The Singles Jukebox

Following her (H.E.R.’s?) Grammy win, W.E. take another look and listen.

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Camille Nibungco: H.E.R.’s voice surrounds me like a silk blanket, delicate to the touch, yet effusive and unrestrained, swiftly fleeing my grasp. The deep bass and simmering hi-hats only accentuate the gravity of her talent and caresses my nostalgic soft spot for late 90s to Y2K classic R&B.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The verses sound fussy, but what wouldn’t compared to such a succinct chorus? H.E.R. spends four lines detailing a quick mental reframing: “Tell me I’m the best (I am)” becomes “I’ll be feeling like ‘Yes, I am'” becomes “You’d be a fool to not take me as I am.” A need for approval soon becomes confidence that someone else needs her approval. It’s slyly presented in how “I am” switches from a term of personal affirmation to something more neutral, placing the ball in a potential lover’s court. Even when you’re sure you can turn heads, it feels nice when you’re not the one making moves, when you’re the one feeling wanted.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: She does the soft & airy R&B but with a sturdy boom-bap beat: next-gen Erykah Badu? Maybe. Her songs, like “As I Am,” are good, too.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The harshness of H.E.R.’s strumming — she plays her guitar like a drum — adds muscle and atonality to this manifesto, more understated than manifestos need to be. 
[5]

Stephen Eisermann: H.E.R has an incredibly expressive voice, and while there is a comfort in the way she sings about how she’s the best fit for her partner, the melody and production do little to match her excellence. Did the producers not realize the talent they were working with? Because this, this is a little too dull to make much of an impact, even with H.E.R doing the heavy lifting with her vocals.
[5]

Iris Xie: Clicks, trills, starts, stops, and metallic strums float around H.E.R.’s easy, unhurried, and confident sentiments about how she is the best lover her partner would ever have. I find it cute how her vocals ease into “You’re like the sweetest thing I know/Like my favorite Lauryn song” with “Lauryn” having the same cadence of “morning.” With these details, the production spills out warmth, and that ether matches the imagery of the lyrics of waking up in the morning next to your partner. Additionally, there is enough breathing space and energy to create a pull for the line “You’ll be a fool to not take me as I am” — a self-confident statement that matches the weighted buoyancy of the track. 
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: H.E.R.’s music leaves me a little cold, not so much because of her generally solid tracks, but how I didn’t see the music industry (as opposed to the critical) establishment rallying this fast around SZA or Dawn or Kelela, as if this is somehow more “authentic.” When she played the Grammys I half-expected Neil Portnow to brag about her being custom-smelted at the Grammy factory. “As I Am” is as good an illustration as anything. There is so much going on here: snaps and boom-bap drums and drill percussion, a faint DJ Mustard-ish loop, synth feints, guitars played like clawing something, mix so humid with backing vocals it lowers the atmospheric pressure in a two-foot radius. And yet it all stays in the same register, H.E.R.’s vocals juuuust on the wrong side of understated vs. underdone.
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