The Singles Jukebox

And thanks to Luca, we turn our attention to a long-running Brazilian…

[Video][Website]
[6.91]

Luca Zingali Meira: Fernanda Abreu was  known in the nineties for being the first mainstream artist to  incorporate funk carioca in her music, but in the days of Anitta, when  funk is probably the biggest cultural force in Brazil right now, that  just doesn’t carry the same novelty value. So, straying away from the  cultural appropriation of it all, electropop isn’t the most daring route  she could have taken, but it keeps her current enough that it works as a  comeback single. And the song itself stands up nicely, with her way of  talk-singing fitting well with the synths, especially when it speeds up  in the chorus. After that it kind of underwhelms. I mean, who would’ve  thought singing about wanting to be fucked and then saying “ah” a lot of  times would sound so unsexy. Even then, it kind of fits the theme of  the song. After a decade-long absence, Abreu came back with a song about  time passing and things always staying the same, but now the wonder  mutant city she described in “Rio 40 Graus” is mundane and stagnant,  with it’s mutations as cyclical as another day, another change of  seasons or another soap opera on television. Her music is not as  exciting as it once was, but maybe it’s just as good, or at least good  enough for me to keep hitting play again and again.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Abreu, who Wikipedia calls “the first lady of Brazilian funk,” is taking a page from Madonna’s ’90s/’00s playbook re: how to continue sounding relevant well into middle age (she’s 55, just a few years younger than Madge) without embarrassing yourself (see: Madonna, ’10s, lol). This utilizes electronics without being in debt to them; this ain’t no EDM. It’s simply straight-up electronic funk, smartly produced and well-sung and catchy as hell.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Remarkably harmonically and rhythmically inventive for a pop singer whose long career has been roughly contemporaneous with Kylie Minogue’s, the lyrics to “Outro Sim” slip enough unease into the candy-colored sweetness of the production that what might be superficially read as a knees-up celebrating middle-aged flings could equally be understood as a lament for human inconstancy. As the world darkens and once-apparently stable coalitions fracture overnight, all that outro-ness can start to sound sinister.
[7]

Iain Mew: From the ear-tickling cut up voice slalom of the intro to the confident speed of the chorus and everything in between, “Outro Sim” is constantly evolving and exciting. It makes the unusual and tricky sound like the easiest thing.
[8]

Juana Giaimo: “Outro Sim” sounds incredibly fresh, thanks to the carioca rhythm masked in an electroic beat and her almost-rapped lines delivered with the confidence of someone with experience; someone who has lived enough to know that life is spontaneous and that there is no time to live in the past. 
[8]

Ramzi Awn: There’s something infectious about “Outro Sim,” and Fernanda is just convincing enough to pull it off. 
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: “Outro Sim” is a maximalist song that is most intriguing in its details. In particular, it is weakened by a rather flat chorus that gets bigger but not more exciting. Better is the layered interplay between the cut-up vocals and a spirited, wriggling synth arrangement.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The drums entering at 3:20 hit my sweet spot: the sour in this sweet nougat. Fernanda Abreu’s addiction to a single syllable (“ah-ah-ah”) is a novelty that many careers can’t touch and hundreds of dollars can’t buy. 
[7]

Edward Okulicz: The track is a clever, buzzy arrangement of curls and loops and tricks and sonic easter eggs (it reveals wonderful depths on headphones), and the section where Abreu throws herself into a half-rap half-chant is startling. It’s such a good pose for her that she sounds disengaged when she breaks from it, and how could you hope to follow that up with an “ah-ah-ah” chorus? It’s weird to find yourself utterly transfixed by a singer one moment and then wishing she’d get out of the way of the ear candy the next.
[7]

Brad Shoup: It’s akin to a country list song with way more rhythmic crunch: Abreu ticks off the world’s pleasurable and banal commonalities. If she’s not particularly engaged, the instrumental touches — vocoded squiggles, studio drumboom, flash-fried handclaps — do their best to obscure that.
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: I did not expect to hear a female Brazilian version of Everything Everything when I pressed play. That is far from a bad thing, though. While EE does everything in their power to make their songs as theatrical and weird as possible, the blending of genres and instruments feels really natural here. Whether the chorus is borrowing a melody from “Ignition” or the second verse is suddenly introducing live drums (and then some saxophone, then some vocoder effects, then some squigglies…), everything feels like part of the same world. “Outro Sim” blends together so well due to the laid-back confidence of both the producer and Abreu herself. They make it sound effortless, but that belies the manic, fussy creativity underneath.
[7]