The Singles Jukebox

Per our controversy score, it’s more iluvit ihateit iluvit ihateit iluvit ihateit iluvit…

[Video]
[6.47]

Katherine St. Asaph: wtf (complimentary)
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: “I Luv It” is a perfect example of once avant-garde sounds being absorbed into the mainstream — which is why people hate it — but the way all involved fail makes it much better than it otherwise would be. Everyone involved doesn’t know how to work outside the lines of pure pop, and it shows. We have a IV-I-V-ii chord progression, normally too melancholic for upbeat electronica outside of “Off-World”, and we have a classic AABB chorus, only the AAs are iluvitiluvitiluvitiluvit and the BBs are Gucci Mane samples. Cabello is much more fun in this mode than crooning nicotine-Halloween-morphine “Never Be The Same” mode, and if she still comes across as try-hard, that adds to the song’s bizarre alchemy. Carti’s dispassionate mumbling nearly kills it, but listen to the beautiful synth arpeggio he’s up against. “I Luv It” is too structured to be incoherent, too clean to be overwhelming, and all those contradictions make the song legitimately captivating, far from the trainwreck intended.
[8]

Isabel Cole: I almost admire this track’s staunch refusal to be an actual song; between its near-total disinterest in conventions like “melody” and “structure” and the fact that its hooks sound like they were recorded by a pull-string doll running out of batteries, you could almost call it avant-garde. Unfortunately, none of its repetitive noodling sounds interesting or good, hence “almost.” Carti’s verse (counterintuitively?) comes closest to achieving one of those things (song, interesting, good), although I’m not sure which one, and despite the fact that he is so inscrutable it’s like listening to a rap verse by the Swedish Chef.
[3]

Alfred Soto: I like it, but it took getting used to Cabello’s voice squeaking ILUVITILUVITILUVIT against a synth arpeggio. Because Cabello’s always sounded like a synth anyway, the track’s an exercise in harmony.
[6]

Mark Sinker: Obviously I should stop trusting the mondegreen as insight generator — but “I was on the train with the MEKONS!” Enter Greil Marcus to solve the case, in deerstalker like the Inspector in the Pink Panther cartoons, his enormous magnifying glass from our direction enlarging only his own eye (affectionate). Down these so-pretty streets a man must go who is not himself pop, who is neither tarnished nor afraid! He is the hero; he is Playboi Carti, mumblier perhaps than anyone in muttering history… [squeaks: ah!]
[10]

Alex Clifton: Am I supposed to understand any of the words in this song?
[3]

Taylor Alatorre: “Doctorin’ the Tardis” with less self-awareness yet somehow even greater contempt for its target audience, which in this case is Millennial-Zoomer cuspers who assign mystical significance to Project X and Spring Breakers because they first saw those films before being old enough to drive. I’m opposed to it in principle — but principle hasn’t stopped me from listening to it 83 times in the past month. Mainly that’s because of how the brute-force Gucci Mane sample tries to hack my brain into thinking it’s actually hearing “Lemonade” for those 12 to 24 seconds. No chopping or screwing, no tenuous lyrical tie-ins, just unadulterated 2010 high school cafeteria bliss. It’s such a childishly brazen tactic, like a couple of teenagers trying to sneak their vodka-filled water bottles into an all-ages show, that I can’t help but nod respectfully toward it. Given all this, Playboi Carti might not seem to be the correct punchline to this joke, and if Camila had been able to wrangle a Riff Raff or Trinidad James onto here, the unified kitsch factor alone would’ve earned the song’s full acquittal. But it’s in the parts where he isn’t aiming for gibberish-fueled virality that Carti justifies his presence here. “Oh you on a roll now?” feels like a playful negging of all the cheap XCX cosplay we’ve just had to sit through, and “she says I’m way too young” is such a teasing last-second aside, turning the very act of Guwop-sampling into a vague metaphor for shooting one’s shot cross-generationally… or something. What exactly is one supposed to do with that, other than try to unlock some other secret meaning on the 84th listen?
[6]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: You luv it, but she got it. 
[6]

Leah Isobel: The Charli XCX Twinks are hyperprotective of their right to feel alternative and unique, so Camila ripping off the cadence and delivery of “I Got It” (not to mention the Hereditary-biting promotional video) would of course send that particular portion of the internet into overdrive. But it’s the prerogative of the actual, charting popstar to execute stylistic hairpins, particularly if she’s navigated the label system well enough to actually release something as chart-poisonous as “I Luv It,” extra-particularly if she’s already played around in this sandbox, and extra-super-particularly if the song represents the first time she’s found a convincing vehicle for her unbelievably annoying energy. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you why I like this so much — maybe it’s the memory of liking the similarly fried-out Lazerproof, or the maturity to recognize that to be cringe is to be human — but I do. Sorry! If the song slaps, I can’t make it not slap! 
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: “You two have been saying one bar is lame and the other one is awesome ALL NIGHT, and it’s the same BAR?!!!” — Troy from Community and me after four listens.
[2]

Andrew Karpan: Every micro-generation gets the “I Love It” that it deserves. I love it.
[10]

Ian Mathers: Look, it’s not my fault that the degree of difficulty you’ve set yourself is “will this make the listener not want to just go listen to the classic Icona Pop/Charli XCX song ‘I Love It’ instead?” Credit to the post chorus and Carti’s digitally slurred moan of a verse for making it a bit of a fight, but…
[7]

Michael Hong: The most captivating word here is that sighed “tomorrow” right before the first chorus. Everything seems to go quiet as she breathes into it, the catharsis of having what you want in your reach, the high of forever in your sight. Cabello never sounds like she’ll get there — “I Luv It” is just one big, provocative, braindead pursuit for your attention, for you to see her as a captivating pop star — but as her tongue darts across her lips and echoes the titular phrase over and over, there’s the thrill she’s been looking for.
[7]

Kayla Beardslee: This is not a song, this is engagement bait. I cannot be bought this easily! Stream La Buena Vida!
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: It’s odd that everyone is treating this as some kind of oddity; this is a Camila Cabello song, for God’s sake! It’s the same format as her big hit and the middling replicant (who cares about “Senorita”), just adapted for the current moment rather than the long 2010s; glitchy pop sounds are not some shocking play when it’s been two presidential terms since “Vroom Vroom.” Even the “Lemonade” sample feels correctly positioned – it’s millennial dad rap, the exact kind of respectable pophead interpolation-fodder that Cabello, Carti, and producer Jasper Harris all probably loved as teenagers. “I Luv It” is a perfect showcase for Cabello’s admittedly limited skillset; she sounds appropriately wan on the verses and cheerleader-ish on the chorus, comfortable with just being another element in Harris & El Guincho’s anachronistic Pop 2 revival. Yet “I Luv It” reaches the mountaintop only upon Carti’s arrival – the track pauses for a second before he starts his verse as if it’s hard reloading; he then proceeds to duet with a synth solo, do his best Dirty Sprite 2-era Future impression, and go so incomprehensible that I’m not even sure if anyone else on the track knows what he’s saying. Glorious.
[9]

Dave Moore: I’m confident that everything that everyone who has scored this song a [4] or below says about it is accurate. But a clusterfuck contains multitudes. 
[8]

Will Adams: Above all else, it’s WEIRD. Strip away the stan chatter and “I Luv It” becomes an appealingly bizarre pivot in which Cabello is enraptured by a frenetic hook, woozy synths and a potentially asymmetric meter. When Playboi Carti’s smeared verse arrives, you start to feel delirious.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: An unrecognizable Camila Cabello, sounding like she’s trying to will herself back to 2012 and secure the Spring Breakers audition she rightfully deserves. An uninterpretable Playboi Carti, facing his biggest moment in the spotlight with a burp and a shrug. An unexplainable “Lemonade” sample, as if producer El Guincho just heard The State vs Radric Davis that morning and decided he was put on this earth to get Gucci Mane a publishing check. None of it gels, none of it makes sense in the same song, none of it even makes sense in the same breath. I can only assume Camila and Co. created this incredible, idiotic Diet Coke and Mentos monstrosity to give guys like me something to be annoying about all summer.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Was kind of thrilling when it dropped but enough time has passed where this doesn’t really hold up. I can only be so amused by Camila sort of just being there (she’s not doing anything particularly well, nor is she flailing in any notably outrageous manner). Carti arrives with a decent verse, and then it’s over. Music to be momentarily amused by and not much else.
[5]