Pictured: Niall riding shotgun with his hair undone in the front seat of her car…

[Video]
[4.00]

Katie Gill: I’ve gotta give it up for the terrifying power of band fandoms. Because honestly, the influence of Directioners pushing this song and streaming it nonstop is the only way I can think of that something as mediocre, as middle of the road, and as aggressively background music like this can get over 10 million views, let alone over 18 million.
[4]

Jeffrey Brister: It is a pop song, in the academic sense. There is an arrangement, there is melodic variance between the verses and the chorus and the bridge (scratch that, it’s just the chorus again but quieter), and there are voices singing words. But there is absolutely nothing distinctive about it. From top to bottom, it’s a box-checking exercise, a rundown of characteristics, rather than a fully realized piece of art. Decent chorus, at least — but that’s about it.
[3]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: With how indistinguishable this song is from any of these other boring guitar riff breakup ballads, they must be remembering each other every ten to fifteen minutes. 
[3]

Vikram Joseph: This is so insipid I just can’t believe that these two protagonists ever had feelings for each other. Anne-Marie has yet to bring a discernible personality to any of her work; Niall Horan presumably left his at home in solidarity, and the watery production and dull songwriting do neither of them any favours.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: The narrative of this is such a nothing, and it’s still a nothing when you split it between two singers’ perspectives. Duets are often a fiction, often between two singers who don’t know each other that well, let alone gone through the kind of break-up they sing about, but this one feels particularly antiseptic, like neither of them are even trying. There’s one good bit; the pre-chorus is the only moment where “Our Song” does something you couldn’t have extrapolated from the first five seconds, temporarily upping the drama, but even that leaves me let down from an emotional climax nobody thought to write.
[4]

Oliver Maier: Niall Horan continues his streak as the most reliable 1D expat, largely because it still seems like no-one has told him they broke up. Anne-Marie sounds exactly like Bebe Rexha. A perfectly fine, no-nonsense thing.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Perhaps it’s a conceptual virtue that this song is so unremarkable. For all their feelings, no longer can its protagonists live together, and so just as tantalisingly, we never get to hear what their song was, or even what it was like. The blandness of “Our Song” is therefore a memorial to what was lost: vitality, unity and spark. It’s smart; almost as smart as understanding that people love inoffensive music.
[5]

Vincent Price does not make an appearance…

[Video]
[5.50]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: From the low-budget “Thriller” music video, to the second verse where Roddy Ricch sounds so much like Young Thug that I had to verify that it wasn’t, in fact, actually Young Thug, to the stale DJ Mustard beat, every element of “Late at Night” nods to brilliance, but lacks originality.
[5]

Alfred Soto: After a helluva year, Roddy Ricch dips his bucket into Mustard’s bottomless well for an impressive mix of rapping and singing. Lots of unexpected rhymes (paint/cain’t), a couple of delightful similes,  that “and rah-rah-rah-ride” in the last thirty seconds. Unnecessary but worth it.
[7]

Tobi Tella: I appreciate the attempt at versatility, but it’s sad to see someone who actually has flow down this bad against the number of syllables in each line.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: The plush chords and clicking snaps besides the bumping drums and lithe percussion next to the slinky bass feels warm and gorgeous as Roddy coos and hums sweet nothings in your ears.
[6]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Riding the same chord structure throughout the song would get boring in less capable hands. It’s the variation in the percussion and flow that keeps me interested here, with no two verses using the same cadence, and parallel structure drawing me in. 
[6]

Juana Giaimo: I really like everything that is happening on the music track — the muffled vocals, the calm keyboards and how the beat changes from single snaps to a more complex one pattern in the first verse and how it almost disappears towards the end. Unfortunately, Roddy Ricch seems to be singing over another more simple and conventional track.
[5]

Dropping some names…

[Video]
[5.71]

Alfred Soto: Or: Unfamous in a Small Town.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Young has an appealing voice, but I wish Brown made this a real duet rather than just contributing some barely-there backing vocals. Lyrically, however, this is just another empty “people are famous in a small town” lowest common denominator country record. Is the Nashville Industrial Complex not even trying anymore? (Spoiler alert: no.)
[4]

Andrew Karpan: Shiny, low-budget HGTV programming in the form of a country song, the revelation here is that even the normies want something their big houses cannot buy them. Dubiously copying the same Cheers line as every restaurant review I’ve ever read, these country stars promise that it actually does exist and, in fact, can be found somewhere in Tennessee. This is actually a better cliché than all the clichés that it’s made from because it’s not untrue in a largely meta way, Nashville and all.
[4]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: This song has some of the best riff building I’ve heard in recent country. The two four note phrases hit by the mandolin are echoed throughout the rhythmic sensibilities of the guitar in the verses and the chorus. The chorus is eminently singable, and adaptable for any listener (I found myself subbing “Richmond County” in my head). I can’t decide if the song suffers or benefits from its brevity — the characters are thin sketches for a thin premise, but couldn’t they be expanded into portraits of these people rather than a small-town tropes trading card game?
[7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: “Famous Friends” leans into cheesiness and self-mythologizing, a cutesy, gooey anthem about friendship that stops just short of being cringeworthy. There’s some weird small town authenticity politics that I don’t love about the lyrics (e.g., “Those big city friendships just aren’t the same!” energy”), but there is something too cute about the way that Chris Young and Kane Brown talk about their own friendship in the context of promoting it. Just look at the moment that Kane Brown hops on stage with a smile and wink at the CMT Music Awards, and tell me he’s not having a great time with his (actually) famous friend.
[7]

Vikram Joseph: This is wholesome, isn’t it? I’m unfamiliar with these two, but Chris Young’s fizzy guitar riffs are a nice backdrop for this celebration of little lives, and — based on the video — Kane Brown just seems delighted to be involved. “Famous Friends” mostly works because of how sincere and enthusiastic it is; Young genuinely sounds proud of these people in a way that doesn’t centre himself at all. At a taut, punchy 2:45, it’s much like a long weekend trip to your hometown: best to leave before you start to feel stagnant, with memories burnished and intact.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: “Round here, it’s all about the people you know” is the kind of thing that chills me about small towns: the clammy feeling of a life given over to cliques and cloisters and how easy it is to be excluded from them. Young and Brown, though, feel only warmth. It’s a lovely warmth, one of shared admiration and mandolin lines and burnished guitar chords that invite rather than bully. These people sound like good people. (One is called Brandon rather than Bubba, because even we country fans might find some truths implausible.)
[6]

He makes bangers, not anthems; leave that to the Artful Dodger…

[Video]
[3.17]

Claire Biddles: Truly the musical equivalent of being at the next table to some negging English wankers drinking eight pints in two hours on the first day of lockdown lifting. These points are awarded for the violin loop only.
[2]

Juana Giaimo: I couldn’t hear anything ArrDee was saying because of that annoying violin sample (samples are fun when producers think of a way of integrating them to the rest of the song instead of doing copy/paste). Still, I checked the lyrics and it seems I didn’t miss much.
[3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: “I’ve been scummy, I’ll admit,” ArrDee shrugs while luxuriating in his own unpleasantness; I’ll give him some points for being self-aware. 
[3]

Alfred Soto: The not bad Oliver! reference and the wobbly violin line project a sense of aural play that ArrDee’s  jus’-folks rhymes and delivery pound into a duty.
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: I’ll admit to finding the line “I just wanted some more, Oliver Twist” kinda clever, but there’s nothing to back it up; ArrDee’s an aggressively generic rapper. (The UK has developed a love affair with dull white rappers, haven’t they?) Matters aren’t helped by ZEL’s annoying production, based around an oddly pitched violin loop. 
[3]

Andrew Karpan: Okay, I’m willing to admit that I was wrong about this whole mini-genre of post-post grime party rapping: grating in its ruthless insistence on establishing authentic nomenclature, eventually this empty yearning comes at the expense of having a good time or actually partying. Instead, it delivers misanthropy in a forced, goofy grin (“I’ve been scummy, I admit/I did what I did, but I deserve this,” the Brighton rapper proclaims, without asking if spitting some bars on a hit posse remix is really something one ever deserves). It is, at turns, both terse and self-seriousness in its meanness, not unlike, say, an early 6ix9ine record. 
[3]

He isn’t sad, just uninvolved with the societal proscription of eating alone…

[Video]
[7.33]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: So many non-English-speaking artists are pivoting to English, Bad Bunny had to troll them all by releasing a song partially in, of all languages, Japanese. Nothing else about “Yonaguni” reinvents the Bad Bunny sad-boi anthem formula, which serves as a compliment in this circumstance. 
[7]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: So much of what I like in reggaeton is about balance and variance. As compared to the last couple of tracks I’ve covered here, “Yonaguni” manages both of those well, giving me enough variability in the melody and instrumental to be interesting, and giving each enough push and pull that one doesn’t overwhelm the other. It helps that Bad Bunny’s vocal style lends itself to an emotional rawness that draws me in. 
[7]

Claire Biddles: Reggaeton that bobs along nicely enough, in stark contrast to Bad Bunny’s monotone bark, which I’ve never really gotten along with — “Yonaguni” is best in the small moments when the swelling synths drop out and it turns percussive and harsh. Obsessed with the lyric (apparently) about tattooing a girl’s butt on his face? 
[5]

Juana Giaimo: I feel the distance between the lyrics and the music kind of ruins this. The music is typical Bad Bunny, a slow reggaeton with very sad vibes, but the lyrics are kind of funny. It starts as a rather normal unrequited love song, but then he says that he knows her ass so well that he could graduate and get a tattoo of it in his face. In the Japanese outro, instead of using it to say something poetical and mysterious in another language, he actually simply says that he only wants to have sex with her. However, this part of the song doesn’t even have a beat, and instead we’re left with these very calm synths and his lonely voice. “Yonaguni” could be a parody of a love song (and I’m assuming he’s trying to be funny, because if not my rating would be lower) but the music tells me to take it seriously. 
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Watching Bad Bunny become one of the world’s biggest pop stars over the past half-decade has been a pleasure, because he just keeps getting better as he gets bigger, and how rare is that? “Yonaguni” is a perfect case in point: this single, in which he drunkenly pines for an ex, could be just another sad-sack whinefest, like so much hip hop these days (cf “Mood” and a myriad of Post Malone records). But Bunny croons this so sweetly, so doesn’t-sound-sadly, that it weirdly turns into a kind of summery jam. The track’s light reggaeton beat helps, certainly, but ultimately “Yonaguni” rises, and rises, on the personality Bunny imbues into it through his incredibly demonstrative voice. He’s an artist who knows just what he’s doing, and is firing on all cylinders here.
[10]

Nortey Dowuona: Bad Bunny continues to hop head and shoulders above all walls, with his lilting holler skipping across the icy synths and buried earthworm bass, hopping in shaky drums that barely fit around his heels. They allow him to skate quite easily when the soles light up, looking for anyone, anyone to follow his lead. But no one follows, and he hops on, feeling utterly defeated.
[10]

Eurovision group get second hit, and now well on their way to overtaking Gina G in terms of success.

[Video]
[6.25]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Catchy tune, Franz Ferdinand-esque beat, lots of glam attitude. Måneskin’s first post-Eurovision “single” sees them trying their hand at the English language, but this move takes a lot from their original charm. Still gets point for Damiano’s convincing Semi-Precious Weapons-era Justin Tranter impression.
[6]

Katie Gill: This may be just one idea stretched out to three minutes long, but it’s one FUN idea stretched out to three minutes long. The build-up for the first minute: drums to bass to guitar, it’s practically perfect. The repetition of the vocal lines is a damn smart trick, lulling you into a sense of complacency before you get hit RIGHT with the power of that instrumental break. It’s certainly not as fun or as kickass as “Zitti e buoni” but I can see why the song went viral. I also certainly wouldn’t complain if the band trotted this out in their inevitable Eurovision 2022 semis performance while all the votes are being tallied.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Sure, there’s glam and hard rock in the DNA of “I Wanna Be Your Slave,” but also a little hair metal, especially in its gleeful ridiculousness. (And also the marvelous lyric “I wanna pull your strings like you’re my Telecaster.”) And that’s just what this needs a little more of; I wish this sounded a bit less, well, organic. C’mon, guys, you’ve never heard a Europe record? (Not that one, another, better one.) You’re clearly not afraid to be stupid, so get stupid already.
[7]

Samson Savill de Jong: To quote myself from my review of Zitti e Buoni: “It’s not pushing the boundaries of rock … but it does the genre tropes very, very well.” If you’ve got issue with me presenting exactly the same review, take it up with Måneskin from providing exactly the same song, albeit hornier and in English.
[7]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Måneskin put their rhythmic chops back on display here, the entire song revolving around the patter of the vocals. The tone of the bass in particular is a standout, the pairing of staccato and fuzz really standing out during the triple gallops in the post-chorus instrumental breaks. The English lyrics on the other hand come across a bit rote, lacking the focking fluidity that made “Zitti e Buoni” work. Europe, however does not seem to agree. 
[7]

Edward Okulicz: I can’t fault this for dynamics or intensity, because it’s got a great thumping rhythm to it. No surprise there, their Eurovision winner had all of that too. This one’s ended up an even bigger hit in some places, because it’s in English. Silly, not very accomplished English, but it probably doesn’t matter to some people. Me, I wish when Damiano David bleats out “you could be the beauty,” making it sound like “de-booty,” I wish he’d said “you could be Debussy.”
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Aspires to Iggy Pop and Depeche Mode and Berlin all at once and damn the problematic; achieves that TikTok about “the bastard… and the beauty… the thotty socialite… and the mysterious orb.”
[6]

Claire Biddles: Listen, I didn’t come to this elite underground vampire sex club because I’m concerned about what the house band sounds like.
[4]

Hustling smokily onto the sidebar…

[Video]
[7.29]

Camille Nibungco: Simmering island drums and a Khruangbin guitar melody hold the focus as Jorja Smith and Shaybo simmer and slither in circles around each other. Jorja’s careful croons about the Hustle(TM) are like a glass of cool milk to Shaybo’s meticulous flow that drips in Yoruban flair. The soulful dancehall construction holds me in a spiritual trance.
[8]

Mark Sinker: Love Shaybo as the first figure out in the world publicly to share my obsession with Teresa Mendoza La Reina del Sur (tho she may I suppose mean the eng-lang Alice Braga version, not the way better way wilder Mexican-Spanish Telemundo Kate del Castillo version). Anyway the role of Shaybo’s raps in this cool casual quietly bitter song is to inject rhythmic disorder into the control, until Jorja is basically also just muttering quietly to herself, as the swan’s panicked feet hidden beneath the gliding surface…
[8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Oozing sumptuousness and consummate precision, Jorja Smith and Shaybo co-create a calm but fiery banger worthy of the titular portmanteau. 
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: The shimmering drums are so settled in the bottom of the mix next to the snugly bass that Jorja’s vaporous voice almost disappears once the guitar slides in. Once overdubs echo through the hallways, it feels a little stronger, but Shaybo’s voice pushes those echoes away, becoming even more disinterested in the fuckery. She settles on Shaybo’s shoulders as she wanders off into the fog, floating on the echoes higher and above the fog and onto the clouds.
[7]

Samson Savill de Jong: “Bussdown” has a very enchanting sound. It’s not particularly complex, quiet drum and bass drums and muted electric guitars, but it all works together wonderfully, especially when combined with both of these women’s voices. It sounds so good that on first listen I thought the song was a bit deeper than it really is. It’s about people eating off Jorja and Shaybo’s fame, a fine topic done many times, but they don’t go into a huge amount of depth with it, other than a vague sense of feeling taken advantage of. I’d extend Shaybo’s verses and give her space to really ruminate. Still, this is a very pleasant song to just have on and vibe to.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Jorja’s interest in consonants is aspirational, while Shaybo settles into a cone in which the ghosts of several generations of spoken word, like the guitar peals and percussion, don’t scare her a whit. 
[7]

Oliver Maier: Languor suits Jorja better than exertion, so the less-is-more approach here — both vocally and instrumentally — pays off (it sounds, I think, a bit like what Billie Eilish is currently gunning for and missing). She’s counteracted by the brisker Shaybo, who adds general sense of form to the track without doing away with its smokiness.
[7]

We look forward to Little Mix’s next single, “Next Single.”

[Video]
[4.78]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Between “Sweet Melody,” “Not A Pop Song,” “The National Manthem,” “Break Up Song,” “Secret Love Song,” “No More Sad Songs,” and now this, Little Mix really know how to brand their songs literally don’t they? “Heartbreak Anthem” doesn’t break the Little Mix formula and that’s fine: it’s bombastic and loud, less an anthem about overcoming lost love than a vehicle for collective catharsis with friends. 
[6]

Katie Gill: The reason why all these big Galantis, David Guetta, Marshmallo, Chainsmokers-pre-“Closer” etc. songs tend to pick artists like Daya, Bebe Rexha, or Anne-Marie for their EDM song main vocals is because those artists are B-list and interchangeable enough that they can easily slot into the generic female vocalist slot that all of those songs use. When you have an artist with an established sound, like Little Mix, 9 times out of 10 they end up getting flattened down to fit that generic mold, as what happens here. You kind of get the feeling that these artists are only here for name value and that if Galantis and David Guetta had to use a female session vocalist for budget reasons, absolutely nothing of value would be lost.
[4]

Samson Savill de Jong: Whenever a song tries to pass off “sometimes it works out but sometimes it don’t” as a deep profundity, I know I’m in for some serious beige. This is pretty inoffensively mediocre, it’s not bad exactly, but there’s nothing that I could point to and call unique/interesting/well executed/good either.
[3]

Tim de Reuse: A soppy violin-and-piano intro that promptly inverts into upbeat house, sticking a “This ain’t” in front of the song’s title: yeah, fine, that’s kinda clever as a bait-and-switch, actually. I admit to having smiled. I’m only surprised because I didn’t expect anything this engaging from a track that credits the reliably-lifeless David Guetta, but it looks like his influence has been minimized. Really, Little Mix are the ones giving this tune a heartbeat (listen to that lovely bend on “hollow” and “shadow”) and the moments when they aren’t singing (listen to that horrible, dry crowd chant of “Hey, hey, no heartbreak”) are thankfully brief, so we don’t have too much time to focus on how stiff their EDM surroundings are.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Credit to mostly Little Mix, I think, for the fact that this sounds like a cruddy Guetta remix of a much better song (and that the chorus still has a little oomph), but no credit to anyone that this is actually the base version and that it mostly sounds and feels so generic.
[4]

Kayla Beardslee: Little Mix gives the performance their all, but the vocals are too buried to let much of their personality shine through, and the sterile drop feels like the work of half a producer, not two. Somehow, I didn’t pick up on the glaringly obvious “moving on from a member departure” subtext until my second listen. “Don’t want to throw a tantrum, you did what you had to, but I ain’t got no time to dwell on it”… yeah, this is not really about an ex, is it?
[5]

Alfred Soto: Kinda hard to protest when generic entertainment is the point.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Little Mix almost seem to be breaking pop’s cosmic law by having yet to head for hiatus, but in fighting against that tide they do sound like they’re treading water. In just over a year, they’ve already sung another break-up song, refused another pop song about falling in love, and been played (but not fooled by) sweet melodies. Has music caught them in a thematic bind? The motions are gone through with commitment — string-laden, “Change Your Life” empowerment blends well with Galantis’ augmented anagram of Sigala — but it increasingly feels contractual.
[6]

Tobi Tella: More Party Rock than National, attempting to wring actual pathos out of these lyrics is a lost cause, but the production keeps it feeling like that one song you liked in 2015 and never thought about again.
[5]

What if we put them on the sidebar instead?

[Video]
[7.71]

Aaron Bergstrom: In which Mackenzie Scott puts her name on a mountain. After a 2020 that saw her broke and stranded in Europe as the pandemic hit, it might have been surprising to see Torres back with new material that she describes as “conjuring this deep, deep joy,” but wow does this one ever deliver. Torres has always had hooks, but they were more subtle, the kind of stealth earworms where you’d have to work backward to figure out why you’ve been humming the phrase “you sang of reparations with the Native Americans” to yourself all day. This one is different. “Don’t Go Putting Wishes In My Head” flips on the bright lights almost immediately. It’s the kind of song you’re singing along with the first time you hear it. One of my music criticism pet peeves is writers overusing the phrase “leveling up,” but if I only get one for the year, I’m using it here.
[10]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Torres gives us an exercise in maximalism that could’ve benefitted from restraint. It’s a minute too long and a synth too indulgent, going for nostalgic signifiers to bolster a lackluster lyric. 
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: The shrieking synth behind the lumber-hunk bass whistles as when the bass cradles it. Torres brings in the heavy drums, taking the bass and synth out to the park. The synth gathers cotton candy and the drums play frisbee with some of the guitar’s kids, Torres’ echoes flying up every time the frisbee is sent high. She rides the rides with the bass and drums, then as they drive home, the drums doze off, the synth singing the bass to sleep as well.
[10]

Katherine St Asaph: One of the most frustrating experiences as a listener (and especially as a critic who has to slap ratings onto things) is what I call “bouncing off.” “Don’t Go Putting Wishes in My Head” starts with a great title and doesn’t waver. Torres is a presence, in full voice throughout — specifically, the part of her voice that sounds like Alanis channeling Scott Hutchison. The arrangement swells and swells, and I imagine the lyric might swell even bigger for someone — a cathartic surge that, through its sheer bigness, makes infatuation into moral thrust, feelings into fact. Everything is near-perfect; not a single thing could be improved. And I bounced right off. I wish I knew why. Maybe — I realize I’m laying out a smorgasbord for the irony gods — my love life just needs to suck more?
[6]

Samson Savill de Jong: I think the fact that Torres is the one who got proposed to, rather than doing the proposal like the song suggests, actually accentuates the anxiety that underlies the whole thing, to the point where you wouldn’t be blamed for not realising that this song is about asking someone to marry her. This is pretty much all I want from music: a song that sounds great and is able to express something deep and personal.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Its persistent chug is its own reward before the lyrics rise to the surface; if anything Mackenzie Scott’s decision to enunciate every word gets too fussy, as if she distrusted the pretty good racket behind her. 
[6]

Ian Mathers: You can tell I’m still on Tumblr because some things still just indelibly make me think “the energy coming off of this is indescribable”. And if you’ve been on there (in the right parts, anyway), you know exactly what kind of superlative that is. And the energy coming off this thing is indescribable.
[9]

Nelly and FGL can have lil a high scoring blurb, as a treat…

[Video]
[2.78]

Ian Mathers: Florida Georgia Line are to Tim McGraw what this song is to “Over and Over”.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Nelly specialized in this crossover shit more than a decade ago when he shared his secrets about country grammar to Tim McGraw.  Apparently so well learned was the lesson that he disappears from subsequent collaborations despite the billing. The giant bit of “Lil Bit” is its hook, sanded by FGL into meaninglessness.  That’s the point, though, right? Eroding racial differences for the sake of collaborative blandness.
[2]

Al Varela: I’m conflicted. On concept alone the song sucks. You can tell both artists are in desperate need of another hit so they’re trying to recreate the “Cruise” phenomenon. The mere image of Florida Georgia Line trying to play in the same lane as booty-shaking rap makes my stomach turn. That said, the stomp of the percussion and the fluttering banjo make this way catchier than it deserves to be. Plus, it’s not so aggressive with its blend of hip-hop and country that it’s obnoxious or sounds like a bastardization. Still, for a song that sounds like a bad idea from the start, I’m almost disappointed that it’s not a disaster. Not quite good either, but it should be worse.
[6]

Samson Savill de Jong: Nelly and Florida Georgia Line bring out the worst in each other, yet somehow have been allowed to collaborate 3 times and go on tour together. Somebody needs to get on to Nelly’s phone and block FGL before irreparable harm is done, if it hasn’t been done already. Anyway, this song is dull, uninspired, more than a little sexist and patantly unfun, a crime in a song all about having fun. It also includes the line “I’m the black Tom Brady, I’m the GOAT” which is a trite and easy line at the best of times, but the beat drops out and Nelly laughs at himself after it!? He really wants you to notice that line, as if he’s just said something witty or clever or subversive, instead of just saying he’s good like the good American footballer (it’s not like Tom Brady is some underground pick or anything). If that’s the standout moment of the track, the rest of it doesn’t bare thinking about.
[2]

Aaron Bergstrom: I have spent far too long thinking about who the real “black Tom Brady” might be: undeniable greatness, deeply weird in an “uncanny valley” sort of way, seems wildly unpleasant to be around. (I think it might be Kawhi Leonard?) It certainly isn’t Nelly, who hasn’t had a new idea in going on twenty years and yet still seems like he’d be fun at parties.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: In case you weren’t aware that Nelly x FGL does, in fact, equal Sam Hunt. Except that Hunt can at least sing. And has something to say.
[2]

Tim de Reuse: You could argue over whether or not “country-rap” is a good idea, but the point isn’t relevant here, because the veneer of “country” is paper-thin; if you swapped out that twangy banjo loop for some tropical bells then this could just as easily have come from any regionally-famous European pop-rapper. You could read this as a cynical grasp at crossover success, but, again, why bother? Nelly’s voice layers over itself constantly, hyping himself up from every angle, ensuring that not an instant of negative space is left for you to catch your breath: exhausting by the standards of any genre.
[1]

Edward Okulicz: It’s a rap song only nominally, because Nelly sounds like someone’s dad busting out rhymes that are simplistic and generally quite bad, as if he were a pop star who took up rapping late in life rather than being actually a rapper to begin with. It’s also not country either, or at least not country that isn’t already infused with pop. So we’ve got two hybrid genres themselves hybridising, and this is the F2 offspring: a little rap, a little country, the crossover’s baked in with a whole lot of corn. Like many hybrids, it’s sterile, but it is a low-key good time with the good-natured banjo, and a chorus you could follow along with even if you started drinking five hours ago when it was 3pm. Which is exactly how this song makes me feel. But it’s a bop anyway.
[7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Thought experiment: What if at the opening of this track when Florida Georgia Line sing “What up, Nelly?/You ready to do another one, bruh?”, Nelly just responded “No!” and then the track just ended? 
[1]