The Singles Jukebox

Yeah, she’s lucky, but is she a star?

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[7.38]

Katherine St. Asaph: I too enjoy “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” and Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be.”
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Apparently, this samples both “Sailing” by Christopher Cross and “Can’t Let Go” by Linda Király. It’s also liquid drum and bass. Excuse me… *leaves blurb to listen underneath an oil drum, waits for 5 minutes before realizing it is empty, thinks of actually analyzing the song, remembers the 2nd line of the chorus, shrugs awkwardly, keeps listening*
[8]

Ian Mathers: YouTube comments section absolutely undefeated: I scroll down and the first thing I see is “Love the Chistopher [sp] Cross vibe going.” I do get where they’re coming from (WhoSampled tells me it’s Linda Király instead), but if I didn’t like “Lucky” what a weirdly specific diss that could be. The song always seems to be a step away from going full depressive breakcore to me, and I mean that as a compliment.
[8]

Hannah Jocelyn: “Can’t Let Go” is a lost gem from the late 2000s: too sparse to stand among Darkchild’s best productions (unless you’re listening to the Radio Edit W/ Guitars [sic]), but Linda Király sings the fuck out of it. Elementary-school Hannah was obsessed with the song: melodrama perfect for a 4th grader grieving her first unrequited crush. I smiled big when I heard that piano show up in “Lucky”, but I kept waiting for this song to explode the way “Can’t Let Go” does in its chorus and it just… doesn’t. Instead, it stays in a quiet register, de Casier not even phased by the breakbeats skittering around her. The production is excellent, even if I’m already getting a bit sick of the drum and bass revival, but there’s no catharsis beneath the smooth synth pads and frenzied percussion. The actual song’s sophistication is captivating in its own right, but the blunt force melodrama of the original is missed.
[7]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Erika de Casier throws the entire kitchen at us on “Lucky.” Between the Linda Király sample, the stuttering drums, the bass hits, the synths, and the laughs, her vocals are often overpowered. There’s logic to contrasting the busy production with her serene vocal performance, and it does prove very effective when the waves break in the chorus. However, when every element is bouncing off the walls at once in a drum and bass-inflected surge, it’s easy to lose track of the main melodic line.
[5]

Jacob Satter: de Casier’s wrapped-in-velvet vocal style brings to mind pop stars who have found ways to repurpose their delicacy as stridency (Nelly Furtado), as a firm corset of gossamer support (Coco O), as an internal monologue set free (Cleo Sol), as coyly kitsch confessional (Clairo). de Casier checks a few of these boxes — she seems content to hold the center, to be simply present in “Lucky’s” swirl of juddering trap, SOPHIE-esque squeaks, and music-box nostalgia. Her patience and clarity elevate near-house muzak into something distinctly, warmly human.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Somehow even more gloriously energized than the singles off Sensational – the drums feel like hail falling on a sunny day, melting immediately on contact with the song’s surface. Thanks to the great NewJeans convergence event we talked a lot last year about de Casier as a songwriter, but “Lucky” is a fine reintroduction to her power as a performer: that opening laugh, the way she says “Whoa,” even the slight lift as she sings “lucky” for the second time on the chorus. It’s all finesse, a highlight reel of perfectly struck moments that make the ordinary trappings of “Lucky” into something sublime.
[8]

Dorian Sinclair: There’s a tedious kind of social media post I’m sure we’ve all seen, where someone posts a lyric sheet from the ’70s or ’80s next to a modern one (I’ve most often seen it with Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)”) to make some point about The Decline of Music Today. The lyrics for “Lucky” could make an appearance in one of those posts, but the song itself makes clear why the core argument the posts are making is nonsense. Sure, repeating the line “another night” 23 times in a 3 1/2-minute song looks lazy on paper, but in practice? Hearing de Casier’s intonation changing, the piano shifting under her, the backing vocals slipping in and out of the mix? It’s beautiful! And it’s not beautiful in spite of the repetition of the lyrics, but because of them. “Lucky” is swoonily, overwhelmingly romantic, and getting that impact with such a deliberately restrictive set of tools takes a hell of a lot of skill.
[8]

Isabel Cole: Retro vibes — not just the tinkling piano of the sample, but a particular unabashed sweetness in both content and melody that seems less in fashion than it once was — run through just the right amount of champagne-bubble glitchiness to make it feel up to date, but not in an ostentatious way. More love songs should draw attention to the erotic potential of being a good listener.
[8]

Kayla Beardslee: “Lucky” is so delicate and conversational that at times you almost forget you’re listening to a song. Erika de Casier is one of few artists who can turn that into a good thing — embraced by the glimmering piano line (even as it shifts focus away from the lyrics), she concentrates on feelings forming and drifting by like clouds in the sky so the rest of us don’t have to, so that we can lay back instead and just feel.
[8]

Will Adams: The liquid drum and bass revival of recent tends to have a winking cutesyness about it (see the de Casier-penned “Super Shy” as but one example). It’s fun to listen to, but “Lucky” pushes beyond that to reveal something darker. The arrangement is in standard skitter mode with twinkling pianos, but throughout are throbbing beat rolls, glitches, and haunting exhalations, as if the song is threatening to crumble at any moment. Even the outro — an emotional tug of war between repeated lines “another night” and “too fast” — forgoes a standard fade out in favor of increased distortion and tactile whispers. Behind the timid smile, a more raw emotion bubbles up to the surface.
[8]

Leah Isobel: Last year, I ended a friendship that I’d had for almost a decade. I had always known it would happen one way or another: either by the slow drift that accompanies physical or emotional distance, or by sharper, more sudden means. I chose the latter option, releasing myself from what would have been years of confused and angry longing. I’m proud of that choice. Yet, I still reminisce about what I thought our relationship was, and who I thought we both were — to each other, to ourselves. The intensity of feeling that characterized my experience of the relationship made me feel fragile, girlish. Of course it wasn’t sustainable. But it was thrilling to see how long we could sustain it; how much I could take from them while minimizing myself; how much I could give to them without them asking for any of it. How many times we could go out together, dancing, drinking, smoking, laughing on the street. On “Lucky,” Erika repeats “Another night” over and over and over, each repetition surprising for the sheer fact of its existence. It’s not about what’s in the future, but the shock of the present staying present: day after day morphing into a zoetroped sequence of images, cycling but not moving, time itself standing still due to the horrible electricity of one-sided love.
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A lot of people in my close friend group shit on Erika de Casier, constantly pointing out that she’s a mediocre singer with unimaginative toplines. And yes, they were not slow to mention that this sounds like Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be” over a skittering beat that wouldn’t even turn heads a couple decades ago. But even though I can recognize their disdain, what keeps me coming back to de Casier’s work is the way her productions are integral to the emotional trajectory of her lyrics. You don’t understand this song without hearing that cackle and those sci-fi synths, which capture the anxiety and blissed-out possibilities of lasting romance. Indeed, this is the same artist who wrote NewJeans’ “Super Shy,” eager to define the complexities of a crush with a polysemic phrase. “I need ya another night” is repeated so often that it becomes a musical Rorschach test. Is it sweet and honest? Too forward and desperate? A sign of confidence? Of insecurity? Love will make your head spin, making you feel like all these things could be true.
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