We don’t go to [11]…

[Video]
[6.50]

Kayla Beardslee: “Eleven” is fine (and so obviously indebted to “Rum Pum Pum“), but it’s missing a distinctive sonic identity. There are sounds, sure, but I’m not fully convinced that any of these sounds actually have a personality. Again, it works fine! (Fine enough to catapult Ive into having one of the biggest rookie-group hits of last year.) But sometimes that’s a damning word.
[6]

Rose Stuart: Not all good songs are good debut songs. “Eleven” is a good song: it has a great beat, a gorgeous instrumental, and an exciting melody that throws semitones around in a genre that rarely strays from standard pop melodic progression. The fundamentals are all there, but the song never rises above them; never reaches a peak that transforms it from decent to amazing. Part of the blame does lie with the song, which finds a style it likes and sticks to it without deviation, but when it slows down to give impact to a chorus that might otherwise have had none, it becomes impossible to ignore that it’s sung by teenagers. “Eleven” is a mature song, one that takes risks, but it’s also a basic one. It’s a song that rides or dies on the strength of its performers, and they don’t yet have all of their strengths to give. They’re not doing bad, not at all, but they’re trying to inject youthful energy and bubblegum into a song that should by all rights be dark and sultry. Combined with shots in the video where you can see the safety shorts of underage girls, the it can all teeter on the edge of uncomfortable. Maybe several years into their career, Ive will be able to carry it to the heights it had the potential to reach. But as it stands, that potential is woefully unrealized.
[6]

Alfred Soto: It’s not Ive’s fault the backing track hits an acceptable level of okay, and nor will I miss a wink of sleep for awarding it the same number score to which they count off. 
[7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: This score is only fair because they do only count up to
[7]

Leah Isobel: “Eleven”‘s chorus comes crashing through with all the subtlety of a battering ram — and about as much melody, too. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the build-up is such a goofy, gimmicky pop pleasure that it feels like a bit of a letdown.
[7]

Ian Mathers: This works pretty well when it’s at its lowest key and you can hear that post-“Bootylicious” frantic thrum, and again when the full chorus hits. But some of the prefatory bits and the couple of times they slow down are kind of meh. Which is one reason it’s smart to keep this to about three minutes — the meh bits are pretty minor!
[6]

No sinking feeling here…

[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Micha Cavaseno: Imagine, if you will, a world where Robin Guthrie wakes up. I can’t tell you what year it was that he shut his eyes, but the former Cocteau Twin has opened them to discover he’s sealed alive in the wax-tiling of a shopping mall, with the light of a Cinnabon blasting his corneas apart. Does the current Robin Guthrie know what a Cinnabon is? Would he have when they were around? Doesn’t matter. In this world he’s there, watching people walk atop him as if he’s a flat surface but he doesn’t feel flat, because his body is churning out the watery guitar he’s best known for from beneath this herringbone hell. Eventually he can spot a young woman who is inside the clear elevator shaft meant to take people up to the food court where a Sanrio Gifts shop is being shuttered close. Not the elevator though, the shaft. Because the shaft doesn’t have an elevator, it’s just a giant tube filled with water. And the girl is being attacked by eels made out of La Roux T-shirts from a tour back when this very mall he seems to be trapped in would’ve been so severely declined that the food court would be abandoned and half the stores shut down. Robin Guthrie doesn’t know how he got in this predicament, he’s not even sure when he is or which Robin Guthrie he is. But he knows somehow that this is the hell he deserves. A place known as… The Hatchie Zone.
[4]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A safe and warm place to sink into when the perpetual pursuit of happiness feels like a trap. 
[8]

Alex Clifton: Evocative of neon lights reflecting off of disco balls, watching people dance in slow motion, and having a minor existential crisis while sipping a whiskey sour by the bar.
[8]

Katie Gill: Sometimes all you need is a perfectly serviceable, middle-of-the-road, catchy yet nondescript piece of music that in non-pandemic times, you could dance along to at the club. Congrats, Hatchie! You’ve achieved that much!
[7]

Alfred Soto: Serviceable electro-angst. No one tries hard, a blessing.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Hipster CRJ with a submerged-sounding bassline shouldn’t be this dull.
[5]

Ian Mathers: These days when someone is writing about The Perils of Success on a sophomore record it feels like it’s usually about haters, or worrying about staying atop the heap, or the way the rewards of that success can change you. The problems of success, not the problem of success itself. “Quicksand” focuses more on the way just putting in the work and seeing it pay off can, itself, still feel kinda like shit. Especially if you find yourself with the space to interrogate the drive that got you there in the first place; there’s no room for “I used to think that this was something I could die for/I hate admitting to myself that I was never surе” when you’re rising and grinding. There’s still a dreampop sparkle to the music but, more than before (even “This Enchanted”), you can feel the modern polish as well, and it can almost feel like the song is shifting into a representative of that perilous success, especially with the doubt and anger threaded through it all.
[9]

Vikram Joseph: Kind of a throwback, this, with moody, reverby verses paired with a chorus that would soar were it not for the gravitational pull of its yearning — I hear a bit of William Orbit c. 1998 and rather a lot of Dev Hynes c. 2012 (especially with Hatchie’s lower register bearing a resemblance to Sky Ferreira I hadn’t hitherto appreciated). The artfully muted, dream-pop-indebted production is still there, acting as a continuity thread from Keepsake, but “Quicksand” is a purposeful step towards alt-pop and plays to Hatchie’s considerable strengths as a vocalist and a songwriter — even if it never quite touches the deep euphoria of “Stay With Me.”
[8]

Leah Isobel: “It’s all I know/And I’m taking it back”: determination to stay the course despite doubt, or absolute submission to disillusionment? Hatchie never says. But the drums shatter her voice into pieces on the bridge, as if her warring impulses are grinding her deeper into subterranean machinery. The point is that there’s no point: you could fall forever and find there’s still further to go.
[8]

Surely, you jester…

[Video]
[2.90]

Alex Clifton: I love really ace puns. I’ve got spades of them. You could say I’m a real card at parties. However, there’s a difference between subtle wordplay and clubbing your audience over the head with it. It can be a good trick but only works a couple times; if you overload your hand it comes off as tacky. “The Joker and the Queen” could’ve been a cool metaphor had Sheeran and Swift not decked out the song with card-playing language throughout; it takes away from the heart of the message and ends up distracting the listener. There’s not even a good ending verse, which feels like a real miss considering this remix has the queen of bridges on here. If this blurb does not suit you and you’re wondering what my deal is, congrats! You are now as annoyed as I was when I listened to this song.
[2]

Al Varela: A lovely upgrade to the original. I always loved the snowfall-esque descent of the pianos, and the strings were absolutely gorgeous as a way to build a more dreamlike swell to the song. Adding Taylor’s poetry and voice to the mix is practically drizzling it in warm, sweet caramel. There’s something humbling about Ed Sheeran feeling insecure about his lack of outstanding traits, constantly feeling like an amateur and undeserving of his wife’s love. And yet, she still gives him the love and support to remind him that he’s not worthless. That sentiment is made all the more powerful when Taylor takes the other side and reminds him that what makes a “king” isn’t being the wealthiest and most noble person, it’s seeing the best in one another, even when they expose all of their cards to you. That realization you no longer have to play games because both of you are on equal playing fields, that’s the kind of dedication that marks a truly unbreakable bond.
[8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The Sleeper and the Boring. 
[1]

Micha Cavaseno: I want to scream at Ed Sheeran, but not for the reasons to which nearly every other critic I know would like to entertain. No, I don’t want him to stop; I want him to be far less humble and acknowledge that he is in fact a legitimate songwriter and musician. The mewly self-deprecating ‘aw shucks’ shit is flabbergasting because no matter what much consensus says, he’s proven that he’s (sorry folks) probably one of the most versatile and adventurous mainstream singer-songwriters today. Compare that to his duet partner who is vanishing back into the woods in terror of dealing with her utter inability to transition to a pop queen with dignity and similarly plagued with noxious faux bashful trepidation. Neither one of these two can convince themselves with so flauncy and vapid a ballad based on these two being oddballs? Misfits? In what world? Personally if you’re going to be one of the most successful emissaries to non-white music despite being a peak of caucasity… I dare say you need to stop trying to act humble and maybe just act up the slightest bit.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The sincere pained mewl prevents me from acknowledging Ed Sheeran’s songwriting gifts. He’s good! Facts are facts. Were he to exchange the sucker routine for Adam Levine’s syphilitic gamine act he’d be an unstoppable and possibly sexy motherfucker. Instead, he writes material he thinks flatters the mewl and the result is gruel. Taylor Swift has been at times smarter than this — she knows when her subjects want their sovereign to send a few heads to the chopping block. Notable line: “I’ve been played before if you haven’t guessed.”
[3]

Katie Gill: Oh Christ this is some dire sad boy shit. It’s trying to be sad and sweeping and majestic but it’s just plodding. It’s a dirge of a song that plays to neither of the artist’s strengths and all of their weaknesses. I would take comfort in the fact that there’s no way on God’s green Earth this would be played on the radio but apparently TikTok gave fuckin’ Duncan Laurence a radio hit so who knows, I’ll probably hear this on my way to work and hate every minute of it.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: When I clicked on the video for this when it premiered, the first “suggested video” YouTube showed in the top right corner of the screen was “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter. The algorithm fucking knows.
[2]

Ian Mathers: Everybody’s going to have their own personal tolerance for the kind of writing on display here, but if the card metaphors seem a bit much during the first bit you might as well skip it because they’re only going to get more leaden from there. At least it sounds nicely, in a gloopy radio ballad kind of way. Minus one additional point for a text conversation presented in the video that was so baffling I could not resist looking it up and finding out said video is a sequel and said conversation is an Easter Egg so hamfistedly deployed that it gave me an eyelid twitch for a few minutes.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: It may just be a hitherto untapped metaphor upon which endless people are expected to project their own relationships, but it’s also characteristically half-baked. If Sheeran was appointing himself as the wildcard or comedian in a superficially humble act of Inceian hubris, it wouldn’t be surprising; nor even if he was calling himself a fool. But while the semantics of “queen” are established enough to survive a song in which specifics are not so much eschewed as abhorred, those of “joker” are less clear-cut. So what does he actually mean? Since there’s no humour and no invention; only cursory shortcuts to emotional reaction, it would seem that he’s a wind-up merchant.
[3]

Will Adams: Do you ever feel, feel so paper-thin? Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in? :'(
[2]

From the top of the Russian Spotify chart…

[Video]
[5.29]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Ebullient, chaotic and feisty like, say, an episode of Euphoria where Rue gets caught up with the Russian drug trade. 
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: Apparently, in 2022 you can get a smash in Russia by combining early-mid ’90s UK rave, a L’Trimm bassline, and some meh rapping. It’s a curio, but not much more.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: Shadowraze’s flow is tight, economical and a little awkward, interrupted for a brief crack. Plvstic’s beadwork is also economical, a simple eight-bar phrase in 4/4 time with a bulbous bass drum rubbing awkwardly against the flat kicks, sandpaper percussion and dull snares that pop up by note two and get erased by Shadowraze’s jutting overlapping vocals — until they slow to a crawl at the end of the song, seemingly too bored with the idea to keep running with it.
[6]

Vikram Joseph: Perhaps this would sound less anonymous if I had a greater-than-zero grasp of the Russian language, but I’m not holding my breath. This might be called “Astral Step,” but there’s nothing remotely celestial-sounding about this passably grimy, drill-adjacent song. To its credit, at a snappy two minutes it doesn’t hang around.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: This is monotonous enough that it could have been created in someone’s bedroom in 1996 using the primitive software a teenage kid might have had. It’s got velocity and volume but no actual force. 
[3]

Ian Mathers: In band name, song title, and production, this absolutely feels like something would have been passed around either on burned CDs or direct from PC to PC at a LAN party back in the day. I didn’t really expect Russian rap in that setting, but I’m not mad at it either.
[7]

Andrew Karpan: Laid over beats so cheap and minimal it evokes genius or just necessity. I like the way his bars don’t mumble but sound frank and cold and make me wonder how much harder I would look wearing a beanie.
[6]

A real burning issue…

[Video]
[5.67]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: brb, painting my nails black to match the graphic tee i just bought at hot topic
[8]

Jeffrey Brister: There is something about MGK that makes me write essays that go on too long and use words like “hauntology”, but this song doesn’t do that. It just deals me psychic damage. It spits empty references and images at me and smashes the memory buttons too hard, too insistently.
[1]

Al Varela: This is garbage, let’s be honest. Cringy, immature, plastic fucking garbage. But let’s be honest, that’s true about a lot of music in our childhoods, especially within pop-punk. Not that those past songs don’t have their merits, but a lot of it was trashy, childish lashing out that appealed to our most rebellious and restless sides. We still hold those songs dear to our hearts because they spoke to us at a time when we didn’t feel heard by everyone else. Sure, most of them weren’t as shallow as lusting after the stereotype of emo girls, but then again, what’s wrong with indulging in that shallowness? The song still rips and has a really strong hook, WILLOW adding a bit of queerness to the song is always welcome, and the two just sound like they’re having fun with this ridiculous, overindulgent premise. I’m sure my peers will totally trash this song, and I can’t entirely blame them. I just think it’s fun!
[8]

Alfred Soto: Reveling in the received, Machine Gun Kelly and WILLOW understand nostalgia is most powerful when it manifests as a longing for unlived times and places; here it’s for Avril Lavigne’s sk8er bois and Dashboard Confessional’s devil women. The pleasures are in the guitar sound and how the acts avoid what’s worst about emo.
[6]

Katie Gill: Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith’s appreciation of pop-punk and mid-2000s era Hot Topic is based off a love for a subculture that I’d bet good money neither experienced in its prime. Case in point: this song, which builds its identity around emo, a subculture that’s been absolutely irrelevant for the past ten years, to the point where all their identifiers of an emo girl seem… kind of off? It’s like someone did a Billy on the Street segment, loudly asking randos what they think the “emo” look is, then worked that into a song. Anyway, this is blatant nostalgia bait for people who think Fall Out Boy peaked with “Dance, Dance” and as someone who went to an MCR album release party when she was 14, I can definitely appreciate the pandering.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: As someone who went to a high school in Monmouth County NJ in 2004-05, got the Geoff Rowley Vans, had wretched AIM away messages and got pissy with Anti-Flag fans bullying me (topical considering they’re one of Colson’s faves) I can tell you that I was there. I lived the life. I am the kind of trash that Hot Topic looked at like a walking lick back in the day. Do you remember how much Tripp pants used to cost? Even then it was expensive… Huh? The song? Oh yes, the song is… it’s not a song. It’s a novelty T-shirt like the ones you got at Hot Topic despite the fact you could easily buy a much cooler and more credible Siouxsie & the Banshees shirt at Kohl’s but y’know it just, like, wasn’t the same, ok!?!?!? Does that era deserve a tribute that borders on parody? Absolutely, that’s the only way to encapsulate how ridiculous a moment like that seemed so WORLD-DEFINING at the time. Anyway, if you need me I’ll be reading that Courtney Love manga, listening to “Nerdy” on loop and wondering where the one girl with dyed blue hair from my homeroom who kissed me on the cheek moved away to.
[5]

Can we hear the other options?

[Video][Website]
[3.67]

Scott Mildenhall: PE TEACHERS MR BOBBY AND MR MCFERRIN RAISED £1280 BY RACKING UP THE MILES IN THE DE BOURGEOIS SCHOOL ROWING MACHINE MARATHON … VOLUNTEERS AT GOOD VIBES FOOD BANK RECEIVED DONATIONS OF £512 AFTER ADOPTING RICTUS GRINS ALL DAY LONG … PLACEHOLDER MUSICIAN GEORGE EZRA MADE THIS CUTAWAY POSSIBLE WITH ANOTHER CONTRIBUTION TO THE ‘AND NOW FOR A ROUND-UP OF ALL THE FUNDRAISING IN YOUR AREA’ GENRE …
[5]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The anonymity of a Macy’s commercial, mixed with the perfunctoriness of a McDonald’s commercial, mixed with the veneer of a Folgers commercial. 
[2]

Alex Clifton: This is cute enough — I’m a sucker for light piano like this — but I was more interested in playing around with the speed controls on YouTube to figure out how it sounded best, rather than making it to the end. (For reference, it feels a bit less repetitive on 1.25x speed; wish he had just upped the tempo a wee bit to make it jauntier.) Ezra can create singalong magic when he wants to but this is one of his weaker tracks.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Sheeran without the Weeknd-esque slickness, and with a voice akin to a bleating goat, which is to say: worse than Sheeran in every way, and that’s a tough road to hoe. So, kudos?
[1]

Nortey Dowuona: The loping pianos feel like they’re rooted in a certain place and time, and since Ezra has spent the first part of his career being a proud, bass crooner with a bright wanderlust, that feels like a specific choice. No matter where his voice goes — at first bouncy, then slinking, then hollering — the piano continuously shines and chimes in the back, the drums around him chaining him to them, and he remains in this solid core, allowing for him to float over to Tiger Lily and lift her up with him, his joy swelled by the charming choir behind. When the song thrashes about in the jaws of his guitar, he lets it go and it’s rebuilt, the pianos allowing him to indulge in the usual wanderlust while rooting it in the very community he comes from, that he’s happy to introduce to Tiger Lily.
[7]

Andrew Karpan: Can a plea for anonymity itself sound so anonymous? This feels like the joke that hangs around the latest George Ezra single, which finds the “Budapest” singer keeping a remarkably straight face while promising listeners “I could be anyone, anyone, anyone.” Needless to say, one does believe him. 
[3]

These frequencies really *are* lost, huh!

[Video][Website]
[4.25]

Thomas Inskeep: I assume the thought process went like this: Lost Frequencies needed a big-lunged singer, Calum Scott needed some cash. Presto, a defiantly mediocre dance-pop song guaranteed to become a smash hit in the UK (and maybe elsewhere, if they’re lucky). Though “mediocre” is more than generous.
[2]

Tim de Reuse: There is a drop of personality straining its way out of the trop-house soup it’s mired in; you can get little glimpses of what it wants to be in the playful, subdued hook, or the fluttering synthwork that drifts in through the back door once in a while. Regrettably, no spark of wit escapes the mellow black hole of Calum Scott’s performance.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: My favorite part of this mix is the bass that enters the song as Calum drops into his midrange. It has to be such a bouncy part since all of the first verse and pre-chorus is very bright and floaty and atmospheric, and Calum’s bright, fiery voice smoulders in it and seems completely lost in it. Calum’s a belter whose voice is strong enough to carry a languid, smooth arrangement (check his recent record, “Biblical” to quake in your boots) but his strengths — his power and bright tone — are working against the song. His voice is too bright to anchor it, even before the drums come back for the second verse. It is also too powerful to be marooned in the back of the mix, even if it might have overwhelmed the groove. In fact, the drums are solid but too small, very dependent on subwoofers to make them sound powerful instead of anchoring the song so Calum doesn’t incinerate it before it can be finished. Once he is in his midrange and the bass slinks over the weak kicks, Calum sounds comfortable, the groove the song is trying to settle into springs to life and your foot gets to tapping. But once the drums enter the second verse and dip out for the pre chorus, the impact is lost. So maybe it’s a good thing it’s only 2 minutes and 53 seconds. Any longer would’ve ruined the power of that bass.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The problem with what Calum Scott believes is a clever metaphor: songs stuck in one’s head can be annoying and gross.
[4]

Alex Clifton: There’s a cool, muted energy in this song — the beat is low-key, which means Scott doesn’t have to compete with an overly complicated backing track. It’s not the best thing ever, but I will gladly pick this over any of Scott’s previous work.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Having a negative opinion on this is the equivalent of having a snobbish opinion on cheap supermarket white bread. It has almost no taste, but a lot of people are getting nourishment from it; there is actually nothing wrong with pure function. The comparison could be extended, but for a three minute song that would be gratuitously mean for something that doesn’t deserve it.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Calum Scott’s hyper-serious groan of a voice fits Lost Frequencies’ playful lite-dance-pop about as poorly as any singer’s performance could. It’s a case of two decent halves of a song failing to cohere — the production deserves a singer that’s having more fun, the singer deserves a production that will take his anguish more seriously.
[5]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Listen to this, not that! 
[2]

Two critical heavy-hitters… one underwhelming score.

[Video][Website]
[5.08]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: One can only imagine what other versions of “Beg For You” could exist: a screaming-guitar, scorched-earth rock SAWAYAMA record; an Elton-John adjacent mega ballad; a crashed-out PC music trip; a posse-cut version with Cupcakke and Pablo Vittar stitched on. Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama are both culture-defining icons and a collaboration between the two of them had so much possibility for generation and synthesis. Instead, at worst this is an anonymous Eurodance track, and at best this is a Trojan Horse for Rina Sawayama. 
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: It’s not surprising that two artists at the near-exact same moment in their careers are hopping back on the revitalized UK Garage craze. It is surprising that it is very good, mostly because Charli and Rina remain calm in their mid-ranges throughout until they go full melisma in the chorus. And also because that melody originally comes from their home countrymen Bronski Beat’s “Small Town Boy” by way of  Swedish singer September. Even more excellent is that all three members of Bronski Beat were out and proud gay musicians, so it’s fantastic to see them be repurposed for an openly lesbian song. It also is fantastic to see Rina Sawayama shining in the second verse and chorus, so lovelorn and worried, waiting and wailing in her feathery soprano for the return of her lover, and how she and Charli combine in such a openly vulnerable plea for that love.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Look, friends, I know this is hard. Rina Sawayama deserves a hit, and Charli was once a creative powerhouse. But you need to listen to this on face value and realise that it is dreadful, tatty and uninspired, taking September’s glorious Europop “Cry For You,” stripping it of its simplicity and gloriously un-subtle emotional climaxes. Everything Charli and Rina add to the song is worse than the source material, and neither have September’s sheer determination to bash you in the face with big, dumb feelings like life depends on it. Your time would be better spent listening to one of the many September songs that are better than this, unless you are Charli XCX, in case, don’t get any ideas.
[2]

Rose Stuart: Have we, as a society, moved past the need for drops? “Beg For You” is a gorgeous song, tantalizing and dreamy with a light beat and a perfectly used harp driving the instrumental. Charli XCX tones down her sledgehammer of a voice to fit the breeziness of the song, and Rina Sawayama matches her note for note, even if she’s underused. But what would be an amazing song is marred by a limp drop that stands in for the first chorus. It’s not an ugly drop, not even a poorly executed one, simply… inadequate. Underwhelming. It doesn’t ruin the song but it does take up space that could have been used to take “Beg For You” to new heights. It’s just taking song-time from Rina Sawayama, and isn’t that a crime in itself?
[7]

Tobi Tella: Embarrassing tweets begging for a larger audience aside, there was no real way for this to live up to the insanely steep Gay Expectations for it. Both sound fine, the sample works okay, but it’s probably not a great sign that every time I listen my first thought is “Man, ‘Cry For You’ is kinda great!”
[5]

Oliver Maier: For one thing this reminds me of any number of the boring collaborations on Charli that failed to capitalise on the centre of the Venn diagram between each artist and turned out austere and fun-proof. For another, the awkward phonetics of Charli’s lyrics have historically been prone to deflating good melodies, and this is all over “Beg For You” — lines like “can I take you to the airport?” and the grating “way-hey-hey-hey-hey” outro fall flat because they sound clumsy and undynamic. Most of all, though, it’s baffling to remake “Cry For You” with such apparent obliviousness to what makes it such a cracker. September’s song builds to an ecstatic kiss-off rendered in brutal, brilliant absolutes. Charli and Rina’s take is not only leagues less satisfying narratively but the phrasing is weightless and vague: “Don’t you leave me this way” has all the catharsis of clearing your throat. Put simply “Beg For You”‘s problem is that it just doesn’t justify its existence from any angle. It’s underwhelming as a collaboration, pointless as a remake and feeble as a pop song.
[4]

Leah Isobel: It’s such a novelty to hear late-era Charli projecting her voice outward like this — not using pitch correction to balance her emoting, the natural grain and throatiness of her voice unshielded by robotic walls. I love it without reservations. I do not love the song that houses it, though. I just like it.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Where is this going? Who is this for? Who needs the hit?
[4]

Alex Clifton: I like this. I don’t have much of a reason aside from “it’s catchy and I think it made me gayer,” but that’s reason enough.
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: At first I thought that this was inane — another high-concept low-depth pop song riffing on industry cliches, another joke that doesn’t work unless you’re deep in the r/popheads trenches on the daily. Then I thought it was brilliant — Rina’s verse especially, the way her voice cuts through the washed out garage revivalism with the keening anxiety that the song’s title promises. As of now I’ve landed somewhere between those two points. It’s inane and underbaked, sure, but in those borrowed melodies and nostalgia-bait drum patterns it’s still entrancing, almost as if Charli is showing off how much she can do with a flimsy excuse of a song.
[6]

Joshua Lu: Charli XCX’s last minor hit as a lead artist was a dancepop track that exploited nostalgia and featured a lesser-known pop figure; as her latest album era progressed without much chart fanfare, it made sense that she’d employ that formula once again. Instead of lyrical references to years gone by, however, Charli goes maximum Ava Max on “Beg For You,” with a sample so heavy that this might as well be a cover. The formula isn’t bad on paper, but the execution is baffling: Using “Cry For You” is already a strange idea considering that its melody has already been interpolated by a much bigger artist recently, but also because she neuters the best part of the original song, making its dramatic buildup lead to a bland instrumental break instead of a proper chorus. Weird creative decisions further muddle the song, like how Charli’s harsh vocals contrast harshly with Rina’s crystalline tone, or how the hodgepodge outro again fails to convey the intensity of the original song. 
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: Every time I see *Big Shaq vox* Charles protesting her label on my twitter feed, I remember that it was almost a decade ago when she was making music that aspired to be commercial that also felt… committed. I’m a long time antagonist for Chas. Ecks vs. Sever and very little has changed since then, but I can acknowledge when I think she’s done some fun experiments in rampaging, and when she’s made proper pop singles. But surely someone so aware of the history of pop would recognize that pioneering new sounds for the industry isn’t always rewarded with your own personally validated stardom? Especially not fiscally. So “Beg For You” feels in many ways like a phone in and a tantrum in a way that strikes me as dishonest and lazy. Surely, after watching PinkPanthress crib your “I Am The Modern Online Girl” bit you’d at least try to do something a little more ambitious than sing worse on even more tossed aside UKG drums if you wanted to defend your reputation. But instead, it seems she’s more interested in just sulking her way through her career’s downward spill. Hard to feel much sympathy for a war you’re not even trying to win.
[2]

Make us refer to the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, 1980…

[Video]
[5.12]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: It’s a perfectly adequate mid-tempo dance-pop song, but if you promise Belters Only you really ought to bring something more anthemic than this.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: Stony and brittle all the way through, from the austere chord progression to the antiseptic production; deep house by committee, with no sense of space or drama. Jazzy delivers the line “come on, twirl, woman” in a resigned mumble while daydreaming about clocking out for the day.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Progress: once upon a time you had to go the trouble of actually writing something like “come on, twirl, woman”, hiring a featured vocalist to sing it, and two dancers and a model to front it. These days you can just do it all with AI. Props to the artists involved for getting it off the ground, but how this is a hit in the real world and not that of a TV show without the budget to use real music in its club scenes is bewildering.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Just the kind of dancefloor fervor and compellingly anonymous vocal of which hundreds of classics have been made.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: Yeah, it’s the kind of semi-cheesy pop-house that the UK and Ireland seem to have a cottage industry making right now — but at least it’s not based around a sample or loop from an earlier classic, and it doesn’t feature either a rising or falling pop diva on vocals. Jazzy is just anonymous enough to make this work.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: The plunking piano chords idle around Jazzy as the synth strings wobble then evaporate while the heat of the bass and kicks burn down. Then the shimmering balls and flat snares slam down, then disappear as Jazzy swirls the piano and strings. Her flat and dry voice just drags across the top of the mix and only floats disembodied as each kick hits, finally fading away as the last chord plays.
[6]

Alex Clifton: Can a dance track be “restrained”? This song has so many moments where it really could’ve popped off and gone for a big, cathartic breakdown, but instead it doesn’t, just teasing the audience with the prospect of a drop. That’s fine if there is an eventual release but otherwise just ends up frustrating; not in a fun, sexy way, but in a “what a wasted opportunity” way. Shame, really. Amping this up a bit could’ve made it stellar.
[4]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Good, nice, not much else. 
[5]

Is every day the 14th?

[Video]
[4.89]

Alex Clifton: Exactly the kind of fun, frothy disco I want for Valentine’s Day — something that goes down easy and keeps me dancing until I go to sleep. I added a bonus point because music videos just don’t have enough armour these days and thankfully Olly Alexander is working hard to rectify that pressing issue.
[7]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Somewhere in a secret bunker sipping on a mimosa, Jessie J is smiling mischievously to herself at the idea that someone has revived this concept with even less success than her. 
[3]

Leah Isobel: Olly Alexander’s voice is brittle plastic; he works perfectly with Galantis’ toybox orchestra. But it’s really all about the grunt after the chorus, which introduces a sexuality that ties the song’s build-and-release structure together with its needling, needy lyrics. Campy, blunt and hedonistic, this would work great on Fire Island.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: More like high fructose corn syrup.
[4]

Oliver Maier: Olly Alexander’s songs are superficially pretty similar to that of a lot of his UK dance-pop peers, but there’s an earnest joy at work that saves them from succumbing to the same monotony. Galantis’ delirious string arpeggios are an ideal complement.
[6]

Alfred Soto: What with his acting gigs and outsize cultural presence, I wonder whether Olly Alexander has any interest left in pop music. The synth string flourish and rattling bass decorate a vocal and lyric as detached from the zeitgeist as anything I’ve heard. He hasn’t come this far to act like a closeted gay man put in the position of having to grope his girlfriend.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: It was a shame that two thirds of Years & Years left, but even more so that Olly seems to have joined them. There is nothing bad about “Sweet Talker” — the conventional strings loop unconventionally, and the chorus is a neat if lightweight package — but it feels like an afterthought. As with Night Call generally, it no longer sounds like music with personality, but music by a personality; an artist whose energies may now lie elsewhere.
[6]

Samson Savill de Jong: I really thought this kind of generic, copy-and-pasted, vaguely EDM-influenced “pop music sludge” sound had died a death in the late 2010s, but it’s been having a resurgence (or at least I’ve been hearing it more) over the past year. I am not for it.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: The hopping pianos are swept up by the synth strings and the snare crack, with Olly’s pealing voice cutting through. The usually airbrushed build-up knocks him out of the way for the violins to spin atop the bass drop and the skipping drums, but once that has ended, Olly jumps back atop — before the violins kick him in the chest and into the mud, doing capoeira to the drums, leaving Olly to croon weakly over the sweeping strings as the bass gallops away.
[6]