Ina Wroldsen – Strongest
Hush, just stop…
[Video]
[3.00]
Will Adams: Because of “Rockabye,” I have no idea why this exists. After realizing that Ina Wroldsen co-wrote “Rockabye,” I suspect she’s wondering the same.
[3]
Iain Mew: “Rockabye: The Co-writer’s Cut” coming to a bloated Clean Bandit deluxe edition soon!
[3]
Alfred Soto: “Let’s talk about honesty,” she announces. Let’s talk about sincerity, though — not the same thing, and Ina Wroldsen is sincere about putting over yet another colorless chop-trop house track.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: Musically this is a third-gen Xerox of “Shape of You,” so really, fuck this lame trop-house shit.
[1]
Alex Clifton: I’ve heard plenty of pop songs about breakups, and several that I’ve known were about the dissolution of marriages, but none laid out as starkly as in “Strongest.” The line “how do I explain this shit to our son?” knocked me sideways, and I felt off guard for the rest of the song. Breaking up a family is a far different beat rather than a generic breakup, and it’s far more affecting; I found myself near tears when the chorus hit, the narrator promising to be stronger for her son. In what would be a more generic song of moving on and letting go, these details stand out and make for a more cathartic piece.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: We, as pop critics, need a concise word for “songwriter shops a sonically trendy track around but nobody bites, not even Anne-Marie whom you’d think this is perfect for, so finally, once the trend’s at death’s door, releases it herself.”
[2]
The picture killed me.
Same! Also as little as I got from the song I really enjoyed reading Alex’s blurb at odds with the rest of us
lmao I was surprised that everyone else hated this but whatever! I always like seeing the songs where everyone hates/loves it but then someone is like EXCUSE YOU, I FEEL THE OPPOSITE
I am totally in agreement with you on this Alex and wish I had the time to write this up earlier; I woulda given it an 8. One of the many problems I have with the endless trop pop summer is that it sets you up to blithely disregard songs that, with different musical signifiers, would land more squarely. It wasn’t until the third listen through that I realized that what I had here was a gender-flipped, better version of “All That She Wants”. Best of all, it’s a song that doesn’t feel the need to give the Him a voice to respond; I don’t need or want anyone else but the mother narrator have the floor. Maybe it’s a blessing-in-disguise this likely won’t get too big in America; I rue the day I queue up “Strongest” and run into a “HANNNNGHH MONTANA” jammed in the middle.