Little Mix – Black Magic
Sugar, Spice Girls, and everything nice…
[Video][Website]
[6.57]
Nina Lea Oishi: If Little Mix started a coven, it would be the girliest, glitteriest coven of all time, with Cyndi Lauper presiding over it all as Supreme Mother. The twelve-year-old me who braided colorful embroidery thread in her hair, wore fluorescent purple hightops, and danced around her bedroom LOVES this song. Carly Rae still has my vote for Sleepover Birthday Party Song of the Year, but “Black Magic” is definitely a contender.
[7]
Will Adams: It’s like the Macbeth witches but they added powdered sugar and Life Saver gummies to the cauldron instead.
[6]
Alfred Soto: At their infrequent best this quartet has ridden every mad tempo and chordal change. Like the best K-pop, Little Mix approximates the euphoria of falling in love, possibly with the wrong guy but who cares anyway, right? But the chunky lick services a dull rhythm, and the “secret potion” metaphor is right out rhymingdictionary.com.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: The first thing that struck me wasn’t the 80s chart pop and 90s teen-flick-non-charting pop. No, it was the “hey!” interjection that made me think of Belinda Carlisle’s similarly joyous “(We Want) The Same Thing.” That it packs a pure pop chorus and a girl-group chant and gets away with sounding like “Blank Space” somehow just shows real mastery at work.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Just in time for The Craft remake, Little Mix have magicked up a version of “Blank Space” that’s even poppier: cauldron bubblegum. The magic’s whatever, you’d find more thought-out conceits in a Sabrina cartoon; what I really care about is the spell that makes anyone disagree that Jesy’s the star of the group.
[7]
Anthony Easton: The soul revival attempts to infect nostalgia for the Spice Girls, and it works much better than you would think — the chorus is almost perfect for a Disney shopping montage.
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: The Radio Disney version of the Spice Girls, with accordingly thin production.
[5]
Infectious throwaway pop that has some fairly magical moments, particularly that opening chant and the sparkly bits toward the end (you’ll know when you hear it). Perfect for anyone who misses a time when pop music was actually F-U-N and not all self-serious millennials vying for a “mature” sound i.e. “something vaguely and somehow generically urban R&B”.