It feels like something’s heating up…

[Video][Website]
[5.17]

Alfred Soto: Expecting a cover of Timberlake’s best early solo hit was too much. This amiable mismatch pits a vehement Camila Cabello against a wan Shawn Mendes while the arrangement favors a strummed guitar that reads “Latin” and a “la la” hook that should’ve gone out with “La Isla Bonita.” Cute video, though.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: “Señorita” relies on the chemistry of its two singers, and that’s an obvious mistake; Mendes and Cabello sound like adept but uncomfortable teenagers auditioning for the leads in a school play. Even more upsetting: the laziness of the “Señorita/Need ya” rhyme.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: A thoroughly old-fashioned spot of pop erotica, starting with the twice-a-decade exhibition of songwriters (Benny Blanco, Cashmere Cat, Ali Tamposi, Charli XCX, a Clean Bandit member, maybe some words by the singers, you? me?) bandwagoning onto Latin pop and barely making it onto the wagon wheel. (“Ooh la la” is cliche faux-French, not cliche faux-Spanish, but there are so many potential lyricists on this that I don’t know who to blame.) Also old-fashioned, in their own respective ways, are Shawn Mendes’ would-be-boy-bander anonymity and Camila Cabello’s palpitating voice — the most old-fashioned of all, in that every note conveys huge, urgent, showboatingly sung emotion when none of those things are particularly in vogue for pop. It’s all garish and embarrassing and fake — but lust is also all of those things, which probably explains why this is the rare song where the singers sound like they’ve felt it.
[6]

Alex Clifton: A sexy song that is actually sexy! Palpable chemistry between our singers, a slinky hook, and a few standout lines (“friends don’t know the way you taste” would’ve been a line I doodled on all my notebooks when I was 19). An added point for the fact that Mendes joins in on “I love it when you call me señorita” despite not being a señorita himself, which is a surprisingly hot detail.
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Scott Mildenhall: Is the implication that Camila Cabello is impressed by non-native speakers’ preschool-level Spanish? There’s the tiniest frisson in these two sharing the words written for her, in a world where male vocalists still perform the clumsiest of contortions in order to avoid singing anything not custom-made for The Heterosexual Male, but this is still bland. It’s the kind of music that someone who has never heard a Shawn Mendes song might think they all sound like.
[5]

Stephen Eisermann: I’m as shocked as anyone at how well Shawn pulled off this Latin-tinged track, but most of my enjoyment of this track stems from something entirely different: I realized what the end of the second verse reminds me of, starting with ooh, when your lips undress me. Go watch that viral “and I pop” meme. Then play the song back, enjoy the melody, the sexiness, the vocals, and then the totally unexpected laughter that’s about to strike.
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