The Singles Jukebox

Iain Mew: I’m a bit conflicted on this demonstration of how to add some actual energy to tropical house-meets-R&B. Partly that’s because for all its good ideas it seems to stop just short of its full potential, carrying on in an easy groove when it could break through to more. Mainly it’s because we have so many things which sound a little like this already and these ideas could be dangerous in other hands.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I am here for tropical-house tropes being (re?)claimed by pop singers in the actual tropics. Even past the Diplo-except-good production, though, this is an elegant breakup song with a central performance that Western pop stars could study to useful effect.
[7]

Will Adams: What the R&B infusion to the trop-house template does is soften its edges with lovely details. The marimba is less upfront, leaving space for gorgeous string swells, piano figures, and creamed backing vocals. The songwriting is just serviceable, though, which means “Chúng Ta Không Thuộc Về Nhau” occupies the gray area between ordinary and extraordinary.
[6]

Adaora Ede: The beauty of tropical house is that no matter how passé the genre becomes, it will never become unbearably moribund with its guaranteed place as the happiest enigma of mainstream music. Dancehall drums and synths are a universal language, it seems, as proved by “Chúng Ta Không Thuộc Về Nhau”‘s diversion into steely bossa nova-cum-futurist RnB. It’s definitely danceable; it’s not even something I would call conspicuously boring, but are we compelled? Yeah, a little, but this song peaks at the unexpected non-Auto-Tuned rap break at which, you are made to think “A cool feature?!!!?” but is in fact the cunning master of disguise Sơn Tùng M-TP himself (in a long trench coat and a mustache, of course), spitting what he seems to think is pure fire.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: I can’t really tell if the vocals feel distant because that’s the emotions, or if the production’s just pushed them too far away. Either way, the groove and the melody want to bring me in but shyly hidden behind the beats of the chorus, I can’t feel the voice’s meaning in the absence of understanding the language. So it feels like an above-average lite-pop-house exercise. Does the world need more of them? Yes, sure.
[6]