The Singles Jukebox

How many alt-pop [6]s are we going to review? Unending, it seems…

[Video][Website]
[6.29]

William John: Tove Styrke has a crush, and they’re bad news. Bad enough to demand stretching out her syllables elastically in her verses; bad enough to warrant an incredible pre-chorus of sighing sine-waves; bad enough that when the chorus initially hits, she finds herself cocooned, with nothing but her own monologues — some dryly bored, some thrilled, some processed to high heaven — for company. The fact that “Mistakes” is about a crush is not itself revelatory; what’s thrilling about it is the way the song is constantly turning itself inside out, mimicking the internal maelstroms that inevitably accompany desire, and using what should be tired aesthetic building blocks to construct something equal parts desperate, romantic and radiant.
[9]

Stephen Eisermann: The lyrics revisit a tired trope in music, but the production, style of singing, and always welcome handclaps breathe life into this song. Tove coos her way through the track provocatively and does a better job at selling the tension with her voice than the lyrics do. The banging synths and video game sounds combine with her voice to give an aural wink, and I want her to make that mistake so bad.
[7]

Alfred Soto: What mistakes? The track succeeds: Styrke self-lobotomizes.
[3]

Alex Clifton: The first verse made me think this was going to be something generic and Europoppy, but that chorus takes a page direct from Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” to great effect, dropping back to vocals and vocoder. The rest of the song tries desperately to reach those highs–a good portion is washed out by an extended minute-long ambient electronic jam that stretches the song beyond its natural limit–but that chorus shows a spark of desire and feeling. Too bad the electricity only lasts for a moment.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Tove Styrke’s voice gets twisted into many shapes in “Mistakes.” First, a cadence that resembles a loose ASAP Rocky impression, then she takes cues from “Wildest Dreams” to thin out her voice, which is quickly digitized like a fast take on Imogen Heap — and that’s only about the first minute. The beat gets broken down, too, with its “Out of the Woods” boom-bap interrupted by found sounds and eventually crushed into glass shards. Though the see-what-sticks approach never amounts to anything cohesive, the song goes through a hell of a bizarre life.
[5]

Cédric Le Merrer: I’m a total sucker for playful sound effects in pop, and this has plenty. But what really gets me is the articulation of verse, pre-chorus and chorus with their respective and clearly differenciated cadences. It’s pure Cheiron Melodic Maths™ style, so of course it works.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I didn’t really fall for this one until that bridge suspends the song in mid-air, which is the most compelling moment here — especially in the video version, which is a fairly rare case of extending the song to fit in more video and thereby making the song better, both in the bridge and the looped church bell opening. It also somehow makes me like the rest more, not because I’d prefer an all-drifty version of “Mistakes” (though you know I would), but because the contrast highlights the similar elements hiding beneath the standard stomp-and-squelch surface.
[7]