The Singles Jukebox

Pop, to two decimal places.

Brockhampton – Sugar

First Hot 100 appearance and it feels so sweet…


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Kylo Nocom: The Black Eyed Peas for zoomers finally get themselves a hit! After finally realizing their attempts at being badass suck, Brockhampton decided to just redo “Bleach.” It works! Ryan Beatty, no matter how corny his own stuff is, still meshes with the Brockhampton aesthetic more than any of their other collaborators. The actual members do what they do best: Dom squeals with excitement and remains the best in the group, Matt mutters high school flashbacks, Bearface cries out in teen-white-boy pain. Kevin Abstract still unnervingly lacks emotion in what he contributes nowadays, but with the pitch-shifting you can feasibly pretend that this hook is on par with what he used to do in the Saturation era. Considering the sensitivity of the material and the surprise of seeing something as relatively interesting as this charting on the Hot 100, I’m still happy for them no matter how excited I actually once was for their future nearly three years ago.
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Camille Nibungco: I stopped following Brockhampton post-Saturation trilogy as they quickly became inescapable and literally saturated the music community. But something Brockhampton never fails to deliver is a well-crafted simp ballad. With the help of the indispensable Bearface, “Sugar” is the amalgamation of “Bleach,” “Summer” and “Waste” that slow dances around their transformation from young scrappy rascals to music industry phenomenons and the nostalgia for simpler times. It’s a quintessential hallmark boy band anthem for Gen Z.
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Nortey Dowuona: A slippery, shimmering guitar is gated by the tight, bubbling drums held by Ryan Beatty. Dom patiently makes his way up and is distracted by the shingles of synths as Matt smooth talks his lover and Joba makes syrupy promises. As Kevin closes the loop with a beautiful bridge, Bearface croons a gentle, but desperate outdo.
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Brad Shoup: The boy-band thing is less of a concept now; it’s coming more naturally to them. So is the post-Vernon thing Ryan Beatty opts for in his features. A slightly flat acoustic figure is actually perfect for a funhouse R&B swayer.
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Alfred Soto: At their best this collective’s tracks have the flitting power of first drafts: the bluntest remarks preserved before the superego intervenes. When they release a polished track like “Sugar” they sound like no one, not even themselves. 
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Julian Axelrod: Brockhampton songs are disjointed by nature. Every track is a hodgepodge of band members, ancillary friends and instrumental sketches jostling for space. So the most surprising thing about “Sugar” is its cohesiveness: It weaves hooks from within the band (baldly emotive Bearface) and outside voices (someday-superstar Ryan Beatty) into a drippy boy band ballad that’s almost smooth enough to grind to at prom. Of course, Brockhampton exists to subvert teen archetypes, so we also get a slice-of-life Southern novella from Matt Champion, Dom McLennon’s dying-robot working-stiff blues, and a prepubescent passport plea from Kevin Abstract featuring one of the most beautiful melodies he’s ever concocted. The disruptions feel born out of artistry over necessity, which doesn’t mean they don’t still jolt you. Even when a band feels this at ease, you can’t let your guard down.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: They still sound like a bunch of friends just messing around in a studio. Sometimes, that’s enough.
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