The Singles Jukebox

I’m finding it hard to believe we’re in heaven…

[Video]
[3.75]

Claire Biddles: Like its parent movie, “Heaven” has all the superficial markers of transgressive sexuality without any of the actual transgression. Like bad sex, it’s all build up and no release.
[4]

Alfred Soto: An uncertain master of post-therapy kink, Julia Michaels is ideal for big budget teen sadomasochism. To co-write and sing Weeknd material is a feat in 2018.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: In which Julia Michaels flirts with sympathy, tenderness but ends in a shrug. 
[5]

Hannah Jocelyn: Having caught up on The Good Place and watched several episodes twice, I can emphatically state that Julia Michaels is taking serious liberties with what “heaven” entails here. Meanwhile, that descending chord progression is minus -1000 points. But I digress; “Heaven”, “Heaven” is a song, a song where nothing, nothing ever happens. Michaels frequently excels as Pop’s Horniest Songwriter, and she can do better than this. It’s like if Jack Antonoff headed a Springsteen tribute compilation but covered “Mary, Queen of the Supermarket.”
[4]

Iain Mew: The sixth song of this title we’ve covered, and a big contrast to Kane Brown’s last week. Not only is there no serious consideration of the afterlife, but Julia Michaels doesn’t sound like she believes in any of the repurposed T-shirt slogans she’s singing, either. The effect is the soundtrack equivalent of all those Twilight-the-film-cast-disparage-Twilight-the-books clips. Entertaining, to a level constrained by the circumstances.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: But is “all good boys go to heaven” something they say? Julia Michaels is as unconvincing as her aphorisms.
[3]

John Seroff: Hermetically sealed, good-for-the-goose objectification over ringtone “Sleep Walk” that’s too quaveringly immature to be properly world-weary and too thin and monotone to get the blood going.
[3]

Alex Clifton: A song about falling from grace needs more fire. The electronic backing is hypnotic, but there’s nothing to build to here — no climax of any sort, not even a sense of being teased that way. Hopefully this song’s release means we’re done with all the soundtracks from the Fifty Shades series — the biggest blessing of them all.
[3]