Maybe just without the self pity?

[Video]
[5.38]

Taylor Alatorre: I have little use for Halsey as a personality or a representative of her generation or whatever, and the less I’m forced to think about G-Eazy the better. But this is a solid blue-eyed soul interpretation of Souled Out-era Jhené Aiko, and considering the ill-defined direction the real Aiko has taken lately (22 songs?!), that’s good enough for me. A bonus point for admitting upfront that this is a stand-alone release, instead of using it to tease an unfinished album where it’ll only appear as a Japanese bonus track.
[7]

Alfred Soto: How curious that Halsey, whose timbre is intermittently poignant, should sing verses like a producer requested she do so through a moist sofa cushion pressed against her mouth. The effect dampens the already secondhand emotions.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: So it turns out Halsey can actually deliver a solid single. The production on the vocals wears thin but the songwriting sounds new. Halsey’s pain is palpable. 
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: Wouldn’t have expected Louis Bell and Halsey to work together at all. Bell’s specialty is his vocal production, taking vocoded inspiration from Bon Iver and Imogen Heap and mixing it with the modern trap production that virtually everyone else is doing. It’s intoxicating, a style that can even lend gravitas to Post Malone. Meanwhile, Halsey centers her music around her lyrics to a fault – even if she sings against a muddy or anodyne background, her voice always comes through. As soon as the chorus hits, Bell and Halsey prove to be a great combination, distracting “God Is A Woman” guitar and the occasional cliché notwithstanding. There’s some PVRIS grit in the way she paraphrases “Cry Me A River” during the breakdown, which is a sentence that has probably never been written before. It should be cringey, maybe it is, but she pulls it off, which is the Halsey way. “Without Me” is not necessarily the best over either artist, but it’s intriguing and makes me want to hear more from this particular combination before it becomes just another entry in Halsey’s career and Bell’s extremely productive 2018.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Halsey does her best Post Malone impression and flounders with an awkward “Cry Me A River” interpolation. In typical Halsey fashion, she owns it and makes these things enjoyable. Also in typical Halsey fashion, this relatably uncool angst is all she has going for her.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Can’t quite get past my immense distaste for “does it ever get lonely, thinking you could live without me?”, which just feels intrinsically poisonous. Although I guess if the song was more interesting that would help.
[2]

Vikram Joseph: It seems churlish to stick the boot in too hard when someone’s so clearly hurt about the way they’ve been treated in a relationship, but damn, I wish Halsey had channelled her grievances into something which was either truly vengeful or more emotionally interesting. The angle she’s gone for – “I saved you, and now you think you’re too good for me” – sinks “Without Me” deep into a morass of self-pity. The best line (“Running from the demons in your mind / Then I took yours and made ’em mine”) hints at a darker, more revealing take on how the fallout has affected her, but even then, it would be hard to overcome a forgettable melody and a pace so laborious it deserves a designated lunch break.
[4]

Iain Mew: The emphasis on force of emotion to get through an indistinct song harks back to all the bits of her first album that weren’t “New Americana.” But none of those had a magic trick like the one Halsey pulls here, where once she quotes “Cry Me a River” the steeliness underneath comes to the surface and suddenly it turns out on subsequent listens that it was there all along.
[7]

Korea’s sweetheart continues to impress…

[Video]
[6.57]

Alex Clifton: I don’t think I’ve ever heard a “hater” song quite like “Bbibbi.” It’s confrontational but feels polite; “hello stu-P-I-D” sounds silly but also like a tremendous insult coming from IU’s sweet voice. It’s not out for blood, like “Look What You Made Me Do” was, but it’s not a colossal finger to the world, either. Nor is it a self-empowerment song like “Roar,” where IU has to build up her confidence. This is a song delivered by someone who knows exactly who she is and where she’d like others to stay around. Instead it’s firm in asking for boundaries, a serious message wrapped up in cutesy packaging. I don’t know if this is IU’s best work, but the novelty of the conceit and her flawless-as-usual vocal delivery are enough to hook me.
[8]

Iain Mew: “Bbibbi” is a sequel in the best sense, returning to the best aspects of “Palette” (the unfeasibly relaxed groove) and taking them somewhere new. So instead of G-Dragon 30splaining, we get a bit where IU brings the playfulness to the fore, turns the song inside out, and for a while anything seems possible.
[8]

Ryo Miyauchi: From the minimalist R&B beat to the direct reference to her own biography, IU cuts “Bbibbi” from a very similar cloth as “Palette.” The chorus includes catchier hooks, and more bells and whistles accent the production. Yet “Bbibbi” gets even more self-indulgent than her birthday song as it marks another milestone: IU’s 10th anniversary since her debut. She’s not so thrilled to celebrate, but more fed up about her place in pop as she draws a line between artist and the media. It comes off not angry nor too passive, instead simply calm yet honest: exactly how a warning from IU would sound.
[8]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: IU the Korean national treasure, the established brand, asserting herself over IU the artist. The result is a track that displays a performer getting a bit too comfortable with all the sonic hallmarks expected in her music; A pity, because the harmonic dynamics hinted at something far more interesting. 
[6]

Ramzi Awn: “Bbibbi” does all the right things but fails to intrigue. Yes, it makes you want to shimmy your hips. Yes, it has an uncanny sense of melody. Yes, it throws everything but the kitchen sink into a slinky, fun, sickly sweet single, but no I don’t ever need to hear it again. 
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: At this point, producer Lee Jong-hoon is as crucial in defining IU’s career as Lee Min-soo was. I’d argue, though, that Lee’s work on “Twenty-Three,” “Palette,” and now “Bbibbi” is even more noteworthy because it’s the rare aesthetic turn that feels both natural and highly personal. But for all that “Bbibbi” is able to do in presenting an understated but firm toughness, its coffee shop-friendly instrumentation is more conducive to providing pleasant diaristic musings than a memorable song. The melodies here are consequently recognizable but unable to stick. Still, this feels like another important step in IU’s continued maturation so it’s hard to get too upset.
[5]

John Seroff: Bouncy, compulsively replayable R&B froth on a par with anything off the Insecure soundtrack. If IU records an English version, I’m having a hard time not seeing this dent the US charts.
[8]

And hello low scores!

[Video][Website]
[2.86]

Kat Stevens: Did you know it’s been sixteen years since Blazin’ Squad covered “Crossroads”? Sixteen!
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: These garish rap ballads are rarely good because the rapping is often shoehorned in and incongruous with the sentimentality being conveyed. That may be the case here but the strings are actually the biggest offender. They’re seriously always present, and then the high note belting and campfire singalong appear as if to ensure that I become physically ill. Fans are responding to this song as being a charming victory lap for iKon given their incredibly successful year. To these ears, it just sounds like the breakup song it wants to be. In this case, a split between me and iKon.
[0]

Thomas Inskeep: This sounds like a Gavin DeGraw throwaway, rapped verse and all, and makes me irrationally angry.
[1]

Will Adams: A decent boy band ballad made maudlin by the persistent violins. The disgusted “euh-huuhh” in the pre-chorus almost made me think they were in on the joke.
[3]

Iain Mew: “Goodbye Road” is a ballad that’s the inverse of the S.H.E single earlier this week. That went with biographic specifics and turned precise musical details into something engaging and affecting; this goes for big vague musical gestures and vaguer still words, and the result is difficult to care about.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: Yuk, the rapping and the saccharine strings are just like oil and water here. No, they’re like a relationship between two people that don’t belong together; they bring out the worst in each other. At 50% faster the chorus would be pretty catchy though.
[4]

Alex Clifton: “Goodbye Road” strikes me as a combination of Big Bang’s “If You” crossed with some of One Direction’s more upbeat stuff, but a bit gloomier. That’s not a bad thing, either. It doesn’t have some of the rawness that makes “If You” stand out in memory, but it’s also not too slick that you lose all sense of the underlying emotions. I actually feel something when those strings well up.
[6]

They’re peddling FAKE NOVELTY POP all over your social media. Click the artist link below at your own risk.

[Video][Website]
[3.38]

Iain Mew: Little Big’s previous songs to have reached tens of millions of views include 1) A bomb-themed, rather 2NE1 take on “Lollipop,” with a Kim Jong Un impersonator for the video, 2) A euphoric trance song with the sweet chorus “I hope you die/Please die right now” 3) “Big Dick.” By comparison, “Skibidi” appears rather low on the (Russian) troll scale, in that it’s just silly and catchy. That’s a feint though. It is incredibly, madly catchy. It is distilled catchiness. It turns nonsense and rave sirens and a whirring mechanical breakdown into the most indelible, punk extreme of weaponised catchiness. I am in awe and a bit in love.
[8]

Taylor Alatorre: I was promised Russian Die Antwoord and instead got Russian Ylvis. Save your remaining brain cells and just browse Russian Memes United.
[2]

Will Adams: Notably, the most annoying aspect of “Skibidi” isn’t its distillation of past novelty dancepop fluff — equal parts Ylvis, Wang Rong, Scatman John and Crazy Frog, each annoying in their own unique, agonizing way — to the point where these viral crazes increasingly seem less accidental and more calculated and highly curated; but rather, the waste of the pretty decent techno groove underpinning it all.
[3]

John Seroff: Manufacturing ill will for a contrived “dance craze” novelty track is mostly justifiable only in direct relation to how inescapable the song is and, at least in America, this is still entirely — and thankfully — avoidable. That said, if Short, Martin and Chase aren’t getting royalty checks, somebody’s lawyer is dropping the ball.
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Sounds like dumb fun until you watch the video and realize it’s calculated dumb fun.
[2]

Tim de Reuse: Like, sure, I wasn’t charmed by the joke and I think it’s a waste of everyone’s time, but that’s just because I don’t like the joke, right? If I don’t like it, it just isn’t my kind of thing, but it’s still doing exactly what it wants to do and succeeding, so there’s no point in saying what I don’t like about it. Sure, sure, sure. But there are so many funnier things you could put over a thrown-together beat and a one-measure bassline; Fatboy Slim based his career off of this, for god’s sake! You can ask for more — we can all ask for more from our skeletal, half-finished comedy dance music. Do you like this one? Your standards are too low. I will die on this hill.
[1]

Edward Okulicz: Viral and then some, I’ve seen this shared on social media by people I know who aren’t even into music. I have no idea if that can be parlayed into a real hit, but if it’s racking up the views, it doesn’t matter if no radio station touches it or money changes hands from consumer to artist. What is obvious is that this is a brutally effective sledgehammer that promises nothing more than harmless fun but significantly over-delivers in that it sticks in the brain long after, and gives you a lame/awesome dance to do at the same time. A near-perfect product, really.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Cool sounds, bros.
[1]

“Women Like Us” is a less catchy title, though.

[Video][Website]
[4.53]

Katie Gill: I’m so mad that this is a lead single! Because if you hadn’t told me otherwise, I’d have guessed third single at the most. Those lyrics are a little too “Shape of You” at certain points — unsurprising since Ed Sheeran had a hand in writing the song. Some of the girls are obviously more comfortable in their lower register than others and it shows. And, like a worrying amount of her recent guest raps, Nicki Minaj’s rap doesn’t fit with the song at all. Still, it’s a Little Mix song so it’s going to spend the next twenty weeks somewhere on the charts. Say what you will about the group, but they’ve gotten the pop song format down pat.
[5]

Tobi Tella: Hearing my sworn enemy tropical pop in 2018 was almost enough to make me hate this on principle, but I just can’t. Little Mix has so much more charisma than a typical girl group, and that’s what sells most of this for me. Add an above average Nicki Minaj verse and we have a solid pop song! You win this round, trop pop.
[6]

Lauren Gilbert: Dear Jesy, if you ever get tired of Deeply Generic White Dude Rappers, please call me.  xx, Lauren
[8]

Iain Mew: Are the recycled lines from “Sing” there to draw attention to the otherwise inaudible Ed Sheeran co-write? Is his presence as a promotion tick box more important than the writing? Speaking of recycling, the Nicki verse lampshades the aim as being “Side to Side” but safer; the combined forces of her, Sheeran, Jess Glynne, Steve Mac, and Little Mix succeed all too well.
[5]

Will Adams: With Fifth Harmony disbanded, Little Mix turn to Ariana Grande for inspiration. If this “Side to Side” replica is any indication, we can expect the entirety of LM5 to just be Dangerous Woman but scrubbed of all ambition and replaced with empowerment clichés.
[3]

Julian Axelrod: This sounds like it could be one of the Little Mix members’ inevitable solo debuts. Instead, the song about being unapologetically yourself is filtered through four different members of a girl group, their personas ranging from troublemaker to tough talker to… woman who likes kissing? Nicki offers a welcome jolt of personality, but Reggae Pop Feature Queen has always been her most boring iteration. And this is not a song that needs more competing perspectives.
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Jade Thirlwall’s part in the pre-chorus offsets the confidence with a dose of real-world insecurity. She draws a line from her previous breakups and her mom’s comments to a very real fear that’s completed by Perrie Edwards. “Could you fall for a woman like me?” she sings, but it’s not the braggadocious taunt she hopes it could be. At its best, “Woman Like Me” captures the tendency to view one’s strengths (in this case, outspokenness) as a weakness. Considering this exact trait is often derided as negative from men — women are “loud-mouthed,” “obnoxious,” “brash” — there’s a lot of emotional turmoil hidden underneath the stock reggae instrumental. While I’d really like for Nicki Minaj’s part to read as victorious encouragement or modeling, it just feels like an opportunistic feature that was slotted in without much thought. There’s so much potential here and it just feels wasted.
[5]

John Seroff: Considering the painfully basic nature of Sheeran, Glynne and Mac’s faux feminist lyric declarations of self (“You like a weekday curry take out and sugar in your coffee? Slow down there, Andrea Dworkin!”), this is far better than it has any right to be. Credit due to a good bassline, the Mixsters excellent phrasing and a well-placed whistle note.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Little Mix, with this joyless “Side By Side” retread, continue to answer the question: Would the Sugababes’ quality still have declined if they kept all their original members?
[2]

Alfred Soto: Boasting the retro stylings on which Christina Aguilera moored herself in the mid 2000s, “Woman Like Me” doesn’t align Little Mix or Nicki Minaj to any tradition except the cheerful compromise signed by male songwriters (Ed Sheeran and Steve Mac in this case) and female songwriters (Jess Glynne, for god’s sake).
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The Production and Nicki Minaj of “Side to Side” + the vocal affect and lyrical conceit of 2015 Meghan Trainor + Ed Sheeran-contributed lyrical details =
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: If there’s one thing Little Mix shouldn’t be doing, it’s singing to a “skanking” rhythm — let alone one that briefly goes EDM-pop on its chorus. And then Minaj drops in for a bridge that is most definitely not “bars.”
[0]

Stephen Eisermann: Surprisingly hot, and I say surprising because when I first heard people describe this as reggae infused I started getting nervous. The ladies of Little Mix pull it off well and despite making me long for the days of peak Fifth Harmony (so… two/three years ago), I’m glad we have a strong female group releasing some pretty dope music. Their voices carry a natural swag and it’s hard not to sway to the beat of the track; next time, leave Nicki off, though, especially if all she’s bringing to the song is a poorly-sung, half-assed verse.
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: Sure was nice of Little Mix to leave in those high-pitched Jess Glynne artifacts, especially since she was totally right to pass on this. The cover art screams “things are serious now,” but this style of warmed-over reggae-trap would barely have qualified as one of the edgier things on Katy Perry’s last album. To compensate, Little Mix spare no effort on the vocals, with Perrie’s high notes and Leigh-Anne’s nimble drawl serving as particular highlights. The record-skipping effect is a clever way to break up the monotony of the chorus without disrupting the flow. And the production isn’t entirely useless: the fuzzed-out bassline finds a suitable calling as backdrop for Nicki Minaj, who blithely code switches between sexual patois and music industry shop talk. In other words, a standard Nicki verse, but it’s elevated to something more by the way she sounds completely at home in this setting. It’s through sheer force of will, and not songwriting prowess, that “Woman Like Me” manages to command your attention.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Stop allowing Ed Sheeran to replicate his innumerable lyrical shortcomings within other artists’ work. The Olly Murs-channelled shots-and-tequila semi-rap is one thing — and in fact one that better suits Murs. But the couch-mouth non-rhyme was not good the first time, nor the second time, and certainly not this third time. If he wants to stretch his threadbare ideas pool out then he can do so in his own time, like when he got really into Van Morrison for a bit. For now though, he should just let Little Mix copy Ariana Grande in peace.
[5]

Our runner-up for post image…

[Video]
[4.62]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Well, it does what it says on the tin: takes Loleatta Holloway’s vocals from the Ellis D “Dish Apella” and combines it with the beginning of “Male Stripper.” The build is enjoyable and it’s a decent length; I wouldn’t mind hearing it in a club. It’s harmless.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The original Man 2 Man version synthesized early Depeche Mode, hi-NRG, and gay sleaze hits like Paul Lekakis’ “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)”; it’s dinky fun. “Dished” plays like a gloss on “Male Stripper,” a musical PowerPoint presentation, hence unsatisfying.
[5]

John Seroff: Generally not a great sign if you’re still waiting for the song to start after the beat drops. I’ll stick to the original.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: It’s the soundtrack to a 1990s Ministry of Sound commercial, being passed off as an actual song. Which it ain’t.
[0]

Tim de Reuse: The structure of late-nineties big beat, but coated in a glossy disco veneer with expensive 21st-century production. It’s bouncy and fun-sounding and catchy, but you don’t even get three minutes of it before the idea bucket runs empty.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Not so much brief and repetitive as it is ruthlessly efficient, this is pretty much a tutorial on how to somehow achieve a significant build and release when you only have less than 3 minutes to work with. More effective than plenty of similar tracks more than twice its length.
[7]

Iain Mew: There’s some skill and success in recognising the groove potential of taking the first 20 seconds of Man 2 Man Meet Man Parrish’s original and just letting it run and run. De-emphasising deep synths in favour of occasional disco string hits neuters it, though, and the incompatible vocal sample adds less than it distracts.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: In an era where everything’s revolutionary if it’ll get you clicks, the bowdlerisation of “Male Stripper” is a curiosity. Most likely, “Dished”‘s thematic erasure is just the standard byproduct of ripping off a banger, but it nevertheless parallels a commonplace deceleration in the boldness of mainstream media and acceleration in praise for it. It wouldn’t even be bold to make “Dished” about a trick-turning male stripper in 2018, not least because Man 2 Man did it years ago. More likely, such overt camp would be dismissed by the ever-shrinking number of gatekeepers, and it would get even less of a look-in. So while “Dished” is very fun, and in some ways even more amped-up than its forebear, it’s just not — and in fairness makes no claim to be — a troupe of men removing their “hot cop drag” on Top of the Pops, the same year that Thatcher warned that children are being “taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay”. Though maybe that’s not entirely bad.
[8]

More punchy than sucks…

[Video]
[6.82]

William John: After a string of relative disappointments — the first few tracks from the Raw EP dampened much of the sky-high hype that had accumulated from her 2017 singles — Sigrid offers some course correction with an enormous chorus, as bracing as the song’s title. But the thrills extend beyond the hook. “Both our hoodies red/You’re in my head” is a clever couplet, neatly encapsulating the giddy sensation felt when discovering even the silliest, smallest coincidences between oneself and a crush.
[7]

Vikram Joseph: “Sucker Punch” is the ideal follow-up to the terrific “Schedules” — they’re both slightly sour but ecstatic-sounding Scandi bubblegum (not far from Tove Styrke’s Sway EP or MØ’s riotously good Jack Antonoff collaboration), and they form a neat thematic segue from a fling on the run to something more emotionally visceral. The downshifting vocals and synths at the end of each verse are a great touch, sensitizing my synapses for the sweet, caffeinated hit of the chorus (with its strangely turn-of-the-millennium-sounding chord progression). The genuinely unexpected dropping-out of the music before the final chorus has a similar impact.
[8]

Alfred Soto: I hear no formal connection between Sigrid’s chorus falsetto and the central conceit, but it’s a strong hook on its own, competing with the synthesized whistles and bells garnishing the verses. 
[6]

Stephen Eisermann: The cool, galactic chorus and bridge save this, because I’m not sure that the experimental production choices on the verses really work. It’s just so hard to ignore that booming, anthemic chorus, partly because it sounds like — “Smoke Break” by Carrie Underwood, right?).
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The big sucker punch of a chorus accompanying the words “sucker punch” is a pop trick almost too obvious to mention, but at least Sigrid actually bothered to do it. The rest, after her past anonymized singles, is comparatively offbeat and refreshing. It reminds me of other artists, but not to the point of being a copy, and not quite the usual names: Tove Styrke (in general, and before her anonymizing), Shakira (the vocals), Billie Eilish (the spoken-sung, distorted bits), even Kacey Musgraves (this particular use of vocoder). And is that the ending riff from “Torn” in there?
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: The verses had to be produced like one of the low-budget pop simulacra from Empire so the chorus would land that much harder and the titular phrase would be that much more pertinent. It’s the only rational explanation. As a way of generating cheap heat, this bait-and-switch is basically effective, but it’s not where most of the appeal comes from. Expansive alt-rock power chords play directly to my pleasure centers, but I find myself looking forward more to the moments where Sigrid uses the skeletal beat as an excuse to stretch out her voice and sketch out a casual, up-for-anything persona. “Both… our… hoodies red” — no one knows what it means, but it’s evocative! Songs about risk-taking should be taking risks like these.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The verse melody here is weird enough to be arresting on first listen, as you try desperately to track its progress through a landscape of emotional ambiguity, and the (slightly) more conventional chorus and electro-tinged pop rock production don’t lose too much of that verse’s energy. Extra points for having an a cappella section that sounds actually raw and unmanicured.
[8]

Julian Axelrod: Sigrid has a way with words — not just as a lyricist, but as a voice who can warp a normal line into something unrecognizable. On paper, “Meet me in the hallway/For a cup of coffee by the stairs” is a standard come-on. But when Sigrid rolls it around in her mouth, it comes out as something strange and stirring: “Mit me in de hullweh/Fer uh cuppacuffee by deh stehrs”. It’s not just her accent, but the way she sneaks up on her lyrics and folds them in on themselves. That voice is enough to tweak these big, glittering pop confections into something beguiling and surreal. There’s something giddily subversive to the way she navigates a banger, pushing and pulling individual bricks until the whole Jenga tower’s about to collapse. But she always pulls back before the fall, delivering classic pop euphoria that leaves you wobbly and disoriented and hungry for more.
[7]

Iain Mew: The salvage job Sigrid does with the vocal is thrilling, every momentary blankness and growling edge and squeezed-in high note transforming rather basic material. It’s far from her best song, but the best evidence so far of her as a star.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The vocalizing isn’t nearly as thrilling as what appeared on “High Five,” but this reining in allows for the straight-ahead structure and chorus to feel appropriate instead of disappointing. Which is fine, I guess. At least that final return to the chorus feels like it’s smacking you in the face.
[5]

Danilo Bortoli: On any other day, I would describe this as “Everything Is Embarrassing” designed for the chill generation, but Sigrid switches the melodrama for wittiness and hopelessness with a bit — just a bit — of happiness and optimism. “Didn’t wanna write a happy song”, but it turns out otherwise. And just like that, perfect pop™ ceases to exist as a concept and enters reality. 
[8]

There’s been some confusion over genre-tagging here at Shiz…

[Video]
[4.09]

Crystal Leww: The Chainsmokers want their own “The Middle,” and Kelsea Ballerini proves to be a more than competent Maren Morris counterpart. I’m not-so-secretly thrilled; I thought Taylor Swift was going to be the blueprint for future country-pop popular success, but this is more immediate, more dumb, more in-your-face about its intentions and its style. Emily Warren yet again proves that she’s one of the best songwriters in the game — this has such a not-so-clever-but-thinks-it-is chorus — and Ballerini and Taggart are excellent vocalists to bring it forth in an open-hearted and sweet way. EDM-pop is back to being dead, but its fighting for its last gasp has been loud and dumb and fun, just like it was in its prime.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Trying for that FGL Bebe Rexha success, and the Chainsmokers are nearly as bad as FGL, but Kelsea has a delicate voice capable of a certain amount of emotional toughness. It’s frustrating that her voice is much less interesting here than it has been anywhere else, but chase those dollars.
[5]

Alfred Soto: From the strumming and chipmunk voices to singing as if watching a bouncing ball on a teleprompter, it’s clear the Chainsmokers have invested not a cent of their hard-earned 2016 earnings into songwriting workshops. Kelsea Ballerini comes no closer than Halsey to embodying “this” “feeling.”
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: This feeling is hatred, provoked by hearing the one Chainsmoker singing like the douche-bro he so clearly is.
[2]

Taylor Alatorre: The vibe the Chainsmokers constantly give off is that they’re different from all those other EDM acts populating the Billboard charts — they actually believe lyrics matter. Such a cloying mindset doesn’t always lead to bad results, but it does when the Chainsmokers think they can whip up catharsis just by diagramming a situation that’s vaguely emotional. It’s unclear to whom this “story” is being addressed, with both Ballerini and Taggart too absorbed in meta-commentary to engage with one another or the real underlying issues. But we still get that big fireworks moment at the end, to justify all the build-up and to fool us into thinking some sort of breakthrough has occurred. If you’re paying less attention than the Chainsmokers want you to, it almost works.
[4]

Iain Mew: It’s the old tale of head versus heart that Ellie Goulding reversed so fruitfully, with only the orphan addition of “hands at my neck” doing anything more with the theme (I refuse to count “nod their heads”). It would have been more entertaining if they’d gone for an entire litany of body parts, Darius on colours style, rather than just tacking a few onto a different well-worn line (the “I put it in this song” meta). It’s the same story sonically, in that we’re stranded between The Chainsmokers Drop (with leftover added Coldplay) and the staccato of “The Middle,” and I’d rather be listening to either.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: What are these lyrics? Put aside the pretty standard “country”-EDM hybrid production for a second. We’re promised a story and we get… a line? I kept waiting for a story, however cliche, a la “Eastside,” but all we get was a statement. And even then, is it a statement? Is pivoting from I’ll tell you a story to don’t judge me, but I love him lol even a statement, or is it lazy writing? Kelsea sounds nice on pop production, though.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The petulant spike to Warren’s lyrics (“no one listens to me, so I put it in a song”) combined with the pre-chorus and its closest thing to a guitar riff you can get away with in a 2018 pop single, makes me want this to turn into a Ballerini-fronted “Semi-Charmed Life” or “My Own Worst Enemy,” which would rule (and where a chorus of nothing but “and I say yeah” would totally make sense). Instead we get two genres, both bad: a chorus of snippetized whatevers — the convenient thing about 2018 EDM-pop is you can write one template and then vomit the sounds out in different patterns — and limpid pop-country that averages both vocalists out for the worse. Ballerini’s twang and sass are gone, and the Chainsmoker dude sings in a groggy, overprocessed low register: clearly trying to sound like a reputable, sensitive Dan + Shay type but not quite managing, like a frat guy smiling in a dean-friendly polo shirt for philanthropy day but still a little too hungover to pull it off.
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: Mr. Taggart, you are a young man who thinks in terms of hooks and drops. There are no hooks. There are no drops. There is no room for “heart vs head” debates. There is only one holistic algorithm of algorithms, one vast, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of trap and adult contemporary infused with trap. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Taggart? You get up on your three-minute pop song with a country singer and pretend this isn’t basically just “The Middle” via “Closer” and, I guess, “Winter Winds.” There is no one listening to pop music. There is only abusive SoundCloud rap, Spotify-influenced pop, and some country filler here and there. You have meddled with the primal forces of 2018 pop music, Mr. Taggart. You won’t need to atone because no one cares about you anyway. (It’s a shame, because I actually kind of dig this.)
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There’s nothing left to write about The Chainsmokers and I think they realize that– why else would they do a song that just sounds like their entire last album averaged out?
[2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The best moment of “This Feeling” is when Kelsea Ballerini screams out “I say yeah-e-eh-eh” and the chorus swoops in to follow her lead. In deciding to follow her heart (er, “that thing in her chest”), it suddenly feels like the entire world is cheering her on and nothing else matters. And then Taggart’s voice comes in and sounds comparatively dreadful. And then the second pre-chorus throws in a tacked-on kick drum to remove all tension. And then the bridge arrives to ruin everything beautiful about the song with a corny “my friends say nooo-e-oh-oh.” And then the song ends.
[3]

Ending the day with some non-controversial boy band alum R&B, because dammit we deserve it…

[Video]
[5.22]

Tim de Reuse: Things to like at the outset: The crisp mesh of guitars and the impeccably produced snap of the snare drum. But it gets sweeter and sweeter as it goes on, thick with synth strings and a cloyingly romantic vocal performance — I think the point might’ve been made just as effectively with less flourish.
[6]

Iain Mew: The way that “Pull Up” combines an easy mastery of ageless soft pop with a certain carefully wielded innocence reminds me of Shura. It’s written too broadly to have the same emotional impact, but still a pleasure to listen to.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: “I’ve been going nowhere,” he sings, and the music gladly obliges. But that’s pretty apropos, considering the subject matter. Cai (or Kunkun, as his fanbase adorably calls him) languishes in his situation as the most hopeless of romantics do, begging for a second chance not because he actually believes it will work out, but because he likes the way the words sound. In this case that’s not a dealbreaker, because there’s an ersatz sincerity to his anxious fronting; it’s a peek behind the mask rather than the mask itself. Still, if he’s going to keep emphasizing the “singing” part of sing-rapping, he could use a vocal coach sooner than a relationship one.
[5]

John Seroff: Stick an actual singer with a little charisma at the helm of “Pull Up” and I think you’ve got a halfway decent album cut along the lines of “Same Ol’ G.” As is, this is a slog even at three minutes.
[3]

Jessica Doyle: I stand corrected: turns out I am not the only person on earth who really liked Zhou Mi’s “Rewind.” Unfortunately Tao is too busy getting that beer money to break things up with a rap; as compensation Cai Xukun receives some very nice R&B production. But the lyrics are a mush and it’s hard to discern any uniqueness. I suspect this plays better if you’ve already watched the reality shows, or at least the unhelpful guides.
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The lyrics would have you believe that Cai Xukun is under some torturous pain but he makes no effort to make that clear with his delivery. The spidery guitar melodies feel slightly constricting but his voice then breaks out of it to sound gloriously sensual. What am I supposed to feel from this?
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The combination of unfurling guitar lines and those synth-string sustains is luxurious as all hell, and Cai’s vocal performance is appropriately silky. Who cares if the lyric isn’t going anywhere?
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: The chill, early-’00s R&B acoustic guitar is a nice touch for sensual pop, though it’s not exactly a logical match for uncontrollable desire. Cai Xukun adds some emphasis to his vocals, too, to express exactly how wild he feels inside, but it’s not too convincing set against the languid music behind him.
[5]

Anna Suiter: Cai Xukun might rely on his personal appeal, but he certainly has it in spades. It’s deserved, too, after winning two different survival shows (and winning first place on one of them, even). That charisma is enough to float him along on a song that otherwise might seem uninspired. At least this song settles into it’s own groove, as much as that’s possible, and Xukun probably will too.
[6]

Yes, Jessie, we like it when you do house music, please keep doing that, yes, thank you.

[Video]
[7.73]

Thomas Inskeep: Now, this is more like it: Ware gets back on the dancefloor with this heavy house track, co-produced by Bicep and Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford. This isn’t of the early ’90s house revival so hot in the UK now, though; this goes all the way back to the halcyon days of Frankie Knuckles at the Warehouse in Chicago. Ware lets you know what’s gonna happen (“Baby, when we kiss, [it’s] gonna tear the roof off”), and is perfectly in sync (in tone and lyrics as much as rhythmically) with the music.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Whenever Jessie Ware takes her introspection for a turn on the dance floor, the beats open expressive possibilities (see “Imagine It Was Us,” the extra track highlight of Devotion). On this banger it isn’t just a lover she gets down with — it’s a shopworn title conceit. Why she didn’t continue in the “Imagine It Was Us” or “Confess to Me” direction I’m not sure. Perhaps she thinks “adult” material is progress.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: The obvious comparison is “Imagine It Was Us,” Jessie Ware’s only great track, but the better comparison is Disclosure collab “Confess to Me” or MNEK’s “Tongue“: tense yearning, compared to tasteful. “Overtime” isn’t as weird as the Disclosure track, but almost monomaniacally straightforward: heavily reverbed percussion, relentless synths, low spoken word, dramatic strings. The track isn’t perfect — “Rhythm is a Dancer” lurks a few steps from the melody, and the chorus ends a little flat — but unlike 90% of Ware’s recent music, this evokes genuine frisson, rather than something that’s been air-dried, sprayed with matte paint and pinned to a department store display.
[9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Really makes you wonder what Jessie Ware could’ve been had she committed to the dance music route instead of becoming fodder for the hipper post-Adeleian adult contemporary crowd. At this point, listeners have been subjected to her voice for so long that they’re familiar with the full scope of its dullness. This is ostensibly why listening to “Overtime” is more tiresome than energizing. But in reality, this isn’t too different from her typical work: there’s a strong reliance on the instrumentation to transmit any and all emotion, and Ware is sort of just there to play her part.
[5]

Julian Axelrod: I’m more sympathetic to Jessie Ware’s Ed Sheeran phase than most, but it’s a relief to hear her back in her wheelhouse: sweaty, unrelenting R&B-house with a decidedly British frigidity. The busy drums threaten to overpower Ware, but she emerges victorious with the same weapon she uses to wrestle ballads into submission — her pained, passionate, perfect voice.
[7]

Pedro João Santos: “This is no Glasshouse 2,” the piercing combo of snares and cymbals announces, and the drilling synth bass accentuates. This is the rare occasion in which working overtime doesn’t require union contract agreements (and the title might be more than metaphorical, as she’s been touring and podcasting, etc., while the last LP has barely been out for a year). It’s something to replenish the mind and ignite a new (artistic) fire. Or put it out, if we consider the aflame evocations of romance in Glasshouse: it produced some career peaks and a seamless listen, but one too many tracks parked at the MOR. From Jessie, who recalls Oh No-era Jessy Lanza on this track, you might expect something more adventurous; that’s the accurate result of this superb, unremitting house-pop call-to-arms.
[9]

William John: Last year, Jessie Ware began podcasting with her mother, inviting guests around to her house — the likes of Clara Amfo, Sadiq Khan and Nigella Lawson have made appearances — for a meal, and recording the ensuing conversation. Listening to the way Ware playfully teases her mother as they talk about desert island meals and culinary propriety has inspired me to throw my own dinner parties, which I find fulfilling and an antidote to the loneliness often involved in “going out.” “Dinner party music” is a descriptor that’s been attributed to Ware’s oeuvre since the beginning of her career, and especially to her most recent record Glasshouse, perhaps her cosiest and most sentimental album, in spite of its severe title. It’s a term that suggests something pleasant and non-irritating, but also bland, as if it’s only worth hearing in bits, between mouthfuls. It’s an unfair term I think, because dinner parties shouldn’t be bland — they should be filled with vibrant laughter, plates of warm vegetables slathered with butter and salt, simple pleasures, invigorating discussion. It sort of makes me think that those that use “dinner party music” as a pejorative just haven’t been to any good dinner parties. Certainly they’ve not been to a dinner party where, once dessert is over, the chairs are shifted aside and the highlights of Overpowered are thrown on at a loud volume. I’ve no doubt that, on certain occasions, this is precisely what happens chez Ware when the Table Manners microphones are turned off, and “Overtime” and its hollered, dazzling disco chorus seems to confirm my theory.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I do like this, a lot, but it’s borrowing at least some of my affection for it from the fact that it keeps getting Hot Chip’s “Night and Day” (similar burbling background, similar hardworking sentiments) looping through my head instead of “Overtime” itself. I actually had to go play that song again to refocus on this song properly, and sure enough there’s more than enough room for both in my listening.
[7]

Alex Clifton: I really like this, but I kept wondering what RuPaul would do with this backing track, which ended up being more of a distraction than I wanted it to be. Needless to say, I’d kill for this to be a Lip-Sync For Your Life on Drag Race.
[7]

Danilo Bortoli: Jessie Ware is usually at her best when she finally embraces the house vocalist she is destined to be, but “Overtime” succeeds for other reasons. Here, she finally mingles her initial work’s penchant for pensive, reflexive, soulful pop — the musical equivalent to a beautiful yet harmless painting standing over at a museum — and her most recent output, the cathartic pop whose emotional outpouring needs immediate release (Bicep produced this for a reason). It’s the stylistic crossover that feels logical when given thought, yet pleasantly unexpected. For the first time in a while, her whispers are not only romantic suggestions. They come off as a command. 
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A lesson in the power of vibe and attention to detail — there’s not all that much going on here, and the pre-chorus doesn’t hit quite as big as it clearly aspires to, but every little moment of “Overtime” feels perfectly calibrated to conjure up hazy memories of nights out, the best moments rising up like synth pulses and the most vivid sticking like the almost-whispered chorus.
[8]