The Singles Jukebox

We revisit an ever-rising Vietnamese star…

[Video]
[6.14]

Iain Mew: It’s interesting to see Sơn Tùng M-TP go from the later addition of French subtitles to the video of “Lạc Trôi” to this one getting a suite of six languages and an official English song title. His global ambitions haven’t been recognised in the YouTube music video chart from which this is bafflingly absent, despite its top 10 view-count numbers, but the change has made it easier for me confirm that the text here is exactly the poetic despair bubbling over into anger that his expert construction of thickly layered intensity sounds like. Plus the smashing glass was a bit of a clue.
[7]

Alex Clifton: It’s got wubs and drops and sounds like if Rihanna recorded a song with K-pop backing. And it’s remarkably smooth and slinky, too. The title might be “Run Now” but I’ll stick around for more like this.
[7]

Will Adams: It’s not until the final minute where “Run Now” reaches the crushing heights of “Lac Troi,” with synths hissing out of the fissured beats. While a whole song of that would feel exhausting (“Lac Troi” also has the edge in terms of dynamics), the maximal trap that precedes this climax feels sloppily constructed by comparison.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Compared to the hybridity that made last year’s “Lạc Trôi” so disorienting, the elements that make “Run Now” an appreciable listen are its following the conventions. Sơn Tùng M-TP’s efforts feel like a perfect curriculum of how to make pop in the post Travis Scott/Quavo/Young Thug school of Auto-Tuned solipsism as depth, with his vocal and producer Onionn essentially playing by a rule set that’s been pretty well established over the course of the last year and a half. However what makes it particularly interesting are the gothy excesses of stress that Onionn has embellished on to any of the cliched moments, giving the “stick the landing” feel of routine extra notes of effort and satisfaction to its own sense of character that wasn’t necessary but most certainly appreciated.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: The lyrics are brooding, threatening, and excoriating, but his singing is always only professional: the video does a lot more to give him a personality than his voice does.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: Dazzling but overstuffed, both in sound design and in structure. The vocals are doubled, stereo-widened, and generally overprocessed, delivered in a no-breath rapid fire that only lets up for a few brief seconds in the bridge; I’m sure there are many lines in here that would’ve been stuck in my head for days if I’d been allowed any time to think about them.
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Sơn Tùng M-TP has been decent since the beginning of his career, but he’s really come into his own in the past couple years. Chalk it up to better mixing and songwriting, or maybe just the fact that his music videos have better production value now, but “Run Now” feels like continued proof that the “Prince of V-pop” is at the top of his game (the record-setting music video doesn’t hurt). Producer Onionn provides a beat that recalls Korea’s glossy take on post-Travis Scott pop rap while Sơn Tùng M-TP raps and sings in a manner that’s a bit too tidy to capture the angst in the lyrics. Thankfully, the final stretch catapults the song into a cacophonous vortex, allowing the vocals to feel like they’re gasping for air.
[7]