The Singles Jukebox

To be clear, this is SNSD Tiffany, not “I Think We’re Alone Now” Tiffany…

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Katherine St Asaph: Not unwitting ’80s inspiration for swaths of ’16 pop Tiffany, but Tiffany of Girls Generation, with a track that sounds exactly like dancing in a beach-resort submarine. Three years ago that’d be a cool, novel sound. Now it’s just competent.
[6]

Alfred Soto: She moves through the electrogroove with practiced ease, and the electrogroove itself takes it slow, luxuriating in its curves. It shames similar efforts on Ariana Grande’s latest.
[7]

Katie Gill: You’d expect a song titled “I Just Wanna Dance” to be a bit more…dancey. As it is, it’s surprisingly laid-back, a fact which hampers the whole song.
[5]

Cassy Gress: SNSD was the first kpop girl group I ever heard, and due to internalized misogyny, I was repelled by how very pink and girly and cute they were. Their image and performing style isn’t much different from a lot of other kpop groups; I think it’s just that I saw them first. It’s years later and I’m still having trouble shaking it, as evidenced by how I almost wrote a bad review for “Party” for reasons that had scarcely anything to do with the actual song. So now I’m listening to “I Just Wanna Dance” and thinking about how Tiffany doesn’t sound like she wants to dance the night away; she just sounds like either she already has, or she’d like to sit and watch someone else dance. And how those high Cs mostly just serve to show that she can hit them, rather than contributing something to the song. And I’m so skittish about SNSD and its individual members at this point that I can’t tell whether I’m really hearing that or if it’s just my internal hater. At least I’m confident that I like the harmonies on “I wanna… dance… the night away.”
[5]

David Sheffieck: So effervescent and sparkling it’s hard to resist getting swept into a neon cotton candy reverie from the moment it begins. But while I love that the production essentially renounces bass, I also wonder if that might be the missing element that keeps the chorus from taking off – or even differentiating itself from the verses in any meaningful way.
[6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Sun-drenched synth layers and a syncopated beat are a very good look for Tiffany, who can lead this settings accordingly, but there’s a point when the vocal processing gets overwhelming, and the voices start fighting the other elements for space in the mix. I’ll give it an extra point ’cause Tiffany’s melodies themselves are really good, especially the ad-libs in the end. 
[6]

Madeleine Lee: “I Just Wanna Dance” is the sound of an idealized summer day, from beginning to end: afternoon sparkles of sun off the water, pink and orange boardwalk sunset, late-night bonfire on the beach. That’s obviously by design, but everything is done with such confidence — every transition from one synth riff to another, every swoop Tiffany makes through her octaves — that it doesn’t feel contrived or cramped. f(x) got the actual Carly Rae Jepsen song, but “I Just Wanna Dance” (and the rest of the mini album it comes from) makes me feel what I think other people feel when they listen to Emotion, a bubbly bliss that’s easy and total.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Like all the best songs about heading out on the town for the night — obligatory mention of Carly Rae Jepsen being particularly versed at this, and yeah this certainly bares a resemblance to E•MO•TION — “I Just Wanna Dance” eschews the actual heading out in favor of the nervous excitement preceding it. This song definitely moves, but everything is tempered ever so slightly — the chorus doesn’t burst open, but imagines what the actual letting go will feel like. Tiffany pirouettes through it just right, like she’s imagining the evening to come while staring in the mirror. 
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Brad Shoup: A lot of people are hearing Jepsen, for good reason. Tiffany has the foggy-disco production down; and if her tone skews more existential than emotional, she’s still got that pinch-me vocal shiver. And there’s the text itself, where she wants nothing more than to be lost in her head in a crowded room. The production’s not set to kill, but there’s a very nice, rest-filled descending filigree in the bridge. 
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Juana Giaimo: “I Just Wanna Dance” doesn’t aim to be a dance-epic, but to reflect the dancer’s state of mind. When compared to the loudness of EDM, “I Just Want to Dance” is comforting thanks on Tiffany’s delicate voice and the light ’80s vibes. It doesn’t matter if you could be doing a hundred different, better things; tonight you can also be the best dancer, even if it is just in your room. All that it matters is you deeply feeling the fulfillment and liberation of your own body spontaneously moving to a beat.
[9]

Ryo Miyauchi: Tiffany’s single reminds that the discotheque is a venue for soul-searching as it is for a weekend thrill. Like the singer at the center, the beat of “I Just Wanna Dance” is cathartic and tough yet slightly bruised. But rather than dwell on the past, she instead cares only about what she wants to do now — dance to forget and heal.
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Lilly Gray: One of my main pastimes used to be going out every single weekend to dance; unfortunately, I now have the body and stamina of a balsa wood marionette and can manage this maybe once or twice a year. The one thing that has not left me, however, is the sense of restlessness that sets in around 4pm on a Saturday, when the city is starting to wind into night — the unspoken admission that the whole day has just been a long, slow morning of preparation for when the lights come on. If before the witching hour there are lengths of window-gazing anticipation, Tiffany’s “I Just Wanna Dance” is that period’s hopeful refrain. If you expect a banger that you can drunkenly grind to, this is not that song; this is instead an in-between-hours mid-tempo love song to the dancefloor and what might happen there. The beat is subdued, her vocals flirt with breathy but remain strong over the gentle synth, and the knuckle-biting pause that develops in “I just wanna/dance the night away” in the latter half of the chorus keeps it wanting and fresh. It doesn’t build too much, but that’s fine, as this is an expression of need yet to be fulfilled. I could do without the piercing vocalization once we hit 3 minutes, but that’s as good a time as any to lay out your make up or check the freezer for leftover vodka. (I’d also suggest listening to this sans video — the SM-town motto here seems to be “look as close to an Urban Outfitters catalogue as possible,” with some bracingly bright parking-lot dance sequences, particularly jarring to the muted, hangover tone of the song.)
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Delicious, frothy dance-pop akin to some of Kylie Minogue’s prime moments, and utterly perfect for summer ’16.
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