The Singles Jukebox

In bloom…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Brad Shoup: It’s remarkable to hear this much quiet satisfaction on such a deep-hued dance track. During the pre-chorus, Dubbel Dutch pulls notes off the table while Bad Gyal asks a dude to get real close; it’s like they’re conspiring to fuck with his focus.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: LED synths blink as Auto-Tune spins Bad Gyal’s voice into their own ribbons of light. The effect is a dazzling one, even if the dancehall rhythm never finds enough propulsion to turn “Jacaranda” into something that does more than glow.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: Almost sounds what life might be if you suffocated to death beneath a sea of bedazzlement or whatever the verb for the process of getting smothered in faux-crystals might be. Via a particularly pinched Auto-Tuning of the Gyal and an artery furrowing sweetness in Dubble Dutch’s riddim, “Jacaranda” is a pixilated faerie gif of a record, gaudy and slight at the same time.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: The fuzzy glow of the synths and the Auto-Tune-baked vocals unwind the dance track to a dreamy slip, though they also cast a certain shade of loneliness. The craving for a body inspires the bodily ticks and stutters behind the swing of this digital dirty rock, so perhaps it’s appropriate for Bad Gyal to sound as if she’s dancing on her own.
[6]

Ian Mathers: This feels less energetic than “Fiebre” (and honestly a bit worse off for it), but the vocal processing works for me, making Bad Gyal’s vocals just another digital element ping-ponging through the mix, the whole assortment somehow achieving a hazy, blurry feeling even while each element is still distinctly in focus. Neat trick.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Bass synth stabs, slight synth squeaks, heavy and collapsing drums, solid Auto-Tune but flat singing.
[5]

Will Rivitz: I often describe my ambivalence towards the dancehall-adjacent Drake by emphasizing that I like “everything Drake but Drake himself.” He combines immaculate production and an incredible ear for hooky glory with delivery and lyrics that suck away most of the power bestowed upon the song by the non-Drake elements, sort of like having all the ingredients for an excellent cake but finding out midway through the baking process that the milk is spoiled. I feel about the same way about “Jacaranda”: the instrumental trips over itself sleekly, arpeggios sinking lower than any listener’s posterior in whatever venue this tune plays, but Bad Gyal’s limp Auto-Tune, sounding much like Drake’s own in its flatness, vacuums up a bit too much of the song’s bounce. Elements of Bad Gyal’s delivery suit this song phenomenally, particularly a lazily melodious pitch correction that pushes her vocal timbre closer to a Future or Young Thug, but by and large it just deflates everything else. Bad Gyal brags that she has “culo pa rebotar” (loosely translated, “ass to bounce”) — it’s just a shame that this bounce isn’t quite emphasized enough here.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I like the quiet, robotic insistence on the power of her culo; no one has to remind her, thank you. The rest of the beat is on the timid side of aerobicized.
[5]

Juana Giaimo: “Jacaranda” is a song of how self-confidence results in an honest proposal of love. It has a fun dancehall beat as well as super loud post-chorus, but there is also warmness in the cadence of the last words of the chorus. That’s why the lyrics mixing lines about dancing and about genuine love aren’t contradictory. Like the Colombian band Bomba Estéreo, Bad Gyal also sees the dancefloor as the means to reach spirituality. She sings that she has “an ass to bounce,” but she also sings that she expects to marry her loved one because what they have is “something spiritual.” In Buenos Aires, the Jacaranda trees are in bloom and the light-purple flowers cover their branches as people walk beneath them with light summer clothes. I have no idea why this song is titled “Jacaranda,” but I feel this is the time of the year to make a dancefloor out in the streets, to own them and to share them.
[9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Jacaranda is a genus of trees native to Jamaica that features beautiful purple-blue flowers. It’s been cultivated in numerous countries around the world, one of which is Spain. As such, it’s an appropriate title for Bad Gyal’s colorful, dancehall-indebted single. Much like “Fiebre,” “Jacaranda” captures the rapturous joy of dancing with someone via a glitzy collage of synths and Auto-Tuned vocals. In the pre-chorus, Bad Gyal asks someone to come closer to her. Producer Dubbel Dutch responds by having the instrumentation constantly recede, focusing the attention on Bad Gyal herself. But when the chorus hits, she doesn’t aim for an overt hook to lure this person in. Instead, all her lines pan hard left or right, directing our attention to the song’s syncopated rhythms. “I don’t need words,” she asserts, and it becomes clear that she wants her dancing to do the talking. In “Jacaranda,” Bad Gyal’s vocals are simply another tool that’s used to grant the song momentum. This blending of singer with instrumentation points to the act of dancing: when you’re dancing with someone, you’re not just dancing with a person, you’re dancing with the embodiment of the dance floor’s transformative properties. After all, it’s not just the music and space that contribute to the dance floor’s sensuous atmosphere, it’s every individual person. As “Jacaranda” closes, a straightforward dancehall beat plays low in the mix. It’s as if we’ve been transported outside, hearing the music from a distance while walking on home. It sounds plain, but it acts as a reminder of how engrossing the dance floor is when one is actually there. With a final repeated line, Bad Gyal summarizes the experience succinctly: “Es algo espiritual.”
[9]