The Singles Jukebox

Proving that we won’t in fact like any old tat as long as Cardi B’s name is on it…

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Tobi Tella: Maroon 5 are so inescapably dull that they’ve managed to make Cardi B, someone who thrives on personality, boring too. From the cliched “cute” lyrics, to Adam Levine sounding bad even when out of his chest voice, to the caucasian “Nice For What” video, I hate almost everything about this.
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Alfred Soto: Sensing the waning of the American public’s interest in their latest material, Adam & the Levines, ampersand trademarked, have recruited female artists whose charisma and delight in wordplay exceed the name above the credits. “Girls Like You” is another one of those condescending valentines in which dudes like Levine specialize: after he’s fucked around, maybe with her friends, he’s going to settle on a girl like her, etc. The zealotry with which the guitar plucks are mixed is supposed to adduce its humanity. Meanwhile Cardi gets to make like Jean Harlow and Mae West, reminding him that if he keeps pretending to play that guitar she’ll return to playing with herself. Too human a gesture for a space this blank. The song too.  
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Alex Clifton: I’ve listened to this song three times and I can’t tell you much about the actual track itself, other than Adam Levine sounds as uninspired as he has for the past ten years and that Cardi’s verse is the most interesting thing in a fairly slow-moving song. Yet the video has made me tear up each time. I hate admitting that I’ve cried to something accompanying a Maroon 5 song of all things; somehow that’s one of the more embarrassing things I can cop to in my life. But the video takes the song from being bland and lifeless to something almost joyous. It’s a wonder seeing so many women on screen dancing around, having fun, singing to you: I need a girl like you, something that feels oddly empowering. I have no idea what Maroon 5 is going for here or if they’ve hit the mark they were hoping for, but something about this does it for me against my better judgment. Is it good? I’m not actually sure. But I know that it’s surely made me feel a little fonder every time I hear this on the radio.
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Vikram Joseph: The little palm-muted guitar figure that leads in “Girls Like You” is the only thing that doesn’t sound entirely generic here. This sort of autopilot, chart-oriented R&B doesn’t make much of a case for the continued existence of Maroon 5 in 2018; neither does drafting in the pop phenomenon du jour to phone in a dreary cameo.
[3]

Ian Mathers: In terms of bros I guess we have to put up with in pop culture, Adam Levine and John Mayer have always seemed like pretty balanced opposites, so it makes sense this feels a bit like the anti-“New Light”. But while I suspect that of the two I’ve liked more songs Levine has sung, in this case he comes up the worse of the two in pretty much every respect, with both production and lyrics feeling so generically mawkish it’s hard to feel much of anything about them. Hell, Cardi (likeable but not much more here) would probably even find the Mayer more conducive to rapping over.
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Stephen Eisermann: Someone needs to remind A&R reps that sprinkling something good on something bad doesn’t suddenly make the bad good. Look, I get it. As a Mexican, I grew up drowning my friends’ parents’ food in cholula, tapatio, and limón, but it never made their food taste good. It only made whatever bland, spice-less white/brown rice concoction was sitting in front of me tolerable. The same applies to this song and Cardi knows it. “I’m sure them other girls were nice enough, but now you need someone to spice it up,” Cardi raps over a trodding, mundane beat. Still, while Cardi’s verse manages to make the song digestible, it’s still not an enjoyable listen.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Adam Levine and the industry, long since merged into one entity, noticed how good Cardi B was on a ’90s throwback and thought surely she’d also be good on a ’10s throwback, i.e. a song sitting around since 2012.
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