The Singles Jukebox

More like “I toured with Trans-Siberian Orchestra and now I’m on Roc Nation, so there”, or “appropriating Indian music for my pop tune? I’m so there“?

[Video][Website]
[4.14]

Katherine St Asaph: Maybe it’s because I’m in my personal The Ugly One phase (joke joke, ha ha, but I am), or because I miss summer (…no?), or because I’m a sucker for vocal-snippet hooks like the one at the start, or because I always ride for rising pop-pop (always), but this is breezy and great. Even the dubious prospect of Roc Nation minting another Rita Ora, or “crunch time” used as a metaphor for something good, feel sunny.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Boy, is she confident about the hook. If she wanted to rock the boat, though, she’d have remembered the rest of the song.
[4]

Anthony Easton: She doesn’t seem to make good choices in lovers, but she makes excellent choices in how she dictates this failure — all that heartbreak, in such a gorgeous package. Extra points for the silvery, needled production. 
[8]

Micha Cavaseno: Bhangra mall-pop is hardly something I expected would be something for consideration in 2014, but hey. The song is nothing to note otherwise because the generic electro-march and the lyrics are pretty transparent. What’s obviously going to get anyone’s attention is the not-so-subtle fake desi grasping by Alexa, which is not only corny, ignorant but incredibly lame.
[0]

Will Adams: The bhangra addition feels like an afterthought, like the producers felt they had to add something exciting or exotic to make it interesting. “So There” needs a bigger intervention, anyway.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: A light coat of country twang to hide how little is going on here.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Just a tremendous waste of timbre and instrumentation. She’s so careless with the text, so mushmouthed on the chorus; even a standard-issue stylistic smash-and-grab would be more enjoyable than this. (And filmi knows from smashing and grabbing.) She’s working some sort of breezy country mode, but the bass is tugging her toward something weightier. I wish they’d both been able to win.
[4]