The Singles Jukebox

Snarl!

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Jonathan Bogart: The frank sexuality — and hooray for unedited versions — isn’t nearly as important as the emotional exhaustion she conveys with rare skill. I could wish for a more dynamic or inventive arrangement, but that might just be gilding the lily; there’s a lot to be said for straight-down-the-line R&B.
[6]

Alfred Soto: No change from 2011’s winning sound: she’s mastered a tremulous near-hysteria which on rare occasions flirts with bathos but often delineates the travails of a woman for whom desire and jealousy entangle with Proustian complexity. She defies words-per-melody-line rules too. And she ain’t getting an R&B radio hit with this title.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I love how no one is quite convinced — the sexuality so powerful that what one is good for you, and what one wants desperately, and then its not one time — the whole list of potentialities, where failing becomes bragging. The crack in her voice suggests that it is an either/or situation. Although she doesn’t give a reason why the relationship should stop, she gives a dozen reasons why it should continue. 
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: The point, of course, is that they’ve been fucking in pretty much every permutation for years — the stairs, the floor, the college dorms — that nothing is remotely over with, and that whether it “works” is thus moot. She can’t decide whether she’s seducing, haranguing or luxuriating; I bet they classify saying “this is a bad idea” as foreplay. Eh, whatever: screw on, kids. I hope the sex is more coordinated than the track.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Our beloved Earth isn’t lowing for more hate-fuck songs, but thankfully, Ambrosius recorded a hate-to-fuck song. And it seethes! Jazzy chords land like dropped shoes and linger for a token post-orgasmic waiting period. She sings without sea legs, so maybe we’re supposed to see her texting someone from the bottom of a glass. An admirably bleak portrait, but not one to linger on.
[5]

Iain Mew: That title would be one to build a song around in any form, but delivered as it is by Marsha Ambrosius as equal parts confrontional and tragic, it’s particularly powerful. 
[7]