Happy 10 years plus 1 day!
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[6.43]
Will Adams: An impressive feat of genre synthesis that never feels disjointed or scattered, “All Night” moves between synthwave and Robin S.-via-R&Bass and dubstep and trance pop. The professionalism that was a detriment to “Holiday” is what holds “All Night” together, and if anything makes a strong case for their longevity.
[7]
David Moore: Girls’ Generation finally absorbs Jeremih into their massive expanding blob of pop referents, and they had the good sense to cut it with some Earth, Wind, & Fire — you could swipe your chorus from worse places than “Let’s Groove.” (I only wish they’d gone further, really, and just copped the whole thing.) And for fun they throw in Robin S. via DJ Mustard, some dubstep, and an 808. It’s like a party with four competing themes, but all of them are pretty good.
[7]
Juana Giaimo: What a disappointing chorus. The melody seems to be out of their vocal range and the lack of a grandiloquent base in the first chorus erases all the energy the song builds in the first part, with the quieter prechorus and the amazing disco vibes of the verses.
[5]
Ryo Miyauchi: Girls’ Generation take on the discotheque as a space to just let go, and what melts away as they feel the glamour of the night is the separation between life and song. Dance-pop touchstones of vinyl scratches, record skips and synth breakdowns play integral to their nightly outing unfolding on record, so much so that it’s hard to tell what exactly stops when the music abruptly gets cut off: is the music simply over, or was the entire night only a thing that exists within the duration of the song?
[8]
William John: The repeated “all night!”s, particularly the vibrato’d third in each refrain, are joyous prompts to throw one’s hands aloft. Unfortunately there’s too much incongruity between verse, bridge and chorus for this to truly work, and the instrumental breakdown in particular should’ve been left behind in the first draft.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: ’80s Paradise Garage vibes that ebb and flow into modern electro-tinged EDM are certainly not bad things to hear on a track in 2017 when so much pop production defers to one or the other. Sadly, the song lying atop the shifting landscapes is fine. So much effort is made to make the record the girls are riding feel lively, but SNSD by contrast feel like a contractual fulfillment.
[6]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Who are Girls’ Generation anymore? I don’t think I know, and I’m not sure I have for a few years. They’ve become the tofu of K-pop — boring and identityless, but able to successfully work in various contexts without seeming terribly awkward. “All Night” is well-crafted and more interesting than “Holiday,” but the chorus is dull and kills a lot of the song’s momentum. So points for the parts I like and no points for the parts I don’t. Does this criticism sound cold, clinical, and lazy? Well, that’s how SNSD have sounded for years now.
[6]