The Singles Jukebox

Yoür editor was gonna add an ümlaüt to every single “u” in the blürbs büt, üh, nevermind…

[Video][Website]
[3.30]

Will Adams: Please don’t let the drop be farts. Please don’t let the drop be farts. Please don’t let the drop be farts. Please don’t let the drop be farts. Please don’t let the drop be farts. Please don’t let the drop be farts. Please don’t let the drop be farts. Please don’t let the drop be farts. FAAAARRRRRRRT. Damn.
[2]

Crystal Leww: Holy shit, how far are Diplo and Skrillex’s heads shoved up their asses that they think they can get away with this? This doesn’t sound like a troll so much as two dudes who really believe in their own craft so much that they think they can shove all these trendy elements in a blender and have it come out sounding like art. That drop sounds like farting.
[0]

Micha Cavaseno: So it’s like this right? In one corner, you have Pentz. A smirking know-it-all nerd pirate who’s just too smart for his own good sometimes. He’s got a ton of vicious cheek, but rarely does he bring the OOMPH in a solid way. Meanwhile in the other corner you have Moore, all blustering idiot glee. Even when he was in sadboy scenecore nobodys From First To Last, peppering Walt Whitman over terrible/great breakdowns, he was so much bluster and just no self-awareness. But combine the nerd and the goon, à la Freak The Mighty, supply them with the factory of awful shrieky vokills known as Kiesza Inc., and you have this laborious beast. That breakdown inspires visions of Diplo calling up protégé Brenmar, playing the latin-tinged breakdown of this moronic trapstep record, and crowing out “FALL BACK LIKE YOUR CHAIR’S NOT THERE!” while Skrillex headbangs in giddy ecstasy. It’s a real monster.
[5]

Anthony Easton: A Rube Goldberg machine of structured production, bouncy vocals, and manipulation of all kinds of sounds–I don’t know what I like more, the car noises, or the ping pong percussion. 
[7]

Brad Shoup: Oh my god, the drop is so dumb. Kiesza sounds like she’s breaking finish-line tape when that shit’s over. Can we reverse-engineer a flawless Glitter-house song from this Urban Outfitters dumpster fire?
[5]

Alfred Soto: The appropriately named above-the-title star does his job: Kiesza gets jacked up, to irritating effect. The voice of “Giant in My Heart” gets turned into a hornet.
[3]

David Sheffieck: Not even Skrillex can save this: Kiesza sounds shrill and like she’s constantly on the verge of being run down whenever the track picks up pace, and there’s an utter lack of charge to the shift between lull and drop. I’m not much of a Diplo fan, but he generally has an ear for the zeitgeist – here, he’s two steps behind, and his collaborators (who should themselves know better) aren’t enough to rescue him.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: I prefer this to anything else I’ve heard from Kiesza: more bite, though I wish Diplo and Skrillex kept more of her vocal intact rather than chopping it up bite-size. I prefer the jumpin’ housiness of this to most of what I’ve heard from either Diplo or Skrillex, too: they’re growing. Really. 
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Thanks to Pitchfork’s review of Kiesza’s Sound of a Woman, I have now heard her 2012 track “Oops.” It is true Diplo-step, in that it sounds fun, like it was assembled with bright Diplo blocks. The Diplo of “Take U There” (I refuse to write the umlaut until Diplo and Skrillex take as much shit for it as Gaga did) is unfun. I’m almost fully soured on this early ’90s revival; not only does it fail to set its singers up for careers (if I didn’t specify Sound of a Woman was the Kiesza album, would you have known?), but it pressures them to take guest spots that ill-suit their vocals. Kiesza’s not natural as a house diva, much as Ariana Grande is not natural as a Mariah Carey tweeter; she sounds puzzling and berserk. Meanwhile, I guess Diplo and Skrillex making their drop a damp dung puddle is their way of trolling everyone who wants a big drop — but it still means a track that’s half dung.
[2]

Josh Winters: Diplo and Skrillex constructed this drop like a couple of cartoon animals hitting each other back and forth in the head with wooden mallets, each with the dumbest, most punchable grin on their faces. Kiesza’s just kieszaing to the point of aural torture, and that’s before her voice gets chopped and screwed. All of which is to say, nothing about this is either pleasant or pleasurable.
[0]