Georgia – 24 Hours
A: If you answered Georgia, good guess, but alas, the slump…
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[6.00]
Vikram Joseph: The fifth single from Georgia’s only-just-released debut — for context, that’s two more singles than we’ve had so far from Lover (justice for “Cruel Summer”!). “24 Hours” is perhaps not as striking or inventive as the four that preceded it, but it still kinda bangs, and sounds better the louder you play it. Georgia is good at creating a distinct sense of place — while “Never Let You Go” sounded like the soundtrack to a nocturnal chase scene, “24 Hours” feels like being consumed by the heat and light of a dance floor, caught in suspended animation between the high, swirling synths and the thumping low end.
[7]
Joshua Lu: Much of Georgia’s Seeking Thrills feels like ersatz Body Talk or gentrified Matangi. “24 Hours” is both, with a chorus that Robyn would never let limp so much, and a pulsating beat that M.I.A. could ride with much deadlier energy. Seek thrills elsewhere.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: “About Work the Dancefloor” fell off hard for me, its arrangement turning fine, its wordplay turning cutesy and its main hook turning obnoxious, so maybe I’m overcompensating by under-rating this. But if you’re going to pander to the pop kids who’ve waited a decade for another Body Talk — and are unpleasably still waiting, I guess, after Honey — why is the hook so, so, so monotonous?
[3]
Alfred Soto: I hear oomba-oomba sequencers and lose my marbles, and in this case aping the upper-register anxiety of peak Robyn is mimicry I can endorse. “24 Hours” isn’t about the dancing experience so much as remembering what it felt like to hook up in a place where the music was inessential.
[6]
Will Adams: Pulsing electropop about wistfully recalling a dancefloor encounter is the ultimate targeted content to me, so being slightly disappointed by “24 Hours” hurts my heart. The verse begins with the memory, the words timidly coming out. The pre-chorus picks up speed, echoing that dizzying, ecstatic moment. And then the chorus deflates everything with a diffident melody and repetitive hook (“we could be it” x3) that doesn’t land.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Georgia repeats “we could be it” like a radio announcer trying to lodge a phone number in your memory. It’s more grating than the video-game blips — just a bit, though. As far as I know, this is a tribute to clubbing 30 years ago, right down to the pitched-down hook that, if you turn your head, goes twenty-four hour party people.
[4]
Isabel Cole: I think that this song might be stupid, and not in the balls-out beyond-meaning way I always mean as a compliment–more that it feels like a cut-and-paste simulacrum of other songs I’ve loved, taking all the sparkly synths and dance-floor transcendence I love and applying them in that thoughtless Tom Hooper way: doing it because you’ve seen smarter people do it but don’t really know why. There’s the hollowness of things refusing to alchemize, and the track doesn’t go anywhere, even with those rising aaahs at the end. I hate that distorted vocal at the bridge, and the lyrics are needlessly heavy (overly adorned, one might say) without evoking much of anything. But, like, it sure is pretty.
[6]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I’ve never noticed how much Georgia’s soothing, soaring voice sounds like Ellie Goulding and Tegan and Sara. But “24 Hours” is all about the synth line that undulates, pulsates, and gyrates with the affective power of any classic dance track.
[7]
Alex Clifton: The best dance music is a blast of energy that shines through your entire body and lifts you to a separate plane of existence. It makes you invincible, like living in a strobe-lighted snow globe. When it’s playing, there’s absolutely nothing that can hurt you. Robyn and Kylie have mastered it, and I’d argue Georgia has too. “24 Hours” is both a sound of the ’20s that are to come and a modern classic, a song that recalls nights out I’ve not had in years. I’m boring now–I stay at home and leave the house only when pressured by friends to prove I exist–but this brings back the memories of dozens of nights out in years past, flying down the road with my friends to go dancing and eating burritos at 1 AM while still buzzed.
[8]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: The synths create a welcome anxiety, while the glossiness of the pre-chorus adds a bit of sweetness. The chorus is when everything falters: The hook, repetitious and sterile, feels like a transference from heart to head, like being taken out of the moment.
[5]
Ian Mathers: It’s not that Georgia’s music is all percussion (obviously), but watching her here or in live footage, the act of drumming seems so central to the way she plays. Maybe that’s why it always seems so visceral? This is going to be my second Georgia blurb in a row to mention The Research, but this time the connection to their immortal “Lonely Hearts Still Beat the Same” is a little more direct, even if it’s in the form of a gentle rebuke; no hearts really beat the same, says Georgia, and that’s beautiful.
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Leah Isobel: Despite its breathless arpeggiators, “24 Hours” has a warm shapelessness that lands closer to Georgia’s coiled debut record than the sparkling dance of “About Work the Dancefloor.” I liked that record.
[7]
it seems like the press cycle for seeking thrills has completely erased her self-titled from memory, and even though it didn’t make a huge splash i still find that strange