The Singles Jukebox

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[3.83]

Katherine St Asaph: Tropical house: the unhappiest sound of them all.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Assignment: take early ABBA single, attach it to trop house beat, summon guest stars, sing vaguely Latin melody. 
[3]

Will Adams: Oh good, I was wondering what would happen if “Answerphone” had 40 per cent of the energy and an even more perfunctory rap verse.
[4]

Will Rivitz: In my experience, the absolute lowest scores on this website tend to be reserved for the offensively, thrillingly bad. I understand this tradition — on any value scale, the extremes should be reserved for things that inspire extreme emotion — but it tends to let songs like “Ring Ring” off easy. Its steel drum hook is flat, its repetition drab, and Mabel’s yawning delivery fits its instrumental perfectly. Rich the Kid (obligatory) provides a verse most charitably describable as “superfluous.”
[2]

Jonathan Bradley: I quite like when pop songs integrate tech into their narratives, since tech tends to be integrated into our lives, but these references to Uber and subterfuge revealed via Instagram form a tale so thin that the lyric could have come via Mabel scrolling through her apps on the way to the studio. At least Rich The Kid consults his emoji catalogue for inspiration: “If she bad, I’mma text the purple pickle” is inventive in a kind of numbskull way. 
[4]

Iain Mew: It’s good that someone’s smartly picking up on the kind of vivid, emotional dance-pop that Clean Bandit have started leading the way on — it’s not surprising to see that they have a producer in common in Mark Ralph. With Clean Bandit’s exceptional record on guest vocalists it’s difficult to imagine them making a mistake as big as going for Rich the Kid, though.
[7]