The Singles Jukebox

Songs have been built on worse puns, but I can’t think of any right now.

[Video][Website]
[4.18]

Juana Giaimo: We found the winner for the most pathetic lyrics of 2014!
[4]

Andy Hutchins: “Do you think I’d have to be, like, really high to make sex to this cumulus cloud of a song truly transcendent, or will incense alone do? And how cool would it be to have sex to it in the Himalayas? Man, that Miguel is great. Viva May-hee-co! That Indiana Jones line is stupid, bro.” — a conversation that will actually happen in a dorm, perhaps with only one participant, at some point this fall.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I have never been great at figuring out where exactly good guitar begins and bad guitar ends–the maestro technique conversation rarely interests me, and I just don’t have the skill. But this song, near the end, where Santana bends towards Miguel’s voice, or Miguel’s voice tries to find a place in the intricacy of Santana’s playing — I want to know what is happening there. 
[8]

David Sheffieck: Remember when Santana achieved massive crossover success with well-chosen guest vocalists and hooks? “Indy” hits the former but not the latter, and is all the better for it — a quietly scorching meditation that plays to both Santana and Miguel’s strengths.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Santana’s voluble guitar can’t stop chirping, and Miguel has sung against enough of those things to let the man above the credits have his say. The rest of this uncluttered production lives up to the billing: Santana and Miguel, nobody else. But oof — did no one edit Mig’s lyrics? Hell, for all I know, they’re Santana’s. Now there’s a guy who’s never read Edward Said.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: And then Kali, Durga, Radha, Sita, Saraswati, Parvati and this poor woman, accosted with classic rock’s worst impulses of faux-Hindu wank and guitar jizz and “I would love to lay ya way up in the Himalayas,” laughed and/or sighed and/or smote the guy, right?
[1]

Thomas Inskeep: Wait, the “Indy” refers to Indiana Jones?! “I would love to lay ya/way up in the Himalayas”? This is remarkably irrelevant and pointless, and I swear to god if Miguel turns into Lenny Kravitz I’m gonna fuckin’ kill him. Also, WHO is still paying Carlos Santana to jerk off his guitar?
[3]

Mallory O’Donnell: I’m not really a multi-platinum recording artist or critically-buttered new piece of hot hot shit but I’ve definitely come up with better stoned horny 3 AM bullshit than this.
[3]

Jer Fairall: They sound like they banged this out, from composition to recording, in about the length of time it takes to listen to it. Can’t blame Miguel for falling back on lyrical corn on what is essentially a throwaway that isn’t even as high profile as the cast of characters may have once suggested (does the audience for these records even exist anymore?), even if he does manage one “Do You”-level zinger with “your body is a temple/it just might be the Temple of Doom.” For Carlos Santana, though, this is much closer to his Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. 
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The running length of “Indy” is nothing more than a set-up for the frankly laughable (and embarrassing) assertion that Miguel has an “Indiana jones” for a girl. Since some of that lead-up is actually worse than that dreadful bit of word”play”, I can only surmise that they couldn’t score some decent weed at short notice, and instead burned a tire and inhaled the fumes. The effect for us is not the same as it is for them. If only they’d just taken lots of pseudo and written a freeform jam version of “Doctor Jones” instead…
[2]

Brad Shoup: This is a really fucked-up thing to do to a sweet old man.
[1]