The Singles Jukebox

A year after “Somebody Loves You,” we’re testy.

[Video][Website]
[6.90]

Edward Okulicz: The reason I only like rather than love “Heartbreak Dream” was hard to discern until I did an A-B comparison with “Somebody Loves You.” Where her earlier hit was fizzy and airy like candy floss in the ears, this one wears its bigger beats and maximalism a little more heavily. It’s still got one heck of oh-aah-aah hook in its chorus, a glorious and doomily romantic middle-eight and another charming vocal from Betty, so this is all quibbling about degrees of excellence.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Expansive and rhetorical, with a seething, almost passive aggression, this would be better with more of her voice and less of her production. How the work loops around itself with the introduction and the coda working as a singular piece is clever. 
[6]

Cédric Le Merrer: Much more than anything on The Movement, it feels like an auditory equivalent of Betty Who’s instagram filtered fluorescent visuals. Pushing the saturation a big pop song somewhere near Sleigh Bells-ish levels, adding metallic reverb on the vocals, the effect is that of speakers bursting out with feels.
[8]

Alfred Soto: “Somebody Loves You” sounded like an older sister who found happiness at last. “Heartbreak Dream” has a similar sense of discovery. The synths conjure Betty’s will to happiness, her husky tones a life that knows pain. The difference is the titles: a declarative sentence versus an incoherent banality.
[6]

Abby Waysdorf: More is more is a favorite music philosophy of mine. “Heartbreak Dream” blasts you with that from the start and never really lets up, with candy-coated synths and a massive, anthemic sound. It’s slightly too car or cellphone commercial in the “ah-ah-ahs” to be truly transcendent, but it’s great fun nonetheless. 
[7]

Megan Harrington: I love almost every individual component of this song: shitty love as a spirit lifting ideal, synths that flare like fireworks, the tinny and chintzy opening notes, the breathy “you keep breaking my heart” delivered like an eyes shut tight total body wish. I don’t love Betty Who’s voice. As a pop song, all its elements are dulled to serve the product and the result is something broadly appealing though ultimately immemorable. 
[6]

Will Adams: The collision of melancholic lyrics with upbeat is an old trope, but “Heartbreak Dream” achieves it so exquisitely that it nearly sounds novel. Betty Who lingers on words better than anyone I’ve heard recently — especially in the middle eight, which takes the previously snappy pre-chorus and slows it down to great effect: “When you hold me, it feels like you don’t know me.” The explosive chorus is fluorescent and euphoric, and it lets one forget the agonizing mortality of the verse easily; which is very well the point.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Game and Watch intro, M83-sized chorus, cheery duck-rabbit lyrics that evoke either euphoria or a loveless relationship depending on what part you’ve tuned into when. It’s music to embiggen moments in your life, but the symbiotic kind, that’s nothing without them.
[6]

Brad Shoup: With that kind of explosive backbeat and held echo, somebody still loves you. I imagine this is what happens in Pink’s head with each playback.
[7]

Jer Fairall: As sincere as a heartbreak, as ephemeral as a dream, as luminous and 80s as a Lite-Brite, with a melodic bridge I could live inside of for hours.
[7]