The Singles Jukebox

Who put spaghetti in our cereal? Was it you, Bebe Rexha?

[Video]
[2.50]

Alfred Soto: What, was Jeremih unavailable?
[1]

Claire Biddles: Just because you can take Whitney’s name in vain does not mean that you should.
[1]

Will Adams: Sleepy trap-pop so desperate to make you care that it references not one but two superior hits from two different eras in the title (not to mention Aaliyah). I suppose we can look forward to future singles like “SexyBack (Girls Just Wanna Have Fun),” “Bottoms Up (Vogue),” and “I Gotta Feeling (Bad).”
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: In case anyone hadn’t figured out how desperate “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is, it’s even spelled out. Which is more depressing: Whitney’s songwriters getting a credit, but not Timbaland, despite the two interpolations being of roughly equal substance (i.e. none, except relevance-via-coattails)? Or the idea that Rexha’s probably singing the intro to the record label?
[1]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Takes the fiery desire of Whitney’s hit and deflates it into something nondescript and plastic. Just compare the 808s and vocal performances in both songs and it’s hard not to see “The Way I Are (Dance With Somebody)” as something akin to a cheap youth camp singalong (if you ignore some of the lyrics, of course). The Timbaland reference also does nothing but make this seem more like a gimmick. Regardless, I would not want to “dance” with Bebe.
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: I know “this has the same chord progression as” is lazy music criticism, but it’s worth mentioning the irony that I keep singing “Want To Want Me” over the chorus, considering how many other songs this tries to remind the listener of. Even the title intentionally evokes two other songs (the actual chorus a third one). All of these are either classics or just really, really good songs. I really liked Bebe on “In The Name of Love,” but this is underwhelming. Lil Wayne especially so; “I know her body inside out/science” sounds like an attempt at hashtag rap, but in a microcosm of the rest of the song, the attempt at a throwback feels half-hearted.
[4]

Austin Brown: Of all the rising pop Whos of the moment (Dua Lipa, Phoebe Ryan, Zara Larsson, Rita Ora), Bebe Rexha has the strongest connection to hip-hop and R&B. That’s not just a musical or career-centric statement, although it’s true there too. Rather, Rexha’s aspirational posturing seems, somewhat surprisingly, lived in and slightly cutthroat: the signs of a rap star hopeful transplanted into the corporate pop world. With that in mind, forgive me for being a bit grumpy that this major label meddling kiss-off single spends so little of its time shit-talking and so much of it in yearning uplift. Defanged as her hope for “that somebody” feels, it seems like nothing less than a form of cruel optimism.
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: One day, there is a song where Bebe Rexha manages to not turn anything so simple into a minefield of cooing and vibratos, which is what happens on this chorus but not so much elsewhere. The whole “chopping homages to various other important pop songs” lyrically is trite, and as good as Lil Wayne does for a pop performance, it’s admittedly hard to take a rapper who’s been so far from relevancy as he has been in the last three years as a good endorsement for someone who’s struggled with becoming a memorable name and face. Also well done on Wayne’s part to throw Xanax references out on a song that was clearly hoping for radio play, ensuring that this dance stumbles and falls.
[4]