“A power that brings immortality and can unite generations to fight evil”…

[Video][Website]
[7.86]

Leah Isobel: “Kalyna” feels both animated and undone by its own futility in the face of war; its instrumental builds threaten a catharsis that never quite comes, despite the song’s chugging, foreboding momentum. How do I even score this?
[7]

Jessica Doyle: The song explicitly rejects pity (if asked, Go_A would probably prefer ammunition to a ride, too) so let’s not give it any, and instead evaluate it from the perspective of a hypothetical 2030 independent Ukraine in the midst of a messy, suboptimal, peaceful rebuild. (Fingers crossed.) “Kalyna” will still have life then, especially in the remixes; it likely works best when stretched out and treated more meditatively, with Kateryna Pavlenko’s voice able to rouse the clubgoers from their trances, instead of coming on with insufficient buildup. It’s not Go_A’s Guernica, but that’s too much to ask of any one song — it’s more a song of resolve than of terror, which will give it a longer afterlife, and makes me feel a little more hopeful for that afterlife.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Hip to its thumping confidence if not thumping arrogance, I blasted “Kalyna” twice without knowing a jot about their origins — and that still doesn’t matter insofar as the beats and multitracked voices bespeak universal applicability, i.e. dancing. 
[8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Ambrosial, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-raising, arena-stadium-rock; flute-powered Ukrainian alchemy, only further heightened by the nightmarish zeitgeist.
[9]

Will Adams: Foolish of me to doubt even for a second if the Go_A formula would work without someone mashing on the accelerator. Of course it does! This strain of aggressive, pulsing trance-rock — evoked by PVRIS, early MUNA and Haloo Helsinki, among others — is practically hardwired into my brain as an endorphin-producer, and Kateryna Pavlenko’s steely vocal in the face of Ukraine’s current plight makes “Kalyna” all the more compelling.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: The legendary intensity of “SHUM” comes into even sharper relief. Vital, urgent and exhortative, “Kalyna” is as compelling as intended.
[8]

Ian Mathers: God, I wish my primary association with this band was still Eurovision. I don’t think the speed-up-and-stop thing with “SHUM” was a gimmick or anything, so I’m unsurprised that even beyond any other considerations this just works really well as a song — the goth techno music of my early years but more genuinely folk-inflected, I guess. Plus now I know that the fruit of the viburnum opulus shrub, called kalyna in Ukranian and kalina in Russian, is an important cultural symbol in both countries. And if, even after you look up the translation, it sounds a bit like a curse being either lamented or laid, well…
[8]

In which we spot the deliberate mistake…

[Video][Website]
[6.83]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: The song is fine, even if the bass sounds like it’s coming from a paper cup, but I didn’t go to six summers of scout camp to not point out that shotguns don’t fire bullets. Perhaps next time we could shoot for a more accurate metaphor?
[6]

Vikram Joseph: Breezy and angular, “Shotgun” meshes gently clattering bass-driven verses with a swooning chorus in a way that’s far more reminiscent of early single “Cool” than the lush, melancholy compositions and golden-hour depressive aesthetics of Color Theory. As much of a near-perfect mood piece as that album was, it’s nice to see this side of Soccer Mommy again — there’s always sadness and a fierce intensity lurking at the corners of her work, but her urgency and playfulness can be such effective counterpoints. Daniel Lopatin’s production is busy, but there’s a lot to like — the woozy synth that floats down like pollen in the post-chorus, and the slightly off-kilter drum fills in the chorus — and Sophie Allison sounds revitalised, emerging from a dark tunnel into the fresh, bracing air of an imperfect world.
[8]

Leah Isobel: “Shotgun” has a grimy sheen, like oil over pavement. That texture, appealing but disgusting, lifts the song when its repetitive structure threatens to wear. I guess more detail might break the illusion; in a song about fooling yourself, you only need the things that contribute to the fantasy.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Barely discernible beneath the rumble of drums and bass, Soccer Mommy sings the expected pleas sheathed in the usual metaphors with professional unprofessionalism. I need more gusto. An attractively unattractive record.
[6]

Oliver Maier: The OPN teamup might imply an exciting pivot in Soccah Mommy’s sound but that doesn’t really play out in practice. I’m sure someone with more technical knowledge could pinpoint his touch here, but to my ears this is pretty standard for her, maybe a tad more vibrant. Still, “pretty standard Soccer Mommy” is a winning formula, at least for me.
[7]

Andrew Karpan: Sophie Allison’s records have a knack of transcending their singer-songwriter-indie-label milieu, finding ways to explore rejection that are as moving as they are relatable; the kind of teen angst that percolates deep into adult life, pulling imagery off the shelf of sunbeat suburbia, grass dry and uncut. When I first heard her, she took the form of the corner’s misbegotten canine, tied up and barking. Now, she’s the bullet inside the barrel of a figurative gun, waiting for a cause to crack into the night air. (Not for nothing does a half-concerned Condé Nast blogger call this dispatch a “cry for help.”) But the reference point I’m reading here is not quite Cobain, but rather contemporaneous work from Liz Phair and those early tapes that also found ways to assemble loneliness out of such everyday parts. 
[7]

Are we right? Are we wrong?

[Video]
[5.33]

Tim de Reuse: Appropriate for the movie to which it’s attached, this song is, well, a lot of things at once. It’s three accomplished musicians with deeply idiosyncratic styles all doing their thing together, but it’s also clearly working under pressure to be cinematic. Thus, the string section, the drama, the up-and-down foreground-as-background while two center-stage vocalists try to be each other’s backing vocals. An interesting kind of chaos, but not really something that’ll be remembered outside of the context in which it was created.
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: The secret of Everything Everywhere All At Once is that it’s essentially a superhero movie without the annoying, synergistic things about superhero movies, and flips the Marvel formula of deflating serious moments so that silly concepts (hot dog fingers, the universe on a literal everything bagel) carry unexpected weight. David Byrne should be a perfect fit, as even his most out-there stuff is still accessible and even his simplest love song is off-kilter. Similarly, Mitski’s last two records are increasingly poppy while still finding room for key changes and unpredictable melodies. This collaboration with Son Lux is beautiful, but ends up a surprising slog, merely restating the messages of the film after said film has hammered its messages into viewers’ brains. An end-credits comedown after a movie so chaotic and loud makes sense: anything more would be further emotionally draining. I still left the movie theater sobbing, but not because of the song. 
[6]

Oliver Maier: Too twee to be moving, but Mitski and Byrne’s voices are a surprisingly good match, her stately soprano playing beauty to his slightly uncanny beast. Solid!
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: The slumbering drums feel at once too slow and too weak while Mitski and David Byrne stumble into each other without being able to properly harmonize, squashed by the howling strings and horns. A messsss.
[5]

Alex Clifton: I like all three artists because they’re a little off-kilter, but I also like it when that energy is matched with something more steady to ground it. This is slightly too much for my tastes; I feel like I’m tripping through the notes. It’s also a weirdly slow song that feels much longer than its 2:41 runtime. I’m sure there are many out there who will think this is the greatest collaboration ever, but I can’t care too much about it.
[4]

Ian Mathers: For those of us in households where, no, we can’t go to the movie theatre and increasingly it is feeling like we may never be able to again, there’s probably a lot of context missing here. (I would really, really like to see this movie and as yet have been too dispirited to see if there are torrents or anything.) Absent that context, I’m surprised to find that this sounds roughly like what I expected Mitski and David Byrne singing a song for this project would sound like; maybe, again absent that context, a bit more lugubrious than that. I am sure it plays better in context but there is not currently anything I can do about that.
[6]

They were right: our next job was in “CYBAH”…

[Video]
[6.75]

Leah Isobel: Syd sings with such lightness and softness that she counterintuitively projects confidence, so when she claims vulnerability, it’s the kind that indicates a deep well of self-knowledge. The sexiest kind, in other words. The ambivalent wording of the chorus and the endlessly ascendant, stop-start beat are too controlled and purposeful to imply anxiety. Rather, they imply a desire for anxiety, like Syd wants the things she knows about herself to become less clear. I tug at my collar.
[8]

Jibril Yassin: A languid, meandering beat that tries to recall Prince with its velvet feel. Syd can play the role of the vulnerable one well but that — along with a killer vocal from Lucky Daye — isn’t enough to elevate this from feeling stuck in motion.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Another homage to a throwback: Blood Orange doing Prince-in-1985. Not charmless, but I’m ready for the Babyface throwbacks.
[5]

Harlan Talib Ockey: It’s hard to find anything new to say about another ’80s pastiche — I personally expended the last of my energy in this realm on John Mayer a few weeks ago — but I think it’s the charm of the primitive technology that makes the concept work this time. The gated reverb and slightly warped guitar loop sound like a portal to an alternate universe that’s free of the stress of modern life, where the only possible focus is the narrator’s uncertainty. This is a song that doesn’t know about emails. Once we’re submerged, it’s clear that the superstar of “CYBAH” is Syd’s phrasing. The minuscule pause in the chorus before “if I asked you” is absolutely devastating, preloading the following line with seemingly infinite emotional weight. Lucky Daye is thoroughly outshined; the vocal processing forces a firm limit on his degree of expressiveness, and it’d be difficult to contend with Syd’s performance here anyway.
[8]

Joshua Lu: Sumptuous and shimmering, but meanders a little too much and goes on a little too long. The bridge with their combined vocals and Syd’s ramped-up refrain are great payoffs, and the song could have been tightened around this closing burst of energy.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I know the album’s theme is heartbreak, but here on its opening track “could you break a heart… if I asked you?” is cooed so sweetly that it doesn’t sound weighty at all; just a trifle, a teensy tiny favour, surely nothing too consequential. Keeping the heaviness and maybe even the menace of the request in the subtext works surprisingly well.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This style of contemporary R&B — futurist quiet storm mid-tempo numbers, muted to the extreme — is almost intentionally low-key and homogeneous. It’s not quite streambait in that Syd & Lucky Daye are both too distinctive as vocal presences to achieve true playlistable anonymity, but the things that make “CYBAH” good are really only perceptible when placed in contrast to poorer examples of the genre — the Kehlani/Yung Bleu song we covered a few weeks ago, for example. Where so many songs in this lane fade into smoothness and absence, “CYBAH” is halting and unsteady, the electro-funk beat stopping and starting like some kind of damaged automaton. Syd and Lucky Daye know what to do over a beat like this — their melodies are silken but maintain a phantom edge, taking what could have been a rote genre exercise and making it something distinct.
[7]

Vikram Joseph: So many songs strive so hard for this exact vibe that it seems almost unfair for Syd to make it sound entirely effortless. “CYBAH” sounds breathless and sublime — icy bass, sultry bursts of processed guitar, Syd’s most pillowy, vulnerable vocal and a perfectly understated cameo from Lucky Daye. You could criticise them for not pushing “CYBAH” into more adventurous territory, but if your comfort zone is this idyllic you can hardly be expected to leave it.
[8]

We await the next single, “Fantastic”…

[Video][Website]
[6.43]

Alfred Soto: Often charmed but unmoved, I listen to Normani to appreciate a certain warmth. “Fair” defines her approach: even-handed to lovers who deserve less. Lord knows in these times I appreciate the approach even as I suppress a convulsive little yawn.
[6]

Vikram Joseph: It feels like a lottery as to whether this low-key, washed-out mood piece captures you in its orbit or passes you by; unfortunately, there’s just not enough going on sonically or melodically for the odds to be worth playing. The production creates plenty of space, but doesn’t use it especially well — it’s like Marvin’s Room, but most of the decor is beige.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: Over a dark, sweeping instrumental anchored firmly to the seabed by a chunky drum machine and a quietly growling bass synth, Normani laments. Her delivery is precise (just listen to that beautiful lilt on “better than average”) and her lyricism straightforward; with little metaphor to get in the way, it gets to dwell on the crushing lucidity of knowing exactly where you’re at and how you got there.
[9]

Ady Thapliyal: Normani has spoken about how her perfectionism slows her pop career down, so on a personal level it’s a breakthrough that she serves us “Fair” underthought and undercooked. It’s unfortunate because with just a little bit more tinkering, this could’ve sounded as lush as Brandy’s “Borderline.” 
[3]

Leah Isobel: I love the prospect of Normani doing icy mid-2000s downtempo, but while “Fair” is undeniably gorgeous, it isn’t the most interesting use of the aesthetic. Its sadness is one-dimensional; you wish for some kind of twist, something to introduce messy humanity into its antiseptic soundscape.
[6]

Oliver Maier: All three singles of this interminable album rollout have suffered from an excess of competence and a lack of real star power from Normani. I don’t know if a lane that she can call hers exists, but if it does, she’s not going to find it by spreading herself thin. There’s not much I can criticise about “Fair” except that it just doesn’t excite me, outside of that glistening vein of autotune in the post-chorus, which feels truly inspired. Other than that this is just fair enough.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: “Fair” is the first time Normani has let us behind the curtain. By and large, her solo releases have been stunning showcases of her talent, but rarely of personal investment. Even “Motivation” and “Waves” and “Dancing with a Stranger” lean on the tracings of other artists. “Fair” is a completely different story. For one, it’s soft. Even the rubbery drums tumbling in the mix are muted and low, anchoring but not driving it; that work is done by the velvet synths. Even when the bass synths are planted in the chorus, the velvet synths lift like a cloud, the light plonking of the piano a rumble that appears to add texture then disappears, all to support a cooing post-chorus which carries agony that can’t be put into words, floating among the clouds and not clinging on tightly to the kick. The writing is also soft. The second verse begins with, “baby, if we could trade places/so you’d feel betrayed/and I could feel shameless” — not at all cutting, more morose and regretful. It reveals the longing in her tone, simply trying to get him to understand her feelings, not to condemn and cuss him out — but that betrayal is still there, and as much as she does long for him, she’s not going to deny what he did to hurt her. The verse continues: “I carry all of the weight/and you get all of the gains/I can’t take all the ways that she might touch you”, and the dreadful anguish bubbles below her voice as she carries the weight of the love she continues to feel while he gains everything he wants — including the touch of his new love. The shortness also seems to fit the emotions Normani is trying to convey. In the verses, she sings in a low, soft tone, slipping into a lilt every time she hits a run, always lifting a bit, never directly leaping higher — until the chorus, where she solely lilts, only dipping down to the line “hearts didn’t break down the middle”, before immediately lilting up to “tell me how did that happen?” It’s at this point the “oooh”s come in, bloodshot and high-pitched, shaking as they’re pitch-corrected into almost fully autotuned coos, the agony and anguish crackling and frothing, the song about to break. “Fair” is a song only Normani could make, and each part of it proves that. Many of her contemporaries, like Chloe or Kehlani or SZA or even SheWhoWritesRacistPropaganda Cabello have at least a bite or bitterness undergirding even their most soft songs, but with Normani there is none, just the softness and vulnerability. A terrifying prospect, since the bite is what makes the soft underbelly impossible to touch — but Normani has presented it to us openly; that hope, that love. “The first thing she said was don’t hurt me.” — Scarface
[10]

Harry moves on to new musical styles…

[Video]
[5.43]Tobi Tella: Harry Styles has become one of the few fully pop event artists today, and this is effortlessly better than anything his White Boy Popstar contemporaries like Mendes and Puth could dream of. At the same time, it kind of convinces me he took the wrong lesson from his breakout albums. I want more bombastic belt-along choruses, not a combination of the slow dreariness of the debut and the occasionally listless pop production of Fine Line. I can’t wait for the chill pop craze to be conclusively dead.
[6]

Ady Thapliyal: Fine Line’s indie funk was already regressive, but “As It Was” changes it up by painstakingly emulating a different dated indie style, MGMT-era synthpop. At least MGMT’s bright synth melodies were brilliantly original; here the main synth hook sounds like “Take On Me” wearing Groucho glasses.
[2]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: At this point, ’80s revivalism mostly just reminds me of 2014. The slightly-artsy portion of the pop mainstream — The Weeknd, Dua Lipa, now this guy — have been running their pastiches of Sky Ferreira/Dev Hynes pastiches of the 1981-1985 era so consistently over the last three years that it’s hard to distinguish any meaning in any individual sonic choice. It’s hard to distinguish anything that’s going on here — for a pop mega-hit, “As It Was” is both flimsier and more muddled than you’d expect. It’s pre-fab art-pop, a largely hookless moire of synths wrapped around a first draft of a song, and the references to “light-speed internet” and “leave America” feel like Styles skimmed a 1975 album. On his first two albums, Styles borrowed from genres rich in charismatic, relatively novel archetypes, and achieved a facsimile of depth. Here, he’s just doing the same damn thing everyone else in his lane is (more on this when we get to the new Maggie Rogers single). The only reason I don’t dislike this more is because there’s nothing here to have an opinion about.
[3]

Al Varela: I think a lot of people expect a pop artist’s comeback single to be this big, world-defining, bombastic return to music, which is why I appreciate how unassuming “As It Was” is. It’s simply a new Harry Styles song, one that takes a lot of inspiration from jangle-pop with a running groove and catchy hook. But the song being unspectacular isn’t an indictment of its quality. If anything, “As It Was” is a refinement of his styles that further cements him as both a pop star and even a rock star. Detached, yet filled to the brim with feelings, this is a song you can run or ache to. I love how it ends with a splash of color against the bright melody and fluttering synths, bringing the song back home.
[8]

Alex Clifton: I think Harry listened to a bunch of Mitski and “Take On Me” and decided to combine the two, to great effect. My favourite musical moment of the year so far is around 2:20 when the chimes kick in, taking “As It Was” to more grandiose heights. It’s joyous and so alive, even when the lyrics are existentially sad — beautifully bittersweet. I’m filing this under “additional proof that Harry was always the best thing to come out of One Direction.”
[10]

Andrew Karpan: Even in this moment of ruthless interpolation-pop, Styles’ rework of “Take On Me” is a subtly moving zombie of a record that seems, at times, sentimental about its own nostalgia. “You know it’s not the same as it was,” his perfect voice cooes perfectly, almost as if to say there’s some deeper reasons why this sounds more like Passion Pit than your corner bar’s ’80s nite.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: I liked Harry Styles better when he was Bruno Marsing classic rock, not landfill indie.
[3]

A title like a Lionel Hutz business card…

[Video]
[4.00]

Alfred Soto: They tell each other lies, sweet little lies, and the telling has got Yung Bleu reaching into his satchel for suitable boilerplate. 
[4]

Oliver Maier: Bleu and Kehlani both manage relatively well with a beat you’ve heard 5423783 times before, but they couldn’t have less chemistry. There’s no interesting dynamic between their voices, and the lack of contrast dulls the whole affair, rendering it less than the sum of its parts.
[4]

Ian Mathers: The production here is the same “sad guitar + beat” thing we’ve heard over and over again, but it’s kind of wild how much better Kehlani sounds over it, right? Is it as simple as “she’s a much better singer” or am I missing something?
[5]

Ady Thapliyal: Yung Bleu is cold and anonymous in the verses but reveals flashes of tender soul in the chorus, which is apparently enough to make “Beautiful Lies” an R&B radio hit. I just wish the lyrics had any color or specificity at all. 
[4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Wikipedia knows of eighteen songs and two albums named “Beautiful Lie(s)”, so that doesn’t bode well. The opening lines rhyme “you had me at hello” with “it must be the devil”, which bodes even worse. Fortunately, the rest of the lyrics aren’t quite as cliché-infested; they are immensely generic and simplistic, however. We get bland, facile references to the narrators’ relationship being toxic like “you lied to me” and “you keep fucking up”, but there’s nowhere near enough detail to make you actually feel bad for either of them. The production is also a trite and faceless void. This guitar riff could be from half the songs on the Hot 100 right now. Yung Bleu musters up a solid rapport with the percussion in his verse, though that’s hardly enough to save it. Kehlani, too, sounds like she’s trying to elevate these incredibly flat lyrics with a graceful vocal performance, but it reads as aimless instead. It must be difficult to know what nuanced emotions to inject into something this nondescript.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Needs a Freemasons remix.
[4]

There’s still time to redo it as “Completely Fine”…

[Video][Website]
[5.33]

Ian Mathers: Every generation gets their own “With or Without You”, I guess. This one ain’t bad!
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: It took Duran Duran almost 12 years to make their way to “Ordinary World”, so 5 Seconds of Summer are several seasons ahead of schedule. The swooping, Tedderish landscape of ambivalence is an appealing gambit, but while the central wordplay is neat, it doesn’t hold enough weight as a hook. Had they really taken the Duran lead and amped up the overblown ad libs and solos, this might have felt more like a finished product.
[6]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Two truths can be held at the same time: 1) This is unclever, bottom-of-the-barrel boy band pop. 2) I am so starved for boy band pop that I have no choice but to like this. 
[7]

Edward Okulicz: This is a perfectly functional big rock ballad take on the boy band whimper (or vice versa) with big hooks performed with the utmost seriousness. Everything works, but though I want to feel like the “complete”/”complete mess” set-up/tear down is genius, Lit got to the idea first.
[6]

Alex Clifton: Yet another song improved by fiddling with the settings on YouTube — listen to it at 1.25x speed and it’s got a far more delightful energy than the mediocre, turgid ballad it is. Hell, even if they’d just played around with tempo changes in the song, that’d make for a more interesting listen. Quite frustrating as I think with a few of those changes this would be so much more engaging.
[4]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: This is the song that plays at the end of an episode of Gossip Girl where we think Dan and Serena are going to break up but actually they kiss at the end of it.
[3]

Giddy up!

[Video][Website]
[6.67]

Alex Clifton: I was hooked from the opening lines: “you’re gonna say that I’m on a high horse/I think that my horse is regular-sized.” This is a song that doesn’t take itself too seriously, that wants you to have fun with it and let your hair down as you dance around. It’s not that the whole thing is played as a joke, but it’s got feeling and irreverence wrapped up in a fun little package.
[7]

Lauren Gilbert: One of MUNA’s best ever opening lyrics, followed by a song that sounds a little too much like an “About U” b-side to reach the heights of “Silk Chiffon”. But I’m still a gay with mental health issues, so basically anything Katie Gavin writes is still a [7] for me.
[7]

Vikram Joseph: It might be too early to call it, but this MUNA era feels different: it’s not that they ever lacked confidence, but there’s a lightness and irreverence to the two singles that seems to signal a departure from the high angst of About U and the often lacerating Saves The World. Like “Silk Chiffon”, this is frothy and addictive, although it’s certainly a weightier song thematically. “Anything But Me” deals with a situation they would previously have reported from the other party’s perspective – trying to navigate the brave new landscape of being friends with someone you’re not seeing any more but have unresolved feelings for (“it’s all love and it’s no regrets”, except there’s almost always some of the latter lying around). But here it’s MUNA adopting a position of relative power, reminding their ex why they broke up in the first place and making sure they know where the boundaries lie in their changed dynamic. The frisky beat, pulsing bass and offhand jokes about regular-sized horses make it sound like they’re entirely comfortable with it – maybe it’s a facade, but it’s convincing.
[8]

Will Adams: The intentional clunkiness of “my horse is regular-size” is a bit too self-consciously nudge-nudge and, like the CVS line in “Silk Chiffon,” briefly takes me out of the song. But that’s only a minor distraction; “Anything But Me” is MUNA in classic form. There’s Naomi McPherson’s rollicking production — dazzling synth-pop glitter anchored by giant drums and pulsing bass — Josette Maskin’s guitar riffs ripping through like lightning, and Katie Gavin’s ever-present resolve to put herself first.
[7]

Ady Thapliyal: I’m going to say that MUNA is on a high horse, and I wish the length of their metaphors was regular-sized. They’re stuck on a dud simile, going in circles on a carousel ride. 
[2]

Leah Isobel: As always with MUNA, this is comfort food for the suburban gay soul. Synths arpeggiate to evoke throbbing, unresolved feeling; guitars soar, suggesting windswept landscapes perfect for dramatic emoting; drums thwack precisely on 2 and 4. Katie’s lyrics are just wordy enough to imply complexity but sharp enough to fit cleanly into a pop structure — clock the sneaky internal rhyme that opens the song, corralling an unruly sentiment back in line. None of this is new for them, but I can’t say this is the first time they’ve produced something formulaic. I can’t even say that their formula is bad. But I can say that the bridge shortcuts past a completely different song that could have been written, one that could be thornier, angrier, more personal and more interesting.
[7]

Alfred Soto: A self-assured example of self-loathing, “Anything But Me” uses loud drums and retro-nuevo synths without self-consciousness. Angst as muse.
[7]

Ian Mathers: I’m very behind, but I’m slowly picking my way through the mid-’80s in Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones column Now that I’m hitting years where I was actually alive, it’s been making me think a lot about the music that was around when I was a kid. Something I think Breihan does well is show how the middle of the mainstream eventually figures out how to assimilate and repurpose the technology and techniques that crop up elsewhere. Like, the actual synthpop of the time was often besotted by all the new ways you could make songs (and I obviously love that stuff at lot), but at its best, the way some major hits took techniques from there and grafted it onto sturdy, proven pop/AOR/AC/whatever structures could be pretty fascinating (and satisfying) too. There’s something about the construction of and playing on “Anything But Me” that puts me in the mind of those songs. (Of course time and history being what they are, the result is much less squarely middle of the road than it was in ’85, but what “Anything But Me” suggests is… maybe it should be?) And then tonally/emotionally it’s much more akin to something like “Call Your Girlfriend” in terms of being a pop song about… compassion but boundaries, I guess? I’ve finally gotten old enough to hear something that sounds like a lot of stuff I loved as a kid without the significant emotional/lyrical flaws of much of it, and I’ve gotta admit it feels like I’m a pretty easy mark for that.
[9]

Andrew Karpan: I like the way that some of my favorite MUNA songs come in the form of these aggressive second-person monologues, flexing their pain like muscles, dripping with spite. The last one was the band’s self-care album closer, the elegant “It’s Gonna Be Okay, Baby,” an MFA-style lyrical essay addressed to their younger selves. This take on the form feels more like a manifesto; the minimal synth pads give the band’s righteous beating the sonorousness of a march to the East River on a cold winter night. It may just be a bad breakup, but that’s no reason not to cry.
[6]

Nominative deblurbatism…

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Leah Isobel: I could knock “Middle of the Night” for its humorlessness, but desire can feel like that. Duhé’s vocal — indie-girl affected, in true 2010 fashion — courts instability, and the guitar’s scratchy warble suggests the same, mystical and coming apart at the seams. More than anything, this reminds me of listening to “Guns and Horses” when I was 16, flirting with boys over text message and drawing up fantasies in my head. Novelty and levity aren’t the point; intensity, affected or not, is. You might want a song that doesn’t so much soundtrack a moment as much as valorize it. By that metric, this works fine.
[5]

Ady Thapliyal: “Middle of the Night” does the cinematic pop style better than Dove Cameron’s “Boyfriend,” but has some terribly cringe lyrics that remind me of the (delusional) fantasies the 20-year-old from “Cat Person” was having as foreplay, fetishizing your submission as if you were detached from your own body… it’s very bad when a song about sex makes me want to not have it. 
[1]

Oliver Maier: I find this sort of self-serious, BANKS-y goth-lite pop kind of silly and tiresome most of the time. This isn’t necessarily an exception — Duhé doesn’t really provide much to write home about — but the meandering verse melody and twisty guitar sample at least give it a bit of flavour.
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Vikram Joseph: The acoustic guitar figure that bookends “Middle of the Night” leans toward Balkan folk, and there’s a certain weirdness here that intensifies Duhé’s hot-blooded lyrics. The 6/8 signature lends the chorus a whirlpool motion, and the reverb-streaked vocals bleed elegantly between lines. It’s compelling, if a little slight — it’d doubtless go down a treat in front of a crowd at a late-night bar, but might not be something I come back to often on headphones.
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Ian Mathers: The title and the fervid little guitar figure in the intro seem like we’re going somewhere interesting, but ultimately things are nocturnal but not really spooky, and it seems like this would be more successful if it were spooky. 
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Jeffrey Brister: I dig the whole “indie singer forest pixie” vibe, how Duhé’s voice slithers around the swirling music. There’s a simmering, dark drama to the whole thing, a low-lit room split by dim flashes of lightning.
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Alfred Soto: On first listen it sounds like The Third Man theme sung by Susanne Sundfør but without the angst.
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Harlan Talib Ockey: Comparing any brooding, vaguely sacrilegious synthpop single to the Weeknd feels like exceptionally low-hanging fruit no matter how many of his song titles Duhé almost name-checks in the chorus or how much she wanted him to sing it in the first place, so let’s put in a pin in that for a second. The flamenco guitar sample and witchcore lyrics are about waist-deep in Florence + The Machine waters; it’s an odd amalgamation of influences on paper, but the high drama in both styles welds them together surprisingly successfully. The lyrics are the clearest weak point. Witchiness, blasphemy; the vibe Duhé is shooting for is obvious, but there are simply too many clumsy, unwieldy phrasings like “within me lies what you really want” to truly hit the mark. The chorus is easily the strongest section on that front — no awkward wording mishaps — and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s the part TikTok’s gripping firmly in its jaws.
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