Ian Mathers: That title promises something deliriously horny and/or hilariously silly and I am very glad both that it’s the former and that Usher shows he is still exactly the guy you call in for this kind of thing. I kind of expect “wonder which one of my lips gon’ be your first kiss” to show up in multiple blurbs, but I hope “pin my legs to the clouds/and I hope you’re ready for the rain” get some love too. [9]
Melody Esme: Two good R&B singers singing about banging each other. Hard to mess that up, and this doesn’t; I dig the steamy, flirty energies radiating off the two of them, and the horns are great. Still, I’m mostly obsessed with the sheer weirdness of “I wonder which one of my lips gon’ be your first kiss.” I mean, a partner’s 50/50 choice where both options are equally good isn’t really on my mind when I’m about to hook up, but… oh wait, she follows that with “Doesn’t matter ‘cause they both gon’ fit you perfect.” The slow jam equivalent to “If I was a sculptor/But then again, no.” [7]
Julian Axelrod: It takes a serious amount of charm and craftsmanship to make this level of cartoon wolf horniness feel warm and romantic. Throwing in some “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” type horns never hurts either. [8]
Mark Sinker: Nothing here you couldn’t have heard 50 years ago, except a couple of moves in the love-language, perhaps, right up until Usher low-stutters in — at which point the two styles frame each other very pleasantly. Not exactly Afro-Futurism, for sure, but nice to have on the background. [7]
Kayla Beardslee: It’s blowing my mind that D’Mile didn’t produce this. Excellent job, Darhyl Camper: if I didn’t check Genius, I never would’ve known! Victoria Monét on “horns and synth-waterfalls” R&B is a guaranteed hit every time: this is like a sequel to 2020’s “Dive,” and just as smooth and sexy. I feel like holding my breath when the song fades out on those gentle sighs of “SOS, babe…” [8]
Claire Davidson: As a slow-burn sex jam, “SOS (Sex on Sight)” has the fundamentals down to a science, full of rich bass, hypnotic vocal harmonies, and subtle but inviting touches of guitar that accentuate the song’s scintillating melody. Victoria Monét’s performance is impressive, too, sultry but mature in tone, providing the kind of confidence that’s enticing but not overpowering. If anything, I’d say that this song’s biggest flaw is that, in attempting to cede ground to his duet partner, Usher is actually the one underplaying here. The tension he creates with Monét does have its own charm in Usher’s suggestive deliberation, but I kept waiting for the moment where the two vocalists’ chemistry would really explode — a point that, for all of the song’s excellent craftsmanship, never truly arrives. [7]
Katherine St. Asaph: A pleasantly relaxed, lived-in booty-call track — that is, whenever the singsong horns aren’t around to cockblock everyone. [4]
Dave Moore: Maybe I’m just getting old, but I can’t imagine doing anything to this music other than taking a nap. [5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: You can’t fool me — that’s the “Pink Matter” bass tone! This is clear and blatant sex jam textural plagiarism, one of the great crimes in R&B history. [5]
Jel Bugle: I mean, I dunno, not that sexy, more a Co-Op own brand Sex Jam, than anything that special. [6]
Leah Isobel: I initially felt put off by the weird plasticky sheen applied to Monét’s vocal here. I softened on further listening, given that the horns receive the same smoothness and that Usher is a human smoothing effect — it feels less like it’s supposed to create a perfect end product and more like perfectness is part of the song’s thematic thrust. Like, they’re supposed to sound like literal stars, burning to fuck, massive and unrecognizable, unimpeachable. Maybe I’m overanalyzing. [6]
Alfred Soto: She loves bass lines like she loves sex on sight, and while Usher’s appearance on first listen sounds gratuitous, he’s here to remind audiences about grown-up sex. Victoria Monét needs no reminders. [8]
Melody Esme: I first heard “Lose Control” at a karaoke bar, sung by a woman with serious pipes who stole the entire night. When I listened to the song proper, it was an enormous letdown, totally lacking the gravitas of that performance. That night will probably influence my response to anything I hear from Teddy Swims for the rest of my life, so I guess take it with a grain of salt when I say: this also should have been sung by that woman. Or any woman. Or just someone with a voice capable of actually selling a soul record, because this is pathetic — like what would happen if Bruno and .Paak were late for a Silk Sonic session so Hozier filled in for them. [0]
Taylor Alatorre: “Teddy Swims” is properly the name of a Warped Tour wash-out who went on to do production work for Hoodie Allen and Blackbear; it’s not a name fit for a somehow depoliticized version of Hozier. But if “Bad Dreams” commits the sin of being lucratively boring, it at least avoids the pitfall of investing its copycat motions with any kind of extra-musical significance. Where Hozier cried “power” in a creaky set of quotation marks, Swims quietly sues for peace. Surrender in the face of an unwinnable battle is no vice, no matter how strong the stink of cowardice. [4]
Alfred Soto: I hear Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” in its lilt and the grain in Teddy Swims’ tone, not to mention its evocation of impending doom. Like “Crazy” it acknowledges futility. Eat, drink, and pine, for tomorrow we will die of measles. [6]
Ian Mathers: I still hate this shit, but maybe it’s a sign of how much worse everything has gotten that it doesn’t even make me mad anymore. [4]
Jeffrey Brister: My brain craves novelty, of which this song contains none. A thin, self-consciously ’70s production (that sounds exactly suspiciously like a Halsey song)? Wow! Soulful white boy without distinguishing characteristics? Wow! Rote and flat lyrics carried by a passable vocal performance? Wow! I want no more of this! [2]
Nortey Dowuona: One of the greatest powers of the (seemingly) unaltered voice is that when it strikes an emotional chord, you know it’s actually raw, the most direct and immediate reaching out from the person to you, you and even you, reading this website because you searched something related to hot singles and wound up here. Swims is one of those singers — a YouTube comment from Nothing-H6i called him the reincarnation of Joe Cocker (slow down, comparison is the thief of joy) — but his unaltered voice, especially in a live setting, is both deep and strong. The lyrics were written by Swims along with Sarah Solovay aka Solly (writer of this twee little gem), Mikky Ekko, and Rocky Block (co-writer of this Lil Durk song used to comfort the Theo Von/Adin Ross demographic, which I like a bit since the guest singer apparently sounds like a goose, as well as a bunch more songs you’ve never heard). Every time Swims interprets this song, he reaches for pathos and empathy, a plea for help, a naked vulnerability that either lands face first and pitiful or wide eyed and sweet. It really depends on whether the voice in the listener’s mind should be spliced, diced and re-filtered to escape the limits of the human voice and take it into strange, inhuman, cyborg places, or spliced, diced and re-filtered to represent the living experience of one big, bald, tattooed Englishman singing to you in a small café and moving the patrons beyond belief. [8]
Dave Moore: Thank you to the human Shazam network of the internet for identifying “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits as the guitar line that was driving me crazy, but that really doesn’t do justice to how wholly pilfered the rest of the song is, too. And yet in the back of my mind I know if Adele did it I’d think it was one of the best things she ever did. [6]
Katherine St. Asaph: There’s probably an optimal level of Teddy Swims melodrama, such that I might actually enjoy him, but he hasn’t hit it yet. “Lose Control” was ridiculous; this is blunted. [5]
Claire Davidson: I actually quite like the gentle, contemplative guitars that drive this song, but “gentle” and “contemplative” are not words that should be used to describe a track whose lyrics revolve around begging a lover to stick around, much less one helmed by someone with as huge a voice as Teddy Swims. [6]
Mark Sinker: If you passed Teddy in the street, would you expect a trifle this pretty coming out of his mouth? But it is just a trifle, and you’d remember you passed him long after you’ve forgotten this. [5]
Ian Mathers: Obviously not as cheery as “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (although remember how that song starts) and yet it still feels warmly communal, mostly via the handclaps and massed backing vocals. And the rest of the backing still feels pretty massive, somehow. But Shaboozey manages to at least mostly dodge the mawkish, generic feeling of a lot of other recent songs that might express sentiments about “tryin’ to get away from the old me” and so on. Maybe it’s just the plainness and humility of “all I really need is a little good news” and the way the lyrics present a troubled narrator who’s gone through some shit but expresses that in a more grounded way. Or maybe he just has a nicer voice than the competition (a little extra pitch correction in places notwithstanding). I don’t know! [7]
Katherine St. Asaph: The genial “A Bar Song”-minus-“Tipsy” arrangement masks a surprisingly deep despair in Shaboozey’s lyrics — surprising, that is, unless you long as a listener to hear your own despair mirrored back at you, and seek that out in every lyric. That probably describes a lot of people; I wonder whether people are more likely to latch onto this kind of Lumineers-y communal singalong chorus amid the much-chronicled “loneliness epidemic.” I’m not saying there’s a thinkpiece-grade correlation — said epidemic would need to have swelled around 2013, that sound’s last time around, then ebbed shortly after — but I can see the appeal. [7]
Al Varela: “All I ever need is a little good news” has been a very resonant lyric with me throughout the year so far. Exhausting headlines and uncertainty of the future have made this sweet little song looking for a light at the end of the tunnel hit me not as a moment of optimism, but simply as a plea for life to get a little easier. The shambling acoustic guitars and sing-along hook are so easy to get in your head, but it doesn’t have the good vibes and good times of “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” “Good News” is for when everyone at the bar is having a bad day, and the only remedy is a toast to some better news down the line. I’ll drink to that. [8]
Mark Sinker: The burr in his voice is amazing, he should use it more, and more effectively. None of the rest is especially shaped to tug at you. [5]
Leah Isobel: “Good News” is oriented towards hollowness, built to be anything to anyone: its metaphors cover the spectrum from classic (“Drowned my sorrows but they learned to swim”) and memetic (“Play a sad song on a tiny violin“), its bridge given over to the bluntest stomp-clap revival yet lest the sadness feel too unrelenting. But it doesn’t quite irritate. Shaboozey’s mission is small-stakes smoothness, and “Good News” succeeds at that well enough to earn some goodwill. In an era as unrelentingly shitty as this, I can’t muster up animosity towards a song as efficient and modest as this one. [5]
Claire Davidson: I knew I liked Shaboozey the moment I heard the line, “You want smoke, I’m the Marlboro man” on Cowboy Carter, but what’s frustrated me about his work is that, despite his genuine affection for country music, he doesn’t quite have the expressiveness to deliver songs that, by nature of the genre, primarily work best in broad strokes. “Good News” is probably the smartest possible solution to that dilemma, partly because it’s really just an inversion of “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” taking the hangdog disposition that anchored that song’s weary camaraderie and bringing it to the fore. Shaboozey portrays that beleaguered feeling well, but what really elevates this song is its production, opening the first verse with spacious, mournful pedal steel before gradually giving way to the fiddle, bass, and handclaps that culminate on the hook, providing the symbolic resolve needed to carry the narrator through times where even hope itself feels futile. For obvious reasons, I think we can all relate to that right now. [8]
Jeffrey Brister: Whoa-oh ascending chorus, slide guitars, that mid-’10s golden glow gang-vocal beauty that I find simultaneously annoying and incredibly endearing? Yes. Yes, please. I am a man of simple pleasures, and this gives me what I want. Is it durable? Hell no. There’s nothing sticky here, no bits to make it linger. Airy, light, and, not disposable, but ephemeral. A fleeting thing that checks some boxes and dissipates. [5]
Taylor Alatorre: I like that the newest wave of rustic folk-pop — I refuse to genuflect to Spotify taxonomies by uttering “stomp and holler” — wears its conformism on its sleeve. It feels no need to project any bohemian bonafides by donning animal masks on stage or on album covers, or to rummage for some tenuous personal connection to sepia-toned Americana. No living music consumer has memories of the Dust Bowl era, but more than a few remember listening to “Dust Bowl Dance” on the bus ride to school, and “Good News” is apt to evoke memories of such times when the naïvely communal was recast as the achingly personal. Shaboozey is an earnest yet canny sort of populist who has his finger on the changing face of nostalgia; he knows that the right way to follow up a record-smashing J-Kwon interpolation is to humbly apologize for his own undeserved success, in a way that conveniently serves to remind us of and thereby ratify that success. As self-martyrdoms go, it’s not as moving as the one on “Finally Over,” which somehow managed to skewer his own stardom before he even had it, but the outward focus of “Good News” gives it a utility that extends beyond solo mope sessions. [7]
Ian Mathers: This is fun! But she keeps saying “I think I’m gonna!” and then not finishing the sentence, which is frustrating. If only there was some context that could solve this mystery. Oh well! [7]
Katherine St. Asaph: What if Britney Spears’s “3” wasn’t about threesomes but gooning? [2]
Mark Sinker: There’s a Chesterton short story (topical) about exactly this: “The Mistake of the Machine.” Plus the entire history of music, composition and delivery, is of course about how you CAN fake it. Really this is like yr entire job. Perfectly designed and shaped, announced the listener-machine. [7]
Will Adams: The only time this song hints at the rumble its title promises is during the chorus, which is just “Padam Padam” with less of a pulse. [5]
Nortey Dowuona: Jisoo is an interesting vocalist, capable of holding the listener’s attention due to her years in a four-piece group where each member has to strike a distinctive role while still combining into a stronger whole. But Jack Brady and Jordan Roman, aka the Wavys, are unambitious producers, and they give Jisoo a thin and unimposing background template for her first solo single. Neither their conventionally assembled drums and pretty standard Moog bass, nor the flickers of acoustic guitar, nor Sarah Troy’s background vocals make an impact on the listener. The bridge doesn’t provide any more forward motion, and the drum pattern switch-up on the post-chorus is so flat and unengaging it squanders the brief spurt of energy that had been generated. Even the black, greyed-out Enemy of the State/Ant-Man in the suitcase visuals in the video — if one were to even watch it — don’t give any life to these sonic choices. Jisoo is capable of making a great solo song, but she would need a brighter, more vibrant producer to pull it out of her — more road cracking and tower toppling, less eerie shudders driving you underneath your kitchen table. [4]
Kayla Beardslee: This is the most YG Entertainment-esque of the non-YG Blackpink solos so far, and it activates my fight-or-flight instinct a bit to hear the dated EDM and questionable antidrop. But there’s more of an interesting texture palette and (checks notes) will to live coming from the producers here, and Jisoo sounds like she’s having fun with a topline that actually gives her something to do. This song was clearly chosen for safe commercial appeal, but I think it’s probably the weakest one on her new album, which is a cute collection of nicely polished A-pop tracks that I’ve found myself returning to a surprising amount. Fuck YG Entertainment: these ladies know what they’re doing on their own! [7]
Taylor Alatorre: If you isolated the instrumental, it would’ve taken me several tries to guess “earthquake” as the type of natural disaster this is trying to evoke. And it’s not as if there aren’t canonical templates within recent EDM memory to show how that can be done. With 2NE1’s comeback, we’re due for K-pop to start revisiting its festival-trap phase, anyway. [4]
Claire Davidson: “Earthquake” reminds me most of those bass-drivenclubtracks that rose to prominence during the pandemic, where the lyrics were often secondary and the instrumentals weren’t nearly as atmospheric or imposing as they strove to be. “Earthquake,” despite an admittedly propulsive pre-chorus, not only feels five years out of date (at the very least), but its commitment to the central imagery of an earthquake feels almost nonexistent; JISOO, who already sounds anesthetized throughout the song, punctuates the chorus with scat singing, of all things. Surely a track this derivative is not how you want to assert your identity as a solo artist. [4]
Dave Moore: I had JISOO pegged as BLACKPINK’s Ringo, and she’s not beating the allegations on this one, a decidedly un-seismic sub-Gaga syllable rush. Kind of weird to give the person with to date the least (musical) personality the track that requires the most attitude to signify. [4]
Julian Axelrod: After listening to all the BLACKPINK solo efforts it appears I’m a “JISOO girl,” which according to this TikTok means I’m “weird but in a good way” and I like “vintage aesthetics”? Can someone who knows more about K-pop or my personality confirm or deny? [8]
Melody Esme: This is an earthquake alright. But not really the natural disaster kind; more the I thought a train went past my window until I heard about it later kind. [5]
Alfred Soto: Chromium disco with every note crease-free and ready for the night, “Born Again” will pick no pockets nor break any bones. [6]
Melody Esme: A Future Nostalgia rip, through and through, right down to RAYE trying with all her might to sound like Dua Lipa. But that formula can’t be fucked with, and the song doesn’t coast on it. From the sexual sermonizing to the heaviest slap bass I’ve heard in some time (every time the lowest note rings out, I feel like it’s about to whip me across the face), this is an inexorable (dare I say blessed?) electro-disco track. [8]
Dave Moore: I’ve been wondering this year about the flat-disco turn (i.e., disco minus funk, period signifiers without the feel of the era’s actual hits) from Doja Cat’s “Say So” and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, and its impact on A-pop in ’20s. I suspect “Say So” wasn’t really getting its moves from the post-disco of the early ’80s, but instead from the way that disco got sucked into the zeitgeist engine of the last decade-plus of K-pop’s global ascension. If I’m right about that, then LISA isn’t just carving out her place in American/Anglophone pop, but reminding us where much of that pop really comes from these days — somewhere else. “Born Again” inhabits the space uneasily; it can’t decide whether it’s the fresh version of something derivative or the derivative version of something fresh. I would say that’s part of what makes K-pop what it is: its refusal of a fresh/derivative dichotomy. And that’s also maybe what American pop struggles with: its own uneasiness with being an unapologetic ripoff without covering its tracks or being annoyingly winky about it. Anyway, another decent transnational A-pop effort: Lipa lite ‘n’ late. [7]
Julian Axelrod: We are officially out of meat on the Future Nostalgia bone. [5]
Claire Davidson: “Born Again” seems both busy and hollow. I respect this song’s attempt to create a disco hit with some real grandeur, but Lisa, ostensibly the song’s lead, doesn’t remotely have the soaring vocal needed to match the song’s scale. It’s no wonder that Raye, with her richer, more expansive timbre, handles most of the hook, even providing backing vocals for Lisa during her verse—though the reliance on her voice makes the decision to strand her verse at the song’s end, without any natural transition, sem that much more galling. Doja Cat, too, feels misplaced; while “Say So” led the 2020s nu-disco revival, that song let her more rambunctious personality take hold, whereas here she’s forced to tamper her energy in favor of the song’s glossy sheen. Even the instrumentation, despite the sense of space the mix conveys on the hook, feels half-hearted: the song’s more dramatic strings and bass licks are stranded in favor of a galloping synth beat that doesn’t add much to the track. [5]
Nortey Dowuona: The flimsy disco drum loop laid down by Cassidy Turbin undergirds all of the other musical flourishes by Andrew Wells, especially the bass, which forces LISA and Doja to adopt a thin soprano line in order to comfortably ride it. When Doja snaps into her own flow, it feels pointed and knowing, but she can’t break from the rhythm, which weakens her verse’s impact to the point it is soon forgotten. RAYE combines both approaches — light, thin soprano, tight, hyper-constructed raps — in the final verse, and lifts off into a daring, silvery riff that travels up the scale. It’s the most exciting and energizing moment, the rest of the song a flimsy, cloudy blur. [6]
Al Varela: You can tell this started as a solo RAYE song that her label refused to release. This is her song, and she owns the chorus and bridge of this song with effortless prowess. LISA, meanwhile, feels like she’s playing catchup. Her performance is fine, but she’s easily outclassed by both RAYE’s powerful stage presence and Doja Cat’s snappy verse. I appreciate LISA saving “Born Again” from label hell, but she’s also the weakest part, which doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in her upcoming album. I wonder whether this song would have been better off had RAYE and Doja Cat kept it for themselves — but the song we got is still worth having. [7]
Kayla Beardslee: Lisa is undeniably getting eaten up by Doja and (especially) RAYE here, but I feel like she also knows that: you don’t imitate RAYE’s demo and then invite her back onto her own song without knowing you’re ceding some of the spotlight. If anything, I respect that Lisa has a good ear for collaborations and a willingness to meet them halfway. (Besides, singers with far more range than herhave struggled just as muchto escape the shadow of RAYE’s writing.) Lisa’s post-YG solo discography has been one big eclectic experiment, and the hits and misses have landed somewhat at random based on the variables in the credits, but “Born Again” is one of the more fun and worthwhile results so far. Cosmic synth bass and a lineup of strong female performers is a winning recipe, and orders of magnitude fresher and more exciting than anything Lisa was stuck with under YG. [7]
Katherine St. Asaph: The same conceit as “Like a Prayer,” yet somehow with no sense of sacrilege or transgression, and thus no juice. [4]
Taylor Alatorre: The obvious answer is “because the drama,” but I’m still confused as to why Lisa would choose to act out the maltheistic vision of God as a scornful tyrant who would punish His own creation for the crime of not loving Him enough, and then ask us to sympathize with that party in the relationship. Most of the blame for this interpretation goes to Doja Cat with her “non-believer” and “bitten from the fruit” nonsense, but at least Doja tries to enumerate some of the guy’s tangible sins, namely lying and underemployment. All we get from Lisa are “receipts” that she cagily keeps out of view, as well as the implication that her man simply should’ve wanted it more — not exactly the stuff of divine retribution. And good luck trying to tease anything from Raye’s Gish gallop of a feature, where she pops in to deliver a brief and bizarrely muffled co-sign of, I assume, sisterly solidarity. We’re meant to take these lyrics as a Gothic counterpart to the vaguely noir-ish instrumental, but if the most memorable words in your liberated woman anthem are “pray to Jesus,” it’s possible you’ve crossed a few too many wires. [4]
Ian Mathers: This has a drive and confidence that perfectly fits the “fuck you, you are now missing out” intended vibe. The disco strings and poppin’ bass give the production a sleek, nocturnal, cinematic sheen, and LISA and RAYE are fantastic, both in their own right and in the way their voices blend. Doja Cat doesn’t let the side down or anything, but if you swapped her out for more of the other two I wouldn’t complain. Maybe she should have changed her name to all caps? [8]
Mark Sinker: I know vid-crit is an infra-dig substitute for listening, but imagine you DID reach the underlit-floor hotel room at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and there was RAYE rhyming cinnamon / minimum, deficient in / vitamin. Kubrick’s way better monolith. [7]
Andrew Karpan: A knockoff Dua Lipa record that comes conspicuously close to the real thing. [7]
Dave Moore: Rosé has glimmers of becoming a Godzilla-like global competitor at Taylor Swift’s monsterverse scale. She’s no literal Taylor Swift, as a glimpse at the serviceable-at-best words will attest. But she has figured out how to do Taylor-pop as a mode of muscular easy listening, the kind of soft behemoth that elbows its way into supermarkets and pharmacies for eternity. Interestingly, the one time I’ve heard this song in the wild was at a tea shop that immediately skipped it for NewJeans, and I’ll admit it really didn’t make a lot of sense in that context — the closest the playlist got to A-pop was Ava Max featuring on an ILLIT song. It may just be that Rosé, relatively new to a solo career but already eclipsing her former peers, is a bit stranded between shores. But hey, you know who else was big and green and got stranded between shores but eventually made a really big impact on the world? [8]
Claire Davidson: I was aware of the many Taylor Swift comparisons “Toxic Till the End” has received, but no one warned me that the song wasn’t even imitating Swift’s good albums. Instead, it pairs buzzy synths with an overwrought bass beat and acoustic guitar touches that feel ripped straight from the worst pop songs on Red, creating a claustrophobic sense of bombast that leaves Rosé struggling for air. That said, this song’s worst offender is the lyrical content, which borrows all the overused therapy buzzwords used to condemn a bad person but doesn’t come up with a truly cutting barb to indict this ex—at one point, the song seems to even poke fun at its use of clichés with the line “His favorite game is chess, who would ever guessed?” Swift, despite how poorly a lot of pop music fits her voice, has the vocal exuberance to convince the audience that she at least believes what she’s selling. Rosé, on the other hand, hardly sounds engaged, even on a chorus that demands full-throated belting. [3]
Kayla Beardslee: “Toxic Till the End” isn’t so much a song as a museum exhibit dedicated to the history of Taylor Swift (“Back then, when I was running out of your place… I ran out crying, and you followed me out into the street”), and the comparisons are distracting enough that I’m not sure how to feel about it as an actual piece of music. I think the vocals are mixed a touch too loud over the instrumental — even for singer-songwriter-y songs, you want some interplay between the music and lyrics. Maybe Rosé should call up Nathan Chapman and ask for a simple yet distinctive guitar riff to thread throughout the verses. [5]
Melody Esme: A perfect angry breakup song sells you with tone and performance, regardless of specifics. So I knew this one had me hooked when Rosé sang “His favorite game is chess” and my reaction was “Ugh, typical.” I don’t even have anything against chess. But here, Rosé masters the art of turning minute specifics into gigantic red flags (when’s someone gonna just title one “Bitch Eating Crackers” already?). I love the line about Tiffany rings, too, a strangely transparent bit of wealth-flashing. Most artists keep their heartbreaking confessional songs and their capitalist excess songs separate–the “7 Rings” and the “Ghostin” on different plates. That this one doesn’t care makes it even more honest. Sometimes, amidst your heartbreak, you have to take a breath and realize you’re actually more upset about the thing you left at your ex’s place than the breakup itself. For me, it was my mug with Shinji from Evangelion on it. For Rosé, it was some disgustingly expensive pieces of jewelry. Few things transcend class; pettiness is one of them. [9]
Mark Sinker: I am very bad at chess (beaming_halo.emoji), so I’m happy to cosign a chess bro = toxic logic — and maybe even pretend I don’t find “bro then played chess on my chest OMG” a bit of a muddling elaboration. But she evidently plays too, and the logic of the sounds of the song tells us she’s the villain. Don’t make me explain this. [8]
Taylor Alatorre: A tightly-coiled burst of crystalline breakup pop that’s more complex, lyrically if not musically, than its Metric-by-way-of-Disney Channel exterior may suggest. “You had me participating” is the kind of sober self-indictment, and “you wasted my prettiest years” the kind of benevolent vanity, that make the scenario feel real and lived-in, even if the curtain-raising segue into the second verse tries to tell us it’s all just winking stagecraft. [8]
Hannah Jocelyn: In Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical The Fabelmans, John Ford asks burgeoning filmmaker Sammy Fabelman to describe a series of photos on his wall — specifically, where the horizon is. Ford says “if the horizon is at the top it’s interesting, if it’s at the bottom, it’s interesting, if it’s in the middle it’s boring as shit.” What this advice means in the film is not that you shouldn’t put the horizon in the middle. Sammy has to frame his shots with intentionality; otherwise he’ll inadvertently make his bully look like a god. “Toxic Till The End” was written by a team who only puts the horizon at the bottom because Taylor Swift did. This is what you get when you take out the intensity that made touch-starved sapphics think she could only be pining for women, the overwrought wit that made Swift sound both alien and #relatable, the fussiness of a Martin, Antonoff, or Dessner. You’re left with the basics, which Rosé delivers with no urgency whatsoever. There’s one striking line here (“you wasted all of my prettiest years”), but it’s so impressed with itself that there’s a filler line building up the final blow. The beauty of a bridge-ending lyric like Swift’s “give me back my girlhood, it was mine first” is that it blows the song wide open and contextualizes the rest of the lyrics. What does “you wasted all my prettiest years” mean? What are the implications when a line like that feels specifically written to invoke a line about stolen girlhood? Do they even think about that? No, they don’t. Even though this is an Amy Allen co-write, it sounds like it was made by people who don’t know why those tropes exist. Take away the shiny production (that synth at the end is pretty, fine), and I guarantee it would sound like a middle-school Swiftie performing her first song at a talent show to polite applause. [0]
Alfred Soto: With Taylor Swift hanging out long enough to serve as influence for a generation of artists, I gotta go case by case. The chorus’ rise-and-fall cadences echo Avril Lavigne’s tricks without her tread. Rosé delivers the lyrics with the bright crispness of the wine that bears her name and with as much depth. By all means act chipper when the guy who stole your girlhood stands in front of you, but at least demonstrate that the mirror has a few cracks. [5]
Ian Mathers: I want to be very clear: any of the people involved in writing or performing this song may well have had shitty, damaging, unfair experiences, and my opinion of the song has nothing to do with them (and certainly isn’t intended to minimize or dismiss them). But as a pop song, what’s important is not the reality or nature of any of those experiences (which aren’t my fucking business anyway), but the fact that the song feels very much like, well, a performance. Slightly removed, no real heat or pain — and also, unlike some other songs on the topic, no sense of the blank numbness this kind of scenario can cause. It’s not that more “genuine” seeming expressions of these feelings are any less crafted; it’s just that they tend to feel less crafted. [6]
Al Varela: “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you… the ex” crawls into my skin like a million cockroaches scurrying when the lights turn on. It’s like someone scrolled through a stan Twitter account for a few mind-numbing hours and wrote a song out of it. And then sent the lyrics to a producer who hasn’t listened to new music since Taylor Swift’s Red. [3]
Julian Axelrod: This is a prime example of my favorite subgenre “Lyft pop,” which I was lucky enough to hear for the first time in the back seat of a Lyft. It’s so funny to put out a Halsey tribute two months after the Halsey album full of tributes to other artists. [7]
Will Adams: A perfect stock song: one that was probably on co-writer Emily Warren’s shelf for years before being dusted off for Rosé’s album; one that could have fallen into the hands of an EDM producer — say, Jason Ross, Illenium, NOTD, whoever — which would’ve resulted in something at least sonically punchy. But here, we get something utterly, completely fine. [5]
Nortey Dowuona:Evan Blair had a tall mountain to climb with me. Emily Warren is a longtime favorite of mine and of many pop music critics. So what do you get when you divide 12 by -5? [2]
Katherine St. Asaph: This is a good, honest .500 pop song. Rosé makes .500 pop goddammit. Salt of the earth, punch the clock, even win/loss ratio pop music. She whiffs a couple, guess what? She’ll slay a couple, too. But don’t get too excited or let it go to your head. No imperial periods here, no sir. That’s hubris, which this blue collar, hard working everywoman artist doesn’t have. A few hits in a row, this artist, true to form, will balance it out with a couple a flops. Yes sir, that’s our 2024 solo debut ROSIE. A good, honest .500 pop album. [5]
Claire Davidson: I understand what Kendrick Lamar is trying to achieve with his delivery here: after all, “luther” is a very low-key love song, its predominant theme being lovers who provide care and respite for each other in the face of outside chaos. Yet there’s a difference between sounding relaxed and just seeming disengaged, and Lamar unfortunately leans toward the latter, his voice too subdued to be truly expressive. Compare this to SZA, whose trademark as a singer is her ethereal openness, and she ends up overshadowing Lamar on his own track. That being said, “luther” is still very endearing, conveying that spirit of breezy generosity with rich strings, fluttery keyboards, and sweet harmonies between the two vocalists, who still have chemistry in spite of their different approaches. [7]
Al Varela: One of Kendrick’s most underrated aspects as a rapper is his ability to make pop music without compromising the core of his music. He’s a legit romantic and his gentle, husky singing voice is a joy to listen to even when he’s not spitting or writing elaborate bars. His back and forth with SZA on “luther”, paired with the elegant sweeping production and gorgeous Luther Vandross sample is the best work these two have ever made together. Their charisma is so natural, and it never feels like one is overpowering the other. It’s a mutual love where both partners are perfectly in sync. [9]
Alfred Soto: I’m here for Kendrick ‘n’ SZA’s Marvin ‘n’ Tammi routine, and the shrewd interpolation of Luther Vandross’ “If This World Were Mine” reinforces the rapper’s king-of-the-world status without ironizing it; but this is the kind of valentine to a sex worker that a Pulitzer Prize winner should’ve sneezed past. [5]
Mark Sinker: Docked a point for how he sings “fah fah fah”, which bugs me for no reasons I can name. And a second for supplying this pleasing summery buzz and hum when it’s still months away from summer. And a third because doesn’t Luther sampled crack little doors in the desired surface of the purr? He’s Luther, he’s a bigger deal than this song, he’s somewhere you’d maybe rather be? [7]
Jonathan Bradley: Vandross is the sample, but Kendrick has spoken enough on the evils of Lucy that I wonder if he has more nefarious ends in mind with this Luther. If so, he should make more of it. He declines to kumbaya, so that’s something: “She’s a fan, he’s a flop.” SZA and Kendrick do make a pretty pair, draping the arrangement in artful melody, but the appeal of GNX is its denuded intensity; the album isn’t worse for a slow jam, but it didn’t need one. This occupies the spot “Poetic Justice” held on Good Kid, m.A.A.d City, except it’s kinda dull. [5]
Katherine St. Asaph: A sweet little interlude, in the sense that an interlude is defined by what’s around it. [5]
Taylor Alatorre: I wish this were sequenced at the end of GNX so it could more perfectly evoke the narrative of the triumphant Odysseus, returning to Ithaca and slaughtering the suitors in order to restore that most cherished ideal of domestic quietude. Some rappers nakedly grasp for such classical models of heroism, but Kendrick and SZA assume the mantle naturally, without the need for any ham-handed lyrical allusions on their part; some tropes are so powerful they just can’t help but reoccur. [9]
TA Inskeep: Lamar’s verse just sits there, SZA provides some tender crooning relief (even singing lines like “fuckin’ on the low”), but what makes this is the very very smart use of the 1982 Cheryl Lynn/Luther Vandross Quiet Storm classic cover of “If This World Were Mine.” (And a few 808 beats, which never hurt.) I wouldn’t say “luther” is a great song, but it’s an effective one. [6]
Nortey Dowuona: So happy that Kendrick finally replaced Drake as the soft rapper du jour. I mean, if he could actually sing that whole unpleasantness of last year need not have happened. szaonthedot soon come. [10]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I was originally not planning to blurb this — it’s another tasteful, artfully wrought collaborations between two artists that we’ve already spilled untold pixels about our love for. But last night I dreamt of a stadium full of people, all singing along to this. I file this review not as a critic but as an oracle. [8]
Julian Axelrod: It’s borderline blasphemous to use the sample and opening from Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s” (one of the best songs of all time) but SZA and Kendrick come pretty close to clearing that impossibly high bar. If anything, the beat’s nostalgic warmth unlocks a looseness between them that’s missing from their other collaborations, which often sag under the weight of their own importance. “Doves in the Wind” may be a better song, but it doesn’t have Kendrick singing, “fooooosball.” [7]
Claire Davidson: What’s the point of “30 for 30”? I’d hazard a guess that it’s meant to frame SZA and Kendrick Lamar as each other’s jaded ex-lovers, but the verses are so generalized that constructing any kind of narrative seems futile. That then poses the question of why this song even needed to be a duet, given how their storied history as collaborators feels so inessential to the final product, to say nothing of the gauzy beat that saps both performers of any energy. Also, the lyric “say you on your cycle, but he on his period too” certainly wouldn’t be the first time Lamar has conflated supposedly female anatomy with weakness—I’m reminded of the “other vaginal option” punchline that appears on “Not Like Us”—but it’s even more egregious in a song credited to SZA, who is currently one of the most prolific women in the music industry. I’m tempted to say I’m docking a point for that line alone, but that would imply I had strong feelings toward the song in the first place. [4]
Jonathan Bradley: “You go to the beauty shop and get in that chair/Your man in there gettin’ his hair fixed,” quipped Millie Jackson in her 1977 song “All the Way Lover.” “He cuter than you, huh?” Kendrick has similar men in mind on this SZA song: “They cuter than you, oh?/Say you on your cycle but he on his period too, huh?” Whatever, Kenny; it’s telling that even when he’s being obnoxious, he exerts a far greater presence on this rote R&B traditionalism than the lead artist does. Allegedly she’s present, but on the “30 for 30” roll call she tellingly recedes before 2020s Kendrick, Switch’s 1979 recording of “I Call Your Name,” and even the ghost of 2007 Rich Boy. [4]
Dave Moore: Kendrick Lamar and SZA work well together. He needs a light counterbalance that isn’t directly competing with his voice, which is authoritative in one sense but at a sonic level is a little too mellow and conversational to compete with another big voice on the track. (He worked as a feature on Beyoncé’s “Freedom” because the song cleanly cordons off his verse.) Here, though, I think the choice to let both Kendrick and SZA go modal together keeps them both in a fog and the song never finds a foothold, but not in an interesting way (they have too much personality to make the fog itself interesting). [5]
Mark Sinker: They stick with the cryptic, with this roman-à-clef shit that amuses them as much as it baffles everyone else, and I suppose to be fair cryptic is sometimes my high mode as well and I’m fine with it (baffled but fine). Their voices tag-team very nicely. [8]
Alfred Soto: The mewl of the electric piano augurs dull shit. The professional anonymity of the principals does not disappoint. [4]
Katherine St. Asaph: Kendrick won the Drake beef so hard that now he even sounds like Drake. SZA’s charm has to be around here somewhere, right? [3]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Yet another indignity in Drake’s century of humiliation — Kendrick has seen fit not just to celebrate his victory in this beef on the biggest stages in music but to steal Drake’s one remaining niche, delivering a lover-man guest verse full of questionable sexual politics and corny jokes. Worse yet: he’s actually good at it, playing the moderator to SZA’s Twitch streamer (Doja Cat must be pissed) with a charm that his nemesis hasn’t displayed in a half decade or more. [7]
Nortey Dowuona: I don’t know what happened to make Kendrick tap into his latent Ne-Yo/The-Dream, but we do need one, and if they’re going around being assholes, let’s have Kendrick replace them too. szaonthedot when? [8]
Iain Mew: It’s difficult to imagine Blackpink doing this song, which gives Babymonster more of their own identity than initial singles. The biggest difference is in piling on the sweetness, in both vocals and horns, which is no bad thing in itself but is too constricted by how big everything still sounds, ending up stilted more than breezy. It briefly works at the end when they loosen up most and convey a new sense of fun. [5]
Jonathan Bradley: Babymonster’s breakout hit was “Sheesh,” a glinting and hard-edged rap sortie that, for all its futuristic thrust wasn’t particularly fun. “Really Like You” is easygoing and easier to like, built on a throwback R&B arrangement that could be called boom-bap if only it had bumped a bit harder. (It should have; Ruka and Asa’s raps point in the right direction.) The hook is frothy and simpers too much, but it’s easy to press repeat on. If these monsters are in it for the long run, I hope they lean in this direction. [6]
Claire Davidson: Color me surprised that what I’d otherwise assumed would be just another sugary love song is primarily imitating 90s hip-hop—and doing it pretty well, to boot, with slick but gentle guitarwork, a loose bass groove, and even a smattering of trumpets on the hook. To the group’s credit, Babymonster actually does feature some members who can comfortably rap over this instrumentation, but this is ultimately still lighthearted and girlish, not quite in step with the more celebratory feel the remainder of the track suggests. Said another way, the lyrics of “Really Like You” aren’t reminiscent of any particular MCs so much as Carly Rae Jepsen, and with all due respect to the Canadian queen of pop, there’s only so much good production can do to compensate for that gulf. [6]
Melody Esme: Those horns are great. Overwhelmingly sweet and a little uncanny — that is what falling in love sounds like! They nailed it! And it’s a good thing they did, because “you make a bad day better/you make a good day better too” isn’t gonna propel this into the crush song canon. (“Ding-diggy-ding like a liggy-ding-ding/Wanna bing-bing,” on the other hand…) I don’t know if this will stay in my rotation. It’s a bit light, and there’s not a ton going for it. But sometimes nailing a single element is enough. [7]
Dave Moore: I’m quite taken with the hook in the chorus, reaching up to minor sixths on tiptoes, but the production feels simultaneously bland and busy, and the whole thing washes out. I think that chorus reminds me vaguely of the old Girl’s Day song “Expectation,” which is the first K-pop song that I remember getting totally transfixed by at a purely melodic level. The comparison highlights how little is going in the songcraft, the song trying to get by almost entirely on personality in the rap sections, and (to be fair) almost succeeding. [5]
Nortey Dowuona: Jonny Hockings doing this record is v funny but you won’t get why it’s funny unless you click this link. v funny but not haha funny. On a positive note, Ahyeon sounds great! Imagine being <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc9XTohaq6I”>Ryan Bickley</a> too. This is a step up! Not for <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs1SgQAmBeU”>AiRPLAY</a>, though. He gets it. [6]
Leah Isobel: “Really Like You” gets closer to justifying Babymonster as a group than their past songs, though the balance still feels a little off — the contrast between the production’s laid-back warmth and the raps delivered in harsh Blackpink style is jarring, and the juvenile tone works against the group’s engineered professionalism. There remains a void where a recognizable personality or perspective should be; there’s nothing to root for, no core, no soul. But the vague promise that, at some point, there will be one is a step up for this group. [5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: It’s absolutely pointless to review Travis Scott’s music in 2025. He’s one of the surest musical victors of the ongoing decay of the critical infrastructure of tastemakers and journalists that once helped determine who’s hot and who is otherwise; he’s gone direct to consumer, topping the charts on pure strength of sales regardless of whether anyone’s really listening. “4×4” thus has no obligation to be anything good, or even new — he repurposes the opening synth fanfares of his biggest hit, does a good impression of the featured guest on his last album’s one memorable song, references another one of his fraudulent number ones. It’s less a song and more a casserole. [8]
Taylor Alatorre: Travis continues his run as the safe-for-advertisers version of Kanye by sampling, instead of Italian football ultras, an HBCU marching band rendition of a Migos single. He is ostentatiously obeying the speed limit of the zeitgeist. [5]
Katherine St. Asaph: I assume the conspicuously opulent, straining-for-expensive-sounding sound of the synth-string arrangement is supposed to evoke Maybach music, but what it actually evokes is a low-bitrate mp3 of an orchestral boss battle remix. And Travis Scott’s vocal is so anonymous and slurry-like that this might as well be an instrumental. I find that amusing enough to give “4×4” a much higher score than it probably deserves. [7]
Melody Esme: A quite good Travis Scott song that, like most Travis Scott songs, makes me feel nothing. I think you may have to be more into downers to really get him, and I’m more of an amphetamine lady (an Addergal, if you will). I like the line about fucking the sun; it made me think of “I WANT TO GET FUCKIN HIGH/I WANT TO EAT THE SUN,” which is always nice. [6]
Will Adams: Absent of a grippy hook, I’m mostly intrigued by the textures. The marching band sample is processed such that the brass sounds like sirens blaring. Travis’s smeared vocal becomes more robotic via a chorus filter. Then, at just the right moment, he flips into a clear vocal. It’s the rare jolt of energy in an otherwise decent lull of a song. [6]
