The Singles Jukebox

“In April 2017, [Yseult] worked in a writing seminar for the Black Eyed Peas, organised by Polydor, after which she decided to end her contract with the label later that year.”

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Harlan Talib Ockey: Sevdaliza sounding ethereal, a viscerally satisfying reggaeton drop, both Pabllo Vittar and Yseult doing an operatic Kate Bush impression. What’s not to like?
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Ian Mathers: Always a bold move to work with two other singers who just outsing you on your own track, but the whole of this works well enough that it comes across more like confidence and good taste.
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Leah Isobel: Sevdaliza’s music is intent in its solemnity, so even when she throws of our most cartoonishly delightful popstars on a baile funk beat, the end result still feels startlingly corseted. I like the way she delivers the song’s title as a farewell and the way her melodies embroider the vworps and zwooms of the synth bass, but there’s a classical sort of prettiness here that I wish she’d scuff up a little.
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Katherine St. Asaph: The operatic thrills and eclecticism mostly make up for the plodding chorus.
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Nortey Dowuona: Katherine St. Asaph once compared Sevdaliza to Tracey Thorn, remarking on the richness of their voices as well as the woo that one would have to push through in order to enjoy the music. Yseult and Vittar, both of whom are sterling vocalists, strain to cut above the noise here. Vittar swings boldly for the fences in the first and last two lines of the intro and the bridge to grab the listener by the hand and thrust them into the chorus, while Yseult, a Nouvelle Star graduate with a sterling soprano, flutters above the drumwork by Mucky and Mathias Janmaat, who suffocate the Totó la Momposina sample under dimming filters to not overshadow the lead artist. Sevdaliza’s voice, a low, girded drawl, thrives in this environment amid the heavy rhythmic swing of the drum programming, and she manages to make some of her most woo-woo lyrics ripple through the mix.
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Jonathan Bradley: There’s more melodrama in the spiky synth riff than anything else, though our three stars give it their best with lines like “when was the last time you felt safe in the dark?” and “this world was never meant for a woman’s heart.” Pabllo Vittar’s warbled bridge is certainly overwrought, and a wobbly drill-adjacent bass tugs us deeper, but I never feel like we fall through the veil into the world these three have constructed for themselves.
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Takes me back to a place when early 2000s pop music took itself way too seriously, and when the stakes were always inexplicably “ride or die.” “Alibi” is the sexiest and deadliest thing I’ve heard this year, in three languages. 
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