In which we’re reminded of someone else…

[Video][Website]
[4.25]

Katie Gill: I’m not predisposed to like Halsey. She’s very much style over substance, something that is 100 per cent apparent with this total package: a visually stunning and viscerally interesting music video that’s accompanied by an alright song. It’s telling that pretty much every music publication is talking about the video over the song, so I’ll lemming right off that cliff and do the same. The thing that makes the sort of longform narrative music video like “Telephone” or even “Thriller” work is that the song’s good enough to hold up the concept. With “Now or Never,” a song that I can’t decide if it was rejected by Rihanna or rejected by the Weeknd, the song falls flat. It’s the final project for Filmmaking 101 scored by a CD found in the back of the radio room at the last minute.
[3]

Will Rivitz: It’s a nearly pitch-perfect ripoff of Rihanna’s “Needed Me,” particularly in the chorus. Pity points because the original was so good, but at least try to be subtler about aping your influences.
[2]

Will Adams: Songwriters and A&Rs are pissing themselves because their livelihood — which already exists in a crumbling, scrambling industry — has been placed in a vice by people who don’t understand the difference between “sounds a lot like” and “definite plagiarism.” Of course, given the way modern pop music is marketed and created — with everything defined in relation to everything else, where soundalikes and references are essential to get anyone to give a shit — they’re doubly screwed. So here we have “Now or Never,” which I spotted as a “Needed Me” retread even before the chorus’ winding melisma: it’s got the same drum pattern (two kicks followed by a trap snare), bass rhythm (hold for a half-note, then off), and identical tempo (111 BPM, going in half-time). As of now there haven’t been any litigious rumblings from Rihanna’s team, but I fear them deeply. Similar though the two songs may be, the gray area between influence and imitation can’t afford much more slashing. The song itself: it’s fine. Though I was never too invested in Halsey, I did worry what “Closer” would mean for her career. Turns out: flailing her way through a Rihanna impression, that is, sounding like everyone else.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Christ, everything on the radio really does sound like the xx now. Except the xx’s main draw was intimacy, and on pop radio lately you’ll more likely find contempt and its aftermath. “Now or Never” is another plaint from the same neglected girl with the same scratchy-gamine voice, singing in implied response to the same indifferent bro. Halsey’s chorus is like you drilled a hole in a washing machine then shoved the hook to “Needed Me” down it, and pity whoever heard it without the processing. (Starrah, the writer, wrote this too — she was probably going originally for Future, but is this going to be the next vocal quirk she Sias into ubiquity? God help karaoke.) Benny Blanco’s track wallows in low-effort moroseness. But like lots of radio bleakness, I’m sure this will sound right on the way home at 12 a.m., which is its purpose. Also, I may also have given a point for the swords-and-mockery album title Hopeless Fountain Kingdom.
[5]

William John: There’s discord between the histrionic Halsey aesthetic and her vocal on “Now or Never,” which is so dispassionate and unconvincing, it’s almost as if it were the placeholder for the placeholder. Perhaps, in this hopeless fountain kingdom where capital letters are ostensibly barred, aloofness is a paragon virtue. Nonetheless, when a deadline of “now” for confirmation of love is repeated seven times over, twice, in three separate choruses, I would’ve expected less pallid, undynamic nonchalance and more tangible evidence of desperation.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: One of my favorite songs last year was Halsey’s “Tokyo Narita (Freestyle),” a snippet of faded, post-Drake feelings-dump that partitioned romantic trauma behind transport modes and record releases (“Told the driver keep it going: he could run the meter/So we could finally hear Views on some decent speakers”). I loved even more her Chainsmokers collab “Closer,” which carved in its clean lines of pop melody the poses and self-deceiving pretensions of early adulthood. “Now or Never” exists somewhere between these two, neither as dopily effective as “Closer” nor as restlessly ill-formed as “Tokyo.” It is, however, an example of how Halsey has honed the life-as-trendpiece declarations of the still dreadful “New Americana” into an earnestness so concerted it becomes engaging even as it is uncomfortable. And if it has a chorus determined to be featureless, it has something unusual in this contemporary synth-pop that models itself on the quantized bones of hip-hop and EDM: a middle-eight so old-fashioned it could have been refashioned from a pop-punk single.
[6]

Alfred Soto: I can’t figure out Halsey: who she plays, what feelings she’s supposed to be projecting.  The clipped, impatient verses sustain some tension, but the chorus words like place holders. 
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: Nothing is more frustrating than musician/PR copy that’s all talk and no results. A band that promises a return to more experimental music and puts forward something literally made in GarageBand; a band that claims to change up their sound only to release the mockbuster version of Boxer; and now, Halsey, who has a whole concept in her head about the album and promises something challenging, comes out with “Now Or Never.” It’s kind of sad watching people react to the video and song after listening to a lengthy podcast with her thoroughly discussing her ideas. But it’s also sad watching her come out with something that doesn’t nearly seem to express her full capabilities. It’s especially not as compelling as “Gasoline,” but I’m rooting for her anyway, and it’s definitely a grower, even the Auto-Tuned “hey.” Then again, I also find “Needed Me” to be forgettable, but have had this stuck in my head since it came out, so what do I know?
[6]