All eight of you?

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[5.67]

Madeleine Lee: I was fine in the world where this was a gorgeous vworping DBSK song and not a boring and disjointed late-period Super Junior.
[3]

Alfred Soto: As the synths saw away Girls keep up and then some, but the track sounds like midtempo mid-’00s Ciara given a jump; it struggles to build momentum.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Is “You can physically hear that they want to give up the ghost” a plausible characteristic? The verse bit has almost absolutely no cohesion to the rest of the song, and the vocal sections are just sort of there with none of the former charge. I know with recent events, it’s pretty cheap to say “break it up,” but honestly I can’t find any of the joy that used to characterize a lot of the SNSD discog.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Not as scattershot as some of their previous singles, though I still want to judge its individual parts: sliced-thin harmonies on the chromatic scale > tinny EDM buildup < surprisingly solid drop. Which all works out to a:
[7]

Megan Harrington: I’ve always enjoyed the way Girls’ Generation speed through plot in their songs. It’s not enough to have one good idea (a strong melody or a great hook to precede the drop), every song is stuffed with little suites, each of them dense enough to work on its own if given the space to unfurl. On “Catch Me If You Can” I have a new sensation, a song with the same sensation as a fancy plate of deconstructed food. The idea behind these entrees is that you combine the flavors in your mouth, reproducing the taste of a BLT by eating a little bacon, a little lettuce, and a little tomato. When “Catch Me If You Can” ends, each little piece of the song collapses on itself and I hear them all at once, a monster megamix. 
[9]

Iain Mew: Congratulations to Erik Lidbom, for whom co-producing this with Jin Choi is the career boost I was speculating about when we met him producing Alexandra Stan. Unfortunately, while its antecedents are a bit less obvious, “Catch Me if You Can” is no more inspired and its dubstep-belch thrills wear out fast. There’s barely enough there for one singer to do much with, never mind eight.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: It’s somewhat surprising that the Hallyu higher-ups thought generic EDM that vaguely recalls what Yasutaka Nakata was doing ten years ago (in much better ways) is what the Japanese market was hankering for. Anyone with a passing interest in K-Pop in Japan has already heard the basic EDM sounds incorporated into much better Korean songs, while the most popular and meme-able song of the year saw Nicky Romero directing the Country Bear Jamboree. So this is boring and out of step with the market it aims to impress. Still, the build before the drop is especially pretty and begs to be sent to a much more interesting single.
[5]

Will Adams: Love the accelerated tempo; while most other dance genres have found a home on pop radio, trance has yet to crack into the mainstream. The breakdown shows promise for the euphoric — and what a classic trance line: “I’m going to find my heart” — to be just as effective as the robust electro drop that follows it.
[7]

Mo Kim: There are two layers of defense built into “Catch Me If You Can.” The first is a direct challenge to the listeners: think back to “Work Bitch” and how that song’s hook was pure propulsion, Britney wordlessly daring her fans to keep the work up, bitch. We get a similar eight-measure bit here, a glittery blast of runway pop that Taeyeon and friends dance over. The second layer is harder to catch amidst the high energy because it’s a more internal dialogue, a recognition of the sweat that goes into becoming one of the biggest girl groups in the world and a resolute determination to keep going, even seven years later. “We can’t stop,” goes the first line of the chorus, and I only caught it in the one moment that “Catch Me If You Can” allows itself some quiet space — then the snares snap back into place, the vocals climb towards their peaks, and the synth machinery come whirring back louder than ever before. Keep up if you can.
[9]