electrifying (hahaaaa) first minute, and then another two which feel perfunctory. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: Moving from the demands of sung pop to the exigences of honest rap, Rico Nasty snaps and boasts over a garage-worthy bass line and the usual percussive clicks. The tension between the self-loathing admitted in the chorus and those verse boasts is very necessary.
[7]

Leah Isobel: Rico’s sideways first verse doesn’t exactly find a pocket within Nick Mira’s antigravity-zone beat; rather, she creates her own rhythm against it. It’s a destabilizing and deeply interesting approach, almost math-rap. I wish she didn’t drop that idea as the song progresses, but the disorientation it creates lingers in the hook — “Bank account look lightning/ Lightning come and strike me if I’m lying” — is a Cheshire Cat riddle disguised as a brag.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: I liked this, so I guess i like it. *starts twirling on my weak toes out of the frame.*
[7]

a/k/a/ “Stay At Home”…

[Video]
[7.31]

Thomas Inskeep: Dua Lipa’s sophomore album Future Nostalgia is a cracker of a pop record; perfectly, consistently upbeat musically even when its words are concerned with bad (or bad-for-her) guys. “Break My Heart” is one of two tracks on the album which interpolate/sample prior pop classics, utilising the guitar riff from INXS’s “Need You Tonight” in a smart way and mixing it into a disco cake batter. The way Lipa sings with, instead of against, the riff, is clever and stands out. This single is nowhere near the candy crush of “Don’t Start Now,” but its smart production gets it over.
[7]

Jackie Powell: When I first heard “Break My Heart,” on the eve of Future Nostalgia‘s release, I thought that Lipa had retreated back to the more reserved vocals that we heard on her self-titled debut. While there’s less of a vocal confidence on this cut compared to “Don’t Start Now” and “Physical,” it’s the dynamics that make up for it. On “Break My Heart” — produced by The Monsters & Strangerz and Watt — it’s almost as if the instrumental transitions add a necessary complement and supplement to Lipa’s vocal vulnerability, which is appropriate based on the lyrics. The bouncy introductory bassline and timid hit-hat mirror the emotional drive in Lipa’s lyrics, but then as her vocal confidence and admittance of her emotions creep in, so do the keyed-in chords. By the second verse, there’s a convergence of the bass, a fuller-sounding drum kit, rhythm guitar riffs and a string section that aids the pre-chorus. INXS’ opening riffs in “Need You Tonight” have a constant presence, but this is a sample that deserves a bit more respect than, let’s say, Rodgers and Hammerstein in “7 Rings.” This sample serves as an assist rather than a cop-out. The Monster & Strangerz are absolute pros at finessing a soaring chorus (“The Middle,” “Liar” and “Hate Me”) and this is what grounds the giddiness in “Break My Heart.”
[9]

Nina Lea: Like so many great dance pop tracks have done since the beginning of time, “Break My Heart” takes a moment of intense vulnerability and transforms it into something electrifying and superbly groovy. “I hope I’m not the only one who feels it all,” Dua Lipa sings, over a relentless beat suggesting the danger that comes with opening ourselves up. Later, in the pre-chorus, she pleads, “I’m afraid of all the things you could do to me.” After all, who doesn’t recognize the fear of falling in love with someone who might break their heart? But this song knows the answer, as did the dance pop greats that came before: The heartbreak may come, but when the dance floor calls, we must obey.
[9]

Tobi Tella: The slow discovery of the beat over the whole first verse, pushing that huge build up only to take it all away with the conversational chorus is a neat trick. It legitimately surprised me the first time I listened, which doesn’t happen often. It’s the polished kind of slick as the rest of her singles; she just can’t miss, huh?
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: A slow, loping bass slumbers underneath Dua’s soft, unimposing tenor as the glass drums tap in just hard enough, then get pressed down by the heavy, chunky synths. Then the bass lopes back in with their new drum sets with glittery disco guitar trying to holler at them desperately while trying to tape up their wrinkles. The synths snatch the drums from the bass; the bass responds by smirking and producing another set of glass drums, with the dice guitar flapping its wrinkles around the bass. Dua beckons with a group of strings and hands the bass their own guitar, leaving the disco guitar to shake around with the pissed synths. Dua and the bass go home to order Jamba Juice.
[10]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Almost every think-piece imaginable about Dua Lipa becoming the Quarantine Queen has already been written, so I’ll keep my thoughts here short and simple: one of the best parts of being forced to indefinitely self-quarantine is getting to hear her sing, “I would have stayed at home/Cuz I was doing better alone,” and then patting myself on the back like I’m taking her advice. (It’s the little victories that get you through each day.) 
[7]

Katie Gill: That is a VERY sexy bass. The song itself is also sexy but sexy in a way that we’ve kind of seen before. It’s a pretty good Charlie Puth retread and a catchy as hell Charlie Puth retread but again, still kind of feels like a Charlie Puth retread.
[7]

Michael Hong: Compare this with Charlie Puth’s “How Long“: both exude a sort of funk energy that maybe makes you tap your foot, maybe nod your head, but they’re not something you’ll want to dance to. Both drop everything except for the bassline before the chorus in the hopes that it will expand the limits of their chorus. But the difference is that while Charlie Puth exhibits a dorky sort of charm, Dua Lipa lacks the personality to make the track have any stakes. “Break My Heart” plays out with a hardness that makes everything sound insignificant. Like there’s no reason for attachment, like her heart can never really be broken and like it’ll be her ex writing the pathetically desperate breakup tracks while she’s long moved on.
[4]

Pedro João Santos: Only nine tracks into Future Nostalgia does Dua forgo a bit of control — a stance she’s had since the debut, now rebuilt as pop hubris and a take-no-prisoners outlook on men and sex (as she should). All it took was (another) disco tour de force with the naïveté of “Me and My Imagination”, romantic sabotage and INXS.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Credits don’t lie, fine, but I hear “Another One Bites the Dust” in the syncopation, not INXS. Either way, it’s the least interesting single on a most interesting album. The bridge is a window into a poorly furnished home.
[6]

Will Adams: A fitting, if disappointing, third single choice for an album whose disco-pop pastiche starts off strong but peters out by the end. Like “Physical,” the nostalgia here is mostly surface: instead of Olivia Newton-John, “Break My Heart” nicks the “Need You Tonight” riff and infuses it throughout the song. And that’s about it; without the drama of “Physical” or the punchy hooks of “Don’t Start Now,” it remains a blank canvas that Dua Lipa is incapable of coloring.
[5]

Alex Clifton: Look, just go listen to the damn song and then come back and try to tell me that it isn’t basically perfect. It speaks for itself.
[9]

Juana Giaimo: I never thought I’d say this, but my problem with Dua Lipa is that sometimes her music is too perfect. She follows all the rules exactly to make a pop hit single — and she succeeds! — but I miss a little bit of emotion. “Break My Heart” has a funk base, disco violins and spoken catchy vocals. Of course it works, but I still feel I don’t know anything about Dua Lipa.
[6]