The Singles Jukebox

“A reading from the book of Rihcclesiastes…”

[Video][Website]
[4.62]

Josh Langhoff: A reading from the book of Rihcclesiastes and/or Steve Forbert: “They tell me this great life can always… END.” Here ends the reading. Ri’s (sometimes literally) one-note performance conveys the sentiment with zero quiet exhilaration but all of its weary cruddiness.
[2]

Hannah Jocelyn: A recent tweet from YouTube critic Todd in the Shadows complained how long it’s been since there’s been an actual song hitting number one. And while it may sound like yelling-at-cloud ranting, he does in fact, have a point – a lot of major music so far this year has felt curiously undercooked whether it’s Kanye, Drake, or Desiigner. As if every celebrity that isn’t Beyonce decided to give up at the exact same moment. And this, which sounded like a Future outtake even before I read the writing credits, is something Todd would likely cite as a prime example. The hook could become yet another iconic phrase for Rihanna, and there’s some meme-able lines here and there, but an “absolute banger” this isn’t. Unless I’m falling out of touch too.
[3]

Katie Gill: Wow, this is a waste of Rihanna. I mean, you get RIHANNA to be on your song and you shove out this half-assed beat? Literally anybody could have been on this song, that’s how generic that vocal line sounds. Rihanna must have owed Mike Will Made It a favor or something because I’m still baffled as to why she’s on this track.
[3]

Ryo Miyauchi: Was this a saved draft Mike Will and Rihanna meant to return to later? There’s a point here Rihanna’s trying to hit — whatever it is. But she can’t quite put her finger on it no matter how many times she repeats the title that perhaps inspired her to start an entry in the first place. For more inspiration, she reaches for Paris, a go-to end point of a rag-to-riches hip-hop story. Again, it’s just there waiting to become something more.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: It’s hard for me to hear this as anything other than Future karaoke, but it’s the best Future karaoke on the market right now.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Maybe there’s a meme worth tweeting in this nullity. 
[2]

Mo Kim: On any other day, the braggadocio of the track — Rihanna boasting about shopping sprees and vacations in France over a sparse jump-rope trick of a beat — would have registered as silly posturing. On this particular morning, it couldn’t be more timely: the UK has just announced its break from the European Union, and of course we can’t ignore how the underlying rhetoric has been centered on the reinforcement of boundaries, as if a nation responsible for colonizing half of the world and displacing millions of human subjects were ever at risk of losing its sovereignty. The resonance, I guess, is that if even the meager space we carve out for ourselves in this world is constantly threatening to cave in, what’s the power of a little joy? What’s extravagance in a home at whose doorstep violence in all its forms is constantly knocking? Rihanna has been doing songs like this for years now: here her voice sounds as nimble as it does exhausted, grappling for a foothold on the face of a world where nothing is promised.
[7]

Lilly Gray: Rihanna provides the soundtrack to another dusky hold up or murder-minded dame turning away from a man tied to a chair in a burning building. If riri only released Songs To Kill To from here on out, I would be down. 
[8]