The Singles Jukebox

Taiwanese pop star goes solo, feels the emotional hangover…

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Crystal Leww: S.H.E. has been such a force in Mandopop for so long (think Destiny’s Child if they had never broken up) that it’s almost hard to imagine that Hebe Tien is only 30. “Learning From Drunk” is a terrible (official) translation; it’s closer to “Can’t Learn Unless Drunk”, which would be a fittingly bleak title for how nihilistic this is. “Learning From Drunk” abandons the usual S.H.E. fare — think of their sweet spot as somewhere between Hilary Duff and Kelly Clarkson circa-2003/2004 in both lyrical and production style — for something totally fucked by pop star standards: lamenting how fucked-up and beautiful the world can be, while asking what the point is if everything is precious. Tien is a pop star clearly at a crossroads. It’s a shame the song is mostly fleeting.
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Alfred Soto: Closer to a Kylie song than Kylie’s latest single, “Learning From Drunk” relies on discreet electronics and Tien’s lovely doubletracked vocal. Call it Taiwanese electro country. 
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Tara Hillegeist: Grandiose sincerity by way of sonic whimsy. There’s a rollicking hey-find-your-partner-let’s-dance stomp to “Drunk”‘s percussion, the melody line rises and falls on a guitar whose fretwork coils around itself like a fractal before tying itself in gleeful, kicky knots to close out the song, and Tien’s vocals pour over the rest of the song with a whiskey-slick sheen to more cleverly frame the wry observations she slips into the lyrics — the perfect ratio of beer to froth. Would that all pop songs this genial were this easy to love. 
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Tien burrows her way into a rhythm and sticks to it, whisper-rambling through lyrics parsing drunkenness and worldly order. As she has it, one goes in hand with the other, and the song follows her down the path, trying to figure out where she’s coming from.
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Madeleine Lee: The lyrics are about how the world looks a certain kind of beautiful when you’re drunk, but they don’t specify what you should be drunk on. It could very well be on this kind of half-rootsy, half-ethereal music that makes everything you do and see feel like an art film, gorgeous and filled with unspoken meaning and only for you.
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Katherine St Asaph: Like a Blue Roses track if it were on Beth Orton’s Trailer Park; it’s the rosiest possible filter for drunkenness, but rosy is pretty.
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Brad Shoup: Everything’s so muted. The drama’s there — I thought things were sliding into the center of the sun for a second — but it’s suspended strangely, between showoff fretwork and celestial vocal supplements. I like so many elements here that it doesn’t really matter if they stack.
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David Sheffieck: I love how this manages to be twinkly (the synths) and earthy (the pseudo-country guitar, the drums) at once and seem utterly natural about the combination. The flashiest moment comes in the pre-chorus drop-out, but even that seems less about showing off and more about finding an emotional centerpoint. Nothing about “Learning from Drunk” seems challenging or surprising, and usually that’d be a demerit, but its effortlessly smooth hooks are impossible for me to criticize.
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Scott Mildenhall: Whatever drunk sounds like, it probably isn’t this. This sounds like ITV Nightscreen. If available translations are anything to go by, it doesn’t sound like its message either, a plea for a step aside to a different state of mind, to reevaluate every last thing; throw off your mental chains. What it actually sounds like is far from radical, just fairly polite. Maybe Tien took one of her overriding thoughts too far — that most chaos appears under control.
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