This one didn’t need a Kendrick feature to boost its score.

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Crystal Leww: For all the handwringing about how awful The Chainsmokers were this year, there weren’t a lot of outlets and critics willing to step up and recognize the art of people in dance music who put in the work. “Dance music made by women” isn’t a genre, but there are strong ties between Anna Lunoe, Mija, and Nina Las Vegas, who all did incredible things for the genre in their own right but also did them together. “Radioactive” is not weird like the stuff that Mija put out or wild like the stuff that NLV was doing; it’s straight-forward big room dance music meant to fill rooms and big fields. I saw Anna Lunoe four times this year, and every time that little bounce that launches into the chorus got me in the air. “Radioactive” is brutally efficient, made by someone who loves dance music for people who love to dance. The bros have dominated the dance music conversation for so long, but why should they continue to? The genre never belonged to them anyway.
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Will Rivitz: OWSLA didn’t kick off the L.A house/”bass house” movement — that probably goes to Spinnin’ Records with Oliver Heldens’ “Gecko” — but they embraced the sound well before it became ubiquitous, signing on for a filthy Habstrakt remix of Skrillex and Diplo’s “Dirty Vibe” two years ago. Since then, the style has become just a smidge played out, but “Radioactive” milks it for all it’s worth nonetheless. The ideal pop song in this style breaks down into its distorted bassline seamlessly, its call for getting down integrated smoothly into its chorus. Anna Lunoe won’t win any awards for this, but her vocal chops slide nicely over a jackin’ beat and ravey piano chords. This won’t be the song that makes you swear off bass house forever — and given how close I’ve come to doing that so many times, that comes as a welcome surprise.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: The easy way would be to bet it all on one single mega-ton drop with that word, one beaten to death by a certain band of dragons. But Anna Lunoe deals a much more exciting hand by letting the energy disperse into multiple exciting directions. She juggles her voice and wobbling bass no problem, and the most thrilling part is that 2-step beat criss-crossing between channels — a refinement of her collaboration with Chris Lake that takes it to stadium status.
[6]

Ramzi Awn: It’s really a bad title to go with. You’re just setting yourself up for disaster. No matter what happens, you’re still the girl that called her song “Radioactive.” Repeated the whole way through, the monosyllabic offering serves as another lesson in the dangers of pop pizzicato. 
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Will Adams: I like that there’s a sense of humor to “Radioactive,” from the silly rhymes (“blind-ahh”) to the kitchen-sink approach to chemistry references to the ha-ha-hook. But Anna Lunoe knows when to get serious; her production ping-pongs between hard club pulse and sleek house (in the vein of our recent venture with Anna Straker). Her ability to seam the two parts together helps make “Radioactive” highly individual.
[7]

Iain Mew: The contrast between the subdued bridge naming the different types of radioactive particle and the verses bursting out “Making paper clips from live wire/Don’t look straight into the fire” while the drums pop all around is one of my favourite musical ‘why not both?’ moments of the year. Anna Lunoe makes linking together those and a lot else besides sound natural and easy, stacking up the stimulation of small transitions as an alternative to the drop.
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Katie Gill: I think that it’s well-known at this point that I’m not really predisposed to the concept of drops in music, especially the pop drop. Well. this is an exception: I really love this song. “Radioactive” is a fun, bright dance anthem. Lunoe’s voice brilliantly interplays with the beat, jumping in with “ha ha” and “radio”s that make her voice an instrument of the beat as much as it’s the vocal line itself. The song knows when to pull back, letting Lunoe’s vocals shine, and when to push forward, moving everything together in an explosion of sound. The main drawback is that the lyrics are entirely too silly, but considering that lyrics take up about a third of the song at most, the silliness is forgiven.
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