The Singles Jukebox

Hey, at least we’re not as harsh critics as her mom or her dad…

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[4.00]

David Moore: I’ve started listening to Spotify’s New Music Friday with my son, letting the EXPLICIT tag help guide me through the obvious landmines. But I still hit an occasional favorite of his, like “Last Hurrah” by Bebe Rexha, that has me crossing my fingers that he doesn’t start spontaneously singing “farewell tequila, so long margarita, lady sativa, I hate to leave ya!” (wocka wocka wocka) at preschool. This means that I end up listening to a song that is resolutely a [5] well over a hundred times. A true stress test of my critical integrity — not a torture chamber of endless loops of Thomas the Tank Engine and Katy Perry, whose yawp in “Firework” at the hiccuping “sky-y-y” has the exact timbre and pitch of my son’s temper tantrums, giving her omnipresence in my household an unsettling karmic quality, nor a serendipitous window into a song I’m underrating. After one hundred listens to this little bon bon on the conveyor belt — this thing that I will forget even after listening to it another hundred times — do I have anything more interesting to say than some forced wordplay combining T-Pain and “Dragostea Din Tei”? No — “Buy Numa a Drank.” Once more from the top.
[5]

Katie Gill: Between this and “I’m A Mess,” Rexha is trying REAL HARD to distance herself from the countryesque cornball of “Meant To Be.” I don’t know if this edgy, “look at me, I’m a trainwreck” vibe will fully wipe the memories of Florida Georgia Line from our brains, but, well, it’s certainly something. Something aiming for party girl but landing in tryhard, but something nonetheless.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: We all have our vices that we want to overcome, and Bebe Rexha has created an anthem that pinpoints the regret of pushing back such resolutions. But sometimes, a final night of debauchery is just a performative gesture and ends up being extremely boring and kind of embarrassing. Is there anything more unexciting, tedious, and appropriate than the undulating wail of the titular line?
[5]

Alex Clifton: The conceit of self-destruction is pretty great, and at 2:30 it’s a short, punchy package, but I spent several listens trying to figure out what other songs I was hearing in the mix. The melodic line that begin the verses and “this is my last hurrah, once I start” are extremely, earwormingly familiar, but I can’t figure out whether they’re actual echoes of something I’ve heard. “Last Hurrah” is the least bland Bebe Rexha song I’ve heard, and yet I’m still convinced it’s stolen from someone else. 
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I liked “Last Hurrah” well enough when it was called “I Said Hi” — the chain from ’90s pop-rock to ’10s radio filler has a lot of intermediate links, like “I’m a Mess” quoting “Bitch” or “Last Hurrah” being written by ’90s singer-songwriter turned one-third of the Matrix turned resurfaced Matrix-free songwriter Lauren Christy. (There’s no way to say this without sounding like one of those smugass “Eleanor Rigby”-versus-“Baby Shark” memes, and god knows I’ve written tons of shit for pay, but man, “The Night I Saved Peter Ustinov” to this?) I also liked “Last Hurrah” well enough when it was called “I Can’t Stop Drinking About You,” or “I’m Gonna Show You Crazy,” or Rexha’s many other hurrahs of this same basic idea. And I still like “Last Hurrah” now, even though it’s been commandeered by Twenty One Pilots.
[6]

Stephen Eisermann: The single that every inspirational movie soundtrack passed on because, I mean, wouldn’t you?
[2]

Anna Suiter: “Last Hurrah” is almost painfully heavyhanded — there’s no way to miss what this song is getting across. But without any ambiguity, this isn’t that fun, or as even over-the-top as it promises to be.
[3]

Iris Xie: Marina mixed together with Charli XCX, diluted by a smidge of Lana Del Rey’s campy death vibe, topped off with a yawn-worthy stadium anthem hook. I’m so sad that this type of post-apocalyptic dance-pop sounds so staid and rote now. Maybe if “Last Hurrah” was a little more tongue-in-cheek and humorous, it would be a good, wry commentary on how tiring it is to be alive right now. But nah, this isn’t it. Even stretching out the syllable of “a-Aa-A-aa-aH” can’t wake this song up.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Why are all of Bebe Rexha’s vocal lines like this?
[3]