The Singles Jukebox

Trainor makes it to album number three…

[Video]
[4.88]

Alex Clifton: Bouncy, fun, and mercifully short. I like the occasional shot of Meghan Trainor when she’s not doing messes like the Puth duet we’d all like to forget, and this is fine. It could do with a little more lyrical substance and structurally this feels a little all over the place, but damn if I’m not bobbing my head along.
[5]

Tim de Reuse: The barked line of “someone else” is a lovely blast of hot air that serves as a much-needed counterweight to Trainor’s high, slippery delivery, and the chromatic bassline under it all is admittedly catchy as hell, but the song never figures out how to elegantly lead into it or extend it past the length of a single chorus. At least it ends before it runs out of ideas.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Sucks to write a Fifth Harmony song while Fifth Harmony’s members are all splintering off — you can practically assign the four or five individual vocal parts. Though I’d also believe it if you told me this was commissioned as a Radio Disney knockoff of “Make Me Feel,” or from a parallel universe where the “Look What You Made Me Do”/”Filthy” tack of aiming your lead single at the haters ever worked.
[4]

Iain Mew: I keep thinking about Marshmello and Anne-Marie’s “Friends” and how instead of a drop they bring in a new synth sound and take a twist into being as in-your-face, incredibly ’90s-sounding as possible. Its pastiche as spectacle kind of works as a one-off. “No Excuses” is a song constructed of nothing but moments like that, and it’s exhausting.
[3]

John Seroff: Trainor’s throwback theater kid vapidity and flashy pandering makes even 2:31 seem far too long for a song so over-constructed that it hardly matters where you drop the needle. Boil this down and drain off the syrup and you could get a solid thirty seconds of high-grade pop; I guess it won’t bother me too much when it shows up in the ad interstitials for the playoffs.
[5]

Alfred Soto: At least “No Excuses” evinces acquaintance with rhythm sections, and the he-man backing vocals are amusing. But Meghan Trainor can’t resist wagging her finger like a person chiding the valet for taking too long bringing her Mercedes around.
[5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Though the chorus may snap in a Z formation, it fails as a hook next to the grunt that punctuates it. And it’s the quirky ad libs, kitchen-sink sounds, and little effects — like the deepened voice-box garble underneath that “someone else” — that make this typical Meghan Trainor track more memorable.
[5]

Will Adams: Meghan Trainor puts a lot of stock into that “HUH!” hook, but Cher Lloyd she is not, and my hope of her leaning into early ’00s pop is quickly dashed on something as nondescript as “No Excuses.”
[5]