The Singles Jukebox

And hello low scores!

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[2.86]

Kat Stevens: Did you know it’s been sixteen years since Blazin’ Squad covered “Crossroads”? Sixteen!
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: These garish rap ballads are rarely good because the rapping is often shoehorned in and incongruous with the sentimentality being conveyed. That may be the case here but the strings are actually the biggest offender. They’re seriously always present, and then the high note belting and campfire singalong appear as if to ensure that I become physically ill. Fans are responding to this song as being a charming victory lap for iKon given their incredibly successful year. To these ears, it just sounds like the breakup song it wants to be. In this case, a split between me and iKon.
[0]

Thomas Inskeep: This sounds like a Gavin DeGraw throwaway, rapped verse and all, and makes me irrationally angry.
[1]

Will Adams: A decent boy band ballad made maudlin by the persistent violins. The disgusted “euh-huuhh” in the pre-chorus almost made me think they were in on the joke.
[3]

Iain Mew: “Goodbye Road” is a ballad that’s the inverse of the S.H.E single earlier this week. That went with biographic specifics and turned precise musical details into something engaging and affecting; this goes for big vague musical gestures and vaguer still words, and the result is difficult to care about.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: Yuk, the rapping and the saccharine strings are just like oil and water here. No, they’re like a relationship between two people that don’t belong together; they bring out the worst in each other. At 50% faster the chorus would be pretty catchy though.
[4]

Alex Clifton: “Goodbye Road” strikes me as a combination of Big Bang’s “If You” crossed with some of One Direction’s more upbeat stuff, but a bit gloomier. That’s not a bad thing, either. It doesn’t have some of the rawness that makes “If You” stand out in memory, but it’s also not too slick that you lose all sense of the underlying emotions. I actually feel something when those strings well up.
[6]