The Singles Jukebox

Not out of the woods yet…

[Video]
[4.54]

Mark Sinker: I’m not by habit melancholic or nostalgic: if things were so great back in the day whatever brought us to this? Of course the brightest energies and optimism are also often stood on the thinnest crusts of inexperience — we hadn’t seen enough of life to be wary! — but all the same, that’s generally what speaks to me. Except now this, growing out of a pretty wispy-seeming young-love-style story, a 24-year-old singing about how this time things just aren’t going to snap back, and that’s what it is…  Anyway I’ve been playing it on a loop since I first heard it, like I just learned a new lesson. 
[10]

Alfred Soto: The presence of co-writer/co-producer Aaron Dessner and the we’ll-always-have-Paris sentiment suggests the influence of Taylor Swift — not to mention Gracie Adams’ breathy plaintiveness. A lovely thing I don’t want to listen to again.
[5]

Isabel Cole: When I listened to “us.,” Abrams’s collaboration with Taylor Swift, I assumed the reason it sounded so Swiftian was that they had written it together, but “I Love You, I’m Sorry” — a lilting waltz with a motormouthed bridge recounting an August heartbreak — suggests that of all the young women in pop’s freshman cohort who credit Taylor for inspiring them to to pick up a guitar and turn their feelings into hooks, Abrams is the one who has most faithfully studied Taylor’s actual craft. This isn’t all bad if you like Taylor’s thing, as I often do; the melody is sticky, not unpleasantly so, and the bridge does go a little crazy. But Abrams just isn’t enough of a presence to shake off the comparison. As a lyricist, she’s adequate but not distinctive; as a performer, the elegantly layered vocal tracks help her make the most of the thinness of her voice, but she mumbles morosely through the melody in a way that comes across as affected or borrowed from someone else. Still, I’m bumping this a point because it turns out that without the Taylor factor, I’m still a sucker for Peepaw Dessner’s production, which here is thoughtful and spare (I love the violin rising in the second verse); here’s hoping this heralds more pop collaborations beyond the Taylorverse in his future.
[5]

Brad Shoup: We can put Abrams’ debt to Taylor in NFL terms: The Story of Us sees the former as an impatient chairperson, purchasing entire limbs of the Sean McVay coaching tree in an attempt to shortcut success. (In this analogy, Sean commits football treason by freelancing for a few plays.) Like most of Abrams’ album, “I Love You, I’m Sorry” is an Aaron Dessner co-write. (It’s also, until the bridge crashes in, a Sufjan Stevens homage, a sort of “seven” in waltz time.) It’s fun to imagine what he contributed (“and I’ll have a drink,” certainly; “trust me, it’s always about me,” probably) and what he merely applauded (“you mean well but aim low”). In high National style, the settings are specific but the actions aren’t. It’s all rich-kid shit: the Benz is supposed to signify while being “by the gate” isn’t; after barely surviving the future perfect tense, the lover flies away, leaving Abrams to a deckside sunset reverie. The bridge infringes on Swift’s fist-pumping backing vocals, but only to goose some fake breakthrough babble. If you really want to pair adult-contemporary loveliness with wrenching self-sabotaging detail, maybe ditch Aaron for Anna.
[3]

Ian Mathers: Sometimes my blurb is just the thought that wouldn’t stop looping through my head as I listen to the song repeatedly — in this case, “I’m not sure Taylor Swift has been a good influence on people.”
[7]

Leah Isobel: The second verse’s fortunetelling inadvertently crystallizes exactly what I dislike about this post-Taylor style of confessional songwriting. This specific conversational voice relies on a unilateral, unexamined intimacy, as if just saying what is felt is enough to make the speaker sympathetic. There is no space for doubt and very little for actual self-reflection. Like musical theatre, we’re hearing the narrator’s unfiltered emotions, keyed up to such a height that they have to be sung instead of spoken; unlike (good) musical theatre, the simultaneously wimpy and portentous musical choices do not allow these emotions any space to breathe or any room for dignity. That Swiftian reverbed-shout-for-emphasis, ugh; the lilt that thuds right on the downbeat, blech; the scratchy whispery vocal, eyeroll. And sure, the inversion is purposeful, but wallowing in self-pity is not a compelling mode. Go for a walk! Read a scary book! Get a personality!
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I find new things to dislike about this song every time I listen — Aaron Dessner’s dumbly rootsy guitar strums, the miasma of synth pads and softly-cooed backing vocals that envelop the track, and most of all Abrams’ lyric, which is at once highly effortful and lazy as shit. It takes a lot of work to write something that sounds like a stream of consciousness, and she’s done none of it; every tossed-off “same”, every attempt at a witty aside lands completely leaden. It’s a work of Potemkin songcraft, full of lines that imply some deep interiority with nothing at all behind them.
[1]

Taylor Alatorre: There’s a certain irony embedded in the term “cargo cult.” While anthropology has long abandoned it as an inaccurate reflection of the Melanesian religious movements it was created to describe, it remains in common use as a metaphor for the imitation of a practice without a full understanding of its inner workings; in this way, the non-academic persistence of the phrase is a sort of “cargo cult” in itself. I say this in order to avoid being problematic when I label the alternating group vocals in the bridge of this song as pure cargo cult Swiftism. Elsewhere, though, the ritual gets better results: “Trust me, I know it’s always about me” is almost as disarming as it wants to be.
[5]

Iain Mew: Like Coldplay doing Bruce Springsteen, this suffers from too many elements almost lining up with a single source. In this case it’s the way the bridge’s rushing rhythm, crash imagery, and arrangement (with those backing vocals emphasising the end of each line) individually and collectively resemble Taylor Swift’s “Out of the Woods.” Gracie Abrams builds a song with its own momentum in a quite careful and effective way otherwise, but the distraction comes at exactly the worst point, turning what should be the emotional climax into an exercise in distorted recognition.
[4]

Al Varela: I have yet to be convinced that Gracie Abrams is anything more than a Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift tribute act being given a major-label push, and here I’m reminded so strongly of Phoebe’s hushed vocal timbre that it catches me off guard. That said, the storytelling here and how it builds upon one of Gracie’s previous songs, “I Miss You, I’m Sorry,” is what makes me a lot warmer to this than her other singles. She’s genuinely good at fleshing out the details and moments that make this breakup painful even years later. Even if she’s still cribbing the sound, I can still hear her in the songwriting, not someone else, which is a step, at least.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Was pleasantly surprised that Audrey Hobert, the director of the genuinely excellent video for this song, also cowrote this! That’s kinda it, I’m sorry.
[0]

Jel Bugle: The vibe is good, the chorus is there often enough, and that’s enough for me. I’m sure Gracie is being too hard on herself.  
[8]

Katherine St. Asaph: What a waste of perfectly good nepotism.
[2]