The Singles Jukebox

Somewhere, Chaka Khan weeps.

[Video]
[3.29]

Leah Isobel: Hear my kitchæn.
[3]

Andy Hutchins: I would like to challenge the Tik Tok tweens and teens to turn Meredith Brooks’s far superior “Bitch” or Des’ree’s immortal “You Gotta Be” — songs that, sure, may not have been explicitly made for the purpose of female empowerment, but were also, crucially, not just mantras set to music even though “You Gotta Be” came from that exact same well, and thus had space for craft, narrative, and parallelism, but no time for some of the most grating bars of singing ever committed to record — into viral sensations on the level of “I Am Woman,” but they, much like the 1999-born Emmy Meli, probably do not have any significant memory of those songs. And the kids these days would probably complain that those songs don’t graft perfectly onto transition videos — but it’s not like they know much about music videos! Woman, womyn, femme, or so forth you may be, and I’m all for you being who you are — but you also gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta get off my lawn.
[3]

Will Adams: Two points for the “gotitgotitgotitgotitgotitgotitgotitgotitgotitgotitgotit” part for making me laugh, I guess.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Billie Eilish + Helen Reddy hand-me-down + TikTok ethos = I Am Defeated.
[1]

Andrew Karpan: Evoking the back-to-the-earthiness of late ’00s indie pop (the granola rock of the Dirty Projectors, the throat-centric choruses that tUnE-yArDs did so much with, etc.) Meli manages to do something her free-spirited predecessors never could, which is to write a pop song.
[7]

Al Varela: I think this song needed more time to be workshopped. In the age of TikTok making demos huge, it encourages artists to rush their songs so they can get it in time for a streaming release, and sometimes the song itself suffers for it. In this case, an otherwise solid melodic foundation and a really good performance by Emmy Meli lack the crescendo and scope to make this feel more anthemic than it is. It sticks to this stunted middle ground where it’s supposed to go bigger, but the production never dares itself to go further. The guitars don’t kick it into high gear, the tempo never changes. As a result, the song feels kind of abortive, lacking in that big shining moment to make the song worth it. There’s enough good that I’m willing to call it decent, and I do side-eye anyone who gets particularly mad at the otherwise harmless women empowerment lyrics, but I’m not rushing to defend it either.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: This song turned me into a misogynist.
[1]