The Singles Jukebox

Life after Amnesty…

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[5.89]

Patrick St. Michel: Perfectly pleasant and fragile electro that drifts by without leaving much of an impression.
[5]

Megan Harrington: Shyness is nice and shyness can stop you from making your song as memorable as it should be. 
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: There are deft moments in this story, like the dork’s lament that forms an opening couplet — “I turned up with my cap on back-to-front/Trying to be someone I saw on TV once” — but it’s hard to make them out amidst these fog machine synths. I’m less captivated by the overarching theme, since there are only so many times you can listen to Rivers Cuomo beg “I’m a lot like you, so please, hello, I’m here, I’m waiting,” before you conclude that, actually maybe it is all in your head. It’s true that pop songs are built on these little white lies, but they’re also built on big whopping hooks, and though those don’t have to be melodic, they shouldn’t underwhelm if they’re trying to be conceptual. A song of small pleasures, worthy of a smallish score, but if it should turn out I’m underrating it, it’s because I’m not taking into account the staying power of vocal phrasings that ghost Prince this transparently.
[6]

Danilo Bortoli: “Maybe that was just the way that it felt to me”: so much of Shura’s talent relies on turning her own perspectives and possibilities into universal, cathartic narratives. And “2Shy” is as universal as the listener allows it to be. It’s supposed to be about the impossible: a heartbreak song when there isn’t a heart to be broken yet, when you’re still overthinking the possibilities of love and everything else that comes with it. Still, Shura’s take on this kind of painful anticipation is very realistic. Unlike many other dreamlike alt-R&B songs out there, “2Shy” acknowledges the pain involved in struggling to find the right words for the right moment. In a certain way, it’s a perfect update to “Everything Is Embarrassing“: its strength is found in that very particular moment when you’re grieving over a relationship that hasn’t even started. And the most important part about “2Shy” is that you don’t want to think of that other possibility — if she ever sang, with a more defiant tone, “That was the way that it felt to me” and if the characters were actually more than friends — because the current state of affairs just seems enough. At least for the moment.
[8]

Iain Mew: The before to “Touch“‘s after, “2Shy” plays on the same tension of relationship possibility, but is more internal narratively. That means its chorus gets a bit too expansive to work as perfectly, but in the verses Shura gets lonely sadness just right. The moment of her walking alone, headphones on, pondering a cigarette, is quietly devastating.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: There’s a line between breathy Dev Hynes-ish shy-girl synth&R&B that makes me swoon, and the sort that makes me feel swaddled, coddled and blatantly marketed to. I think it’s mostly got to do with how grumpy I feel that day. But this has about as much weight as a powder puff. Or it’s Charli XCX’s “Doing It,” blurred dull by powder.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: The reductive caricature of ’80s pop that Shura has striven for is best captured by the space that the production attempts to embody, yet her vocals often fail to thrive in. There’s always the possibility that she wants and wills this to happen, but I’m always wondering how the sound travels in her songs — her voice remains this sort of listless, unhealthy being.
[2]

Ramzi Awn: Miss Jackson, if you’re nasty. Is this actually a Janet b-side?
[8]

Mo Kim: I’ve spent a lot of nights this year spent staring wistfully at my News Feed, in love with too many people and without enough space in 140 characters to tell them how. It’s maybe the best and worst problem to have: I don’t want to think of love as a zero-sum game, but what about time? “2Shy” delves right into the heart of that feeling, that tangled wistful lovely numb sensation of holding onto a flame you don’t mean to burn yourself playing with, and it leaves me wondering if this is where I want to be. How do you evaluate a place whose entire point is that you need to leave it?
[7]