The Singles Jukebox

TIëSTO & DZEKO FT. PREME & POST MALONE - JACKIE CHAN

[2.86]

We feel you, Jackie…

Iain Mew: Post Malone on a dance single should be a good fit, with his way of subsuming himself into the service of whatever mood a song’s music is providing. There’s a reasonable low key party mover here that would be more likeable than most of his singles if he just managed to do that. His chorus presents triumph in such clunky form though, in one of those couplets where both sides sound like an awfully tortured fit, as to bring the whole dancefloor skidding to a halt.
[3]

Julian Axelrod: Post Malone’s hook is so staggeringly inane I can actually feel my brain cells dying with each line. Unfortunately, that leaves my remaining lizard brain even more vulnerable to the sugar-sweet guitar line, which sounds like a Party Supplies relic forcibly dragged into 2018.
[5]

Nicholas Donohoue: Jackie Chan is from Hong Kong, and this is thoughtless “Die Young.”
[2]

Ian Mathers: Huh, so it’s mysterious charisma void Post Malone that finally makes me say, “You know what this track needs? More Tiësto.”
[3]

Will Adams: I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have synesthesia but I swear I can hear the frat sweat on this.
[3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The hook is dumb but I think the bigger issue is that its repetitious nature feels like a cheap attempt at forcing an earworm on the listener. Post Malone is simply too unenthusiastic, and he has me missing Fetty Wap’s theatricality. Everyone else sounds just as limp, and any semblance of musical development is consequently negated.
[2]

Stephen Eisermann: If I keep believing that the “sushi from Japan” line is only there to force a rhyme, this is less bad; because if these writers think that Jackie Chan is from Japan… yikes. Regardless, Post Malone’s lax delivery feels weird on such a vibrant production and calling a girl someone’s “bitch” continues to make all culpable men look worse, so better luck next time boys.
[2]

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GEORGE EZRA - SHOTGUN

[4.50]

Okay fine but I get the aux cord then…

Katie Gill: Because when I think of the “Budapest” guy, I think of hot summer party jams? I appreciate George Ezra attempting to write a song that’s vaguely summery considering that our song of the summer prospects are pretty dire, but the word salad lyrics and chill sound come together to form a weirdly calm hot summer party jam. Still, if “Cheerleader” could be a serious song of the summer contender, then this might have legs.
[5]

Alfred Soto: This deep-voiced kidder hasn’t done much business Stateside, and unless he duets with Cee-Lo or Future Islands his dumb would-be soul tunes ain’t happening.
[3]

Stephen Eisermann: The British response to bro-country is George Ezra: songs about partying outdoors without the misogyny, basically. Sadly, that only makes this slightly less bad.
[3]

Matias Taylor: George Ezra’s not-so-secret weapon has always been is his gorgeous, striking lower register, the kind of sound that allows him to imbue vague wanderlust with an infectious carelessness that simultaneously registers as wizened gravitas. He’s still running away from home, but he’s realized there is untapped fun in letting someone else choose the destination. It doesn’t hurt that this barely tries to disguise its pop maximalism with indie rock trappings; he’s having too good a time with the wind in his hair to care (listen to the way he luxuriates in his drawl during the chorus: “hot-one”, “some-one”), and why should he with a hook this good.
[7]

Nicholas Donohoue: This was probably written on a dare to make a song about adventure and relaxation sound as unappealing as can be, but the stupendously ridiculous moments (u-UST to this, h-AW-t sun, sa-UMMMMM) also shows some level of tongue firmly in cheek, and what’s wrong with that?
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: After the subtle childlikeness of “Paradise,” a nursery rhyme that announces itself with a see you later/alligator rhyme. George Ezra is quite literally having a laugh. Take against his smarmy joviality if you wish, but on this showing it really doesn’t sound like he would care. Ultimately it plays to his advantage, because this wouldn’t come off without the self-satisfaction – it even overrides the ineffectiveness of the false ending – and if you are opposed, it plays to yours too: by the time this goes to number one on Friday he’ll have turned to chocolate and eaten himself.
[5]

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GAC - SAILOR

[5.33]

Jakarta group takes to English language pop, also the high seas…

Alfred Soto: I wish we had chart space for the kind of R&B practiced by the Indonesian trio: leisurely, coquettish, generous about allotments.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: GAC’s recent string of singles have all been well-suited for Western consumption, and “Sailor” is no exception. Complete with English lyrics, a triplet rapped/sung bridge, and relatively contemporary production, this is all so perfectly agreeable. It’s not much more, though; while their voices may mesh well, “Sailor” becomes increasingly tedious with time, and feels significantly longer than its actual runtime. The song intends to capture the calm of sailing on a sunny afternoon, but I find myself feeling like the person who’s bored by such an activity, forced to enjoy it for the entire length of its duration.
[3]

Frank Kogan: Seems silly to criticize a smooth song for being smooth, but the smoothness isn’t working for me – well, “smooth” can mean insinuatingly smooth, or ingratiatingly smooth, or insistently smooth, or gently smooth, or hauntingly smooth, or drifting, or hazy, etc. This doesn’t seem like any of those, or anything else in particular. Nonadjectivally smooth, perhaps. Towards the end the guy raps, which gets clumsy, so “clumsily smooth” for a while, but that’s not what I was wanting on this one.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: The sincerity behind this is delightfully comfortable, its sparkling R&B production shining just as much with bliss. The lack of conflict and drama makes its sweetness a bit fleeting, though the crinkling and the fizzing of the beat add just enough spark to keep it going.
[6]

Iain Mew: Producer Harry Sommerdahl has one of the more wide-ranging collections of lesser credits for not-quites I’ve seen: Alesha Dixon! FEMM! Lawson! The Rasmus! “Sailor” is a lot slicker sounding than I’d predict from that, even if its early AlunaGeorge synths and drum rattles are not quite of-the-moment. GAC’s swapping vocalists lend it some added twists and a calming assurance that’s a pleasure to listen to.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: The trap snares are on trend and entirely unsuited to this song’s more unhurried and timeless R&B arrangement. (The rap break is just as timely, yet more effective.) The three members of GAC give an unshowy performance – too much so for this to be genuinely impressive – but it’s one so amicable that that hardly matters. There’s talent here, even if on this occasion it has been arrayed only to deliver something agreeable.
[6]

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: What are we to take away from Kyle’s music? His rapping and singing are both mediocre, strategically forgivable given that his buddy-buddy personality is made more perceptibly authentic as a result. The truth of the matter: there’s a paucity of depth to many of his songs, and the cutesy shtick that he often employs only illuminates how his positivity is a mask for his man-child behaviors and lack of creativity. “Playinwitme” isn’t one of his worst offenses – the shallow social media babble of his previous Kehlani collab and the reductive inclusion of Sophia Black’s Japanese on “Ikuyo” are more eye-rolling – but it’s also more harmless than actively enjoyable. Kehlani is able to make the song feel less one-dimensional, but even she sounds restricted by the song’s simplistic conceit. I'mma need that time back.
[3]

Will Rivitz: It’s rare that a rapper as blandly corny as Kyle can make their brand of occasionally negging schmaltz palatable, but I’ll be damned if this one doesn’t do exactly that. Shoutouts to the following: producer SuperDuperBrick, not only for crafting a sprightly blend of peppy piano and hearth-warm bass but also for providing the impetus for a quote that single-handedly turned me into a Kyle fan; Kehlani, who within about twenty seconds of her entrance has already run circles around Kyle’s entire performance; and the self-confidence of the song’s focus, who looked at this woman and was like “Eh, I bet I can do better.”
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: The piano shades “Playinwitme” with a sincerity a little too well for what Kyle brings to the table. He’s not vengeful, though his rebuttal lacks a deep investment from him for it to sound off on anything more than petty feelings. Kehlani, meanwhile, hits the personal from just the first two lines, and her subtle shift of the narrative into a queer one ends up overtaking Kyle’s original perspective.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: “Playinwitme” is frothy and frivolous and very twee, and might not be as forgettable as it threatens to be. Describing Kyle as rap’s Owl City seems beside the point: that’s exactly what he’s here for. On this occasion, he’s brought duet partner Kehlani back, though they’re not singing to one another, but commiserating over mutual girl problems. Kehlani claims the spotlight with a sharper delivery and a narrative that calls out a straight tease while still keeping things light. (Deft nods to the Spice Girls and Johnny Cash help.) Kyle’s commitment to day-glo pop-rap is even more unwavering than Lil Yachty’s, but he risks one-dimensionality as a result. The trick is to be so replayable that it doesn’t matter.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Their chemistry surprised me, although as usual it’s to Kehlani I listen, quoting Johnny Cash and perfectly happy to remain single if necessary.
[6]

Vikram Joseph: “Playinwitme” is enlivened by a dorky Spice Girls reference and a very strange cadence on the line “I ain’t got no tiiiiiiiiime… forthat.” Otherwise, this is just cheerful hip-hop with a plinky piano hook and an oddly leaden beat: I had no idea that Hilltop Hoods’ influence had spread all the way to California.
[5]

Julian Axelrod: Kehlani has a long history of collaborations with corny-ass dudes, and Kyle is no stranger to corny. But while other artists use Kehlani as a romantic foil or hollow hook-slinger for cheap cool/queer cred, Kyle includes her as an equal partner in heartbreak and lets her be herself in all her goofy, gay, give-no-fucks glory. A rising Kehlani lifts all tides, and this is the most appealing Kyle’s sounded… ever? His precocious tween schtick works much better when he’s the butt of the joke, and the bright, simple beat reflects and refines his unrelenting positivity. Finally, a summer banger equally suited for a pool party or Saturday morning cartoons.
[7]

Katie Gill: Well this sure as shit is a collab none of us saw coming. I’m not entirely sure what (if anything) Julia Michaels is trying to pivot to, but I don’t think it’s working. Her persistent sleepiness works really well with Trippie Redd’s laid back guest verse, but that’s about it. This song is so middle of the road and skippable that after a few listens of it, all I can come up with is “yup, that’s a song.”
[4]

Julian Axelrod: “Jump” follows a distinctly 2018 formula: clean-cut pop starlet tries to sully her sound with a verse from a hot SoundCloud rapper, only to find the song is a flop and their new collaborator is a domestic abuser. But somehow, unlike other singles of its ilk, this experiment actually works. Julia Michaels’s raw angst and romantic aversion is only a few degrees removed from Trippie Redd’s emo screeds, but she’s got the kind of bulletproof choruses most rappers only dream of writing. I’m hesitant to praise her guest for obvious reasons, but I will say his presence lends a certain poignancy to the narrative. For a song about overcoming past trauma and learning to trust again, there’s a bitter irony to Michaels ceding the spotlight to a scumbag who’s hurt before and will probably hurt again.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Trippie Redd is a rather uneasy collaborator for Julia Michaels, specifically in relation to what she writes about in “Jump.” Her side of the story is a prelude to an immature, destructive love, its train-wreck quality understated from the subdued aquatic synths as well as Michaels’s predictably smooth rap cadence. Meanwhile, the man next to her is a guy who deals with break-ups through violent threats, which he also sings about a little here. But musically, the odd coupling works: though coming from opposite perspectives, they together nail the sharp vertigo from nosediving into love.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I’m consistently impressed by Julia Michaels’s vocal melodies even when they’re in songs I don’t particularly like. This somehow makes Trippie Redd an apt fit as a collaborator, as he’s one of the best rappers right now in terms of making every line as memorable and catchy as possible. He’s not quite as unhinged as I’d like him to be here, but he certainly provides a verse that doesn’t feel tacked on. Michaels delivers a performance that’s appropriately muted yet meaningfully evocative, but the chorus is too much of a non-event, deflating much of the drama that’s touted in the lyrics. The switch to a trap beat during Trippie’s verse proves to be the song’s climax – underwhelming considering how trite a musical development it is.
[4]

Alfred Soto: I can’t say I’ve enjoyed a single one of Julia Michaels’s biz-approved approach to, uh, issues, and while the synth chords are the equivalent of painted glass, here’s another example of her pro forma approach. I’ve enjoyed one of Trippie’s recent appearances; he does his best.
[4]

Alex Clifton: Julia Michaels gives us her best Tove Stryke impression but falls flat with a blank chorus. Would have been better with Sabrina Carpenter at the helm.
[3]

THE CARTERS - APESHIT

[5.78]

Fun TSJ stat: This is the middlest score, and the highest controversy, we have ever given a song with both Bey and Jay on it.

Alfred Soto: When two years ago she released her pop masterpiece, Beyoncé Knowles used public awareness of her indescribable wealth as Ozymandias might have his implacability. On “APESHIT,” she and Mr. Knowles return to the nullity of “‘03 Bonnie & Clyde,” celebrating a celebrity as content-free as a Givenchy ad on a Seventh Avenue window front. She can’t get away with “Can’t believe we made it” in 2018, no matter how springy Pharrell’s beat – not when her career to this point has incarnated “We made it.”
[5]

Tim de Reuse: I don’t mind a power couple victory lap on principle, as long as everyone involved actually brings their A-game; and, yeah, they did. Mostly. It’s a great reminder of how good these two can be when they’re not just talking about how good they can be.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Genre conventions be damned, minor keys and midtempo beats are now as unutterably dull to me as whatever the kids believe was so suffocating and corny before trap came to save them from it. Jay tells dad jokes, Bey makes dumbass flexes in as baroque a fashion as possible. They’re both better than this, which I understand is entirely the point.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I understand that celebrities have an important platform that they can use to inspire and empower people around the world. Both Beyoncé and Jay-Z have done that, yes. But at the same time, the glamour of perfectly manicured PR campaigns and artfully done music videos have led to a celebrity worship-informed delusion that declares a song like “APESHIT” as something far greater than it actually is: second-rate Migos album filler in 2018 (which is to say, extremely middling and painfully dated). People will readily admit this is the case–some already have–yet will happily continue listening. A sign of good music, or good marketing?
[0]

Crystal Leww: It annoys me so much that I like this as much as I do. This is just Beyoncé and Jay Z doing a Migos song, right? Yes, it is. And Everything is Love is just The Carters doing a full album of production that doesn’t differentiate from the hip-hop airplay charts, right? Yes, it is. And yet, this is still better. Yes, having access to the best producers and writers plus a (surely) huge budget help, but the level of quality control that Beyoncé exerts over her output is a cut above. We’ve seen a number of olds put out high profile releases in the last three weeks. They all sound like no one is willing to them that their shit sucks. Thank god for Beyoncé.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: Pharrell crafts a bouncy trap beat for Bey to rap over like the BAWSE she is, with the Migos chiming in behind her. Jay-Z wisely drops in for a cameo verse but otherwise leaves the heavy lifting to his wife, who ain’t takin’ shit from you nor anyone else. She sounds fierce with a capital “F,” and your 2018 summer jam has arrived.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: More functional than song: Watch the Throne II, swapping out Jay’s estranged-due-to-MAGA buddy, or the third-act epilogue to Lemonade, which already had its own finale. But the bar for functional here is obviously pretty high.
[6]

Will Rivitz: Pitchfork describes Beyoncé’s performance on “APESHIT” as that of “your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper,” high praise for a woman who’s been outrapped by three other women in the past two weeks alone. I’m all for this song and the album it’s on conceptually, as Bey and Jay flaunting their wealth is always fun (THEY RENTED OUT THE GODDAMN LOUVRE! WITHOUT ANYBODY ELSE KNOWING! HOW?!?), but the fact of the matter is that the beat sounds like it was made in twenty minutes, Quavo sounds like he recorded his ad-libs in ten, Jay sounds like he both wrote and recorded his verse in five, and Bey, while solid, is punching well below her weight. Each Carter’s previous solo release saw the artist in question pushing 95 on the freeway; “APESHIT” (and EVERYTHING IS LOVE in general) is them going 45 in the passing lane.
[4]

Andy Hutchins: I called the Carters’ last collaboration “compellingly weird” and docked it points for Future bleating aimlessly. Here, there is no Future but the future as soundtracked by a Pharrell-smithed car alarm for UFOs, and both are less weird and more wired, red-dotting targets specific and general – for Shawn Corey, Trump, the NFL, and The Recording Academy; for Beyoncé Giselle, haters far and wide – and sniping with precision. Jay sounds as committed to ripping into a track as he has in years, but he’s out of pocket enough to make what his better half does, in making Migos-style (and likely Migos-penned) double-time sound rich rather than rushed, as much an upstaging as an outrageous display of talent. Beyoncé is certainly among the more versatile and powerful singers of her generation, but her flow here suggests she could probably be one of the better rappers of her generation, too, if she had wanted that as more than an avocation, and that she is currently a better rapper and flexer than her husband, widely considered one of the greatest to rhyme bars ever and perhaps a better braggart. Yet my takeaway from all this fantastic flexing is the sincerity of it: Jay and Kanye went gorillas on “Niggas in Paris,” but that “married Kate and Ashley!” groaner certainly didn’t move Big Brother to praise his wannabe protégé; here, Jay declares “She went crazy!” in astonishment after the Secretariat-speed third verse, and it sounds as true and loving as anything he’s ever said.
[8]

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DA PUMP - U.S.A.

[5.29]

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Iain Mew: Hearing this original and deciding that what it needed was to be 50% less cool is a stroke of genius.
[7]

Will Rivitz: The fact that this song is good is absolutely inconceivable. It is nothing short of ludicrous that a washed-up version of Da Pump could mix the worst of ‘80s guitar muscle, '90s camp, and early-aughts neon and somehow end up with something that is genuinely better than passable. “U.S.A.” is like if Chris Kirkpatrick, Vitas, and the guitarist of any interchangeable '80s hair metal band got together, snorted so much coke that none of them remembered the next three days, woke up on the other end with a half-mastered recording of “What Hurts The Most,” and said fuck it and posted it to SoundCloud. Whatever once passed as good music is now dead, and I couldn’t be happier.
[7]

Andy Hutchins: I am very much unsure who the joke is really on here, because while a zombified Japanese boy band of dudes pushing 40 and singing a (semi-)facetiously pro-America song and doing every viral rap dance of the last five years and the Hammer Dance in the video is a pretty decent joke about America in 2018, it is also a boy band of dudes pushing 40 and making a hit by stealing fucking BlocBoy JB’s shine, which is a) laughable on its face and b) basically what Drake did with “Look Alive,” only with a decidedly non-Drake capacity for joy and sincerity in equal measure at the same time.
[4]

Alfred Soto: I love secondhand takes on most things, and Da Pump’s re-imagining of the Land of Trump as one in which synths that wouldn’t be out of place on a Stacey Q song sit beside stun guitar, stutter vocal, and a beat that would wind Lance Armstrong.
[7]

Tim de Reuse: There’s some charm to watching of someone in another hemisphere get sincerely enthusiastic about a version of your home country that was only ever depicted in the least contemplative of its cultural exports. Unfortunately, no amount of context could make this mess sound fun; its mix is heavily lopsided towards the vocals, the kick performs a grotesque pinch on the instrumentation around it, and the sound design makes far too much sincere use of the shrill, rough synthesizer tones that are more conventionally reserved for parodying the flimsiest dance music of the 90’s. The thing is – I don’t really detect any kind of ironic distance from the source material but if this were trying to act as parody, or make some kind of point beyond nostalgia – it’d still sound atrocious.
[1]

Anna Suiter: To be honest my knowledge of Japanese male pop groups has always been tenuous. Many of their labels have only recently and reluctantly started to publish music and videos in a way that’s more accessible to international audiences. Because of this, I don’t have a lot of context for Da Pump’s career. But U.S.A is inexplicably charming that it doesn’t even need that context. It’s so"meme-y", for the lack of a better term, that it’s hard to believe that some of that wasn’t on purpose. But it feels sincere, at least as much as that’s possible. Maybe it ends up feeling like your uncle trying to be cool and failing, but you can’t stop yourself from doing the shoot dance with him anyways, or even just singing along.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: Suburban shopping malls in Japan gave me a light rush of culture shock when I visited my family a couple months ago. Every other menswear vendor stocked what looked like a foreigner’s interpretation of middlebrow American street fashion: Thrashers, Supreme, and the like admired from a far distance. This secondhand view of American cultural fixtures definitely informs the viral music video of “U.S.A.” though it’s also not entirely lost on the Eurobeat record, sourced from a Joe Yellow song. Not only are disco balls and convertible sports cars admired with nostalgic fascination, the group’s ISSA peppers in katakana phrases solely to borrow its Western cool. By the end of it, the imports feel so hollow as substance, only leaving their pure surface quality of how catchy it feels to recite them. The flattening and bizarre appropriation behind “U.S.A.” are a prime example of Weird Japan, sure, but this surreal thing is only a byproduct of incessantly consuming Weird America.
[5]

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Stephen Eisermann: Kesha’s earned this: subdued, muted, but still pulsing, this track manages to embody one of my favorite things – earned exhaustion. This song makes me feel the same way that watching the Avengers eat shawarma at the end of their first movie did. Kesha hasn’t been through hell and back this era and it’s recently been announced that a judge denied her request to be removed from her Dr Luke contract. Basically, Kesha is back in the same spot, contractually, that she was at the start of this era, but she seems more seasoned now. I know this song was (clearly) created prior to this judgment, but it still fits. “Hymn” finds Kesha singing to all of the misfits and coming together with them to make her own little family and although the song is more understated than her prior singles, it feels so correct for where she stands. Kesha may still be in a bad place contractually, but now she seems more ready than ever to fight back.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Based on the text here I’d expect “Hymn” to sound more joyous but, well, maybe I’ve just spent too long tonight reading the news. Certainly while Kesha’s voice itself has all the power and resilience you’d want, there’s a melancholy undertow here. Basically right this second it feels like both sides of this to me, and I may not get that chorus out of my head for a week.
[8]

Tim de Reuse: A singalong prayer for the heavily disaffected: how incredibly 2018 of you, Kesha! The only thing that lets it down is the absolute non-specificity of its struggle. Sure, universality isn’t a bad thing to shoot for, but it feels like she’s pulling her punches when the only phrase she comes up with that has an ounce of genuine poignancy is “even though I’m fucked up;” nothing else raises any real stakes or describes any situation that you might need a healthy dose of self-affirmation to get through.
[6]

Abdullah Siddiqui: There is a kind of maturity in Kesha’s contentment with who she is, and that sense of self-assurance translates in her vocal performance, which is skillful and powerful. The production is wonderfully restrained. It all strikes a nice balance, and makes for an anthem that is reassuring, and warmly conveys Kesha’s newfound peace in herself.
[8]

Will Adams: Unlike Rainbow’s more outwardly empowered singles like “Praying” or “Woman,” “Hymn” is more reflective than outwardly empowered singles like “Prayertone,” but still makes just as much of a statement. The spacious, pared down beat creates a calm environment for Kesha to breathe, calling out to the perfectly fucked up. If the spirituality feels vague, it’s only justified. In the swirling uncertainty of today, even fleeting moments of feeling safe seem preferable to the promise of heaven.
[7]

Dorian Sinclair: When I was first listening to Rainbow last summer, “Hymn” was not an immediate standout, but in the time since I’ve really come to appreciate it. Kesha is not a name one typically associates with minimalism, but there’s something really appealing about the pinprick synths and fingersnaps as primary accompaniment, and her vocal delivery complements them well – particularly the last time through the chorus, when the effects and harmonies drop away and we’re left with a single simple voice to pair with a single simple message: I know that I’m perfect, even though I’m fucked up.
[7]

Alex Clifton: “Hymn” is a cousin to “We R Who We R,” Kesha’s ultra-brash hit back when she was still Ke$ha and all her music were party anthems. Both are self-empowerment songs, but “Hymn” is quiet and twinkly where the former was screams and synths piled on top of one another. It’s unfortunately repetitive–the chorus runs overlong, especially when sung back-to-back–but the lyrics are pure Kesha. “Sorry if you’re starstruck, blame it on the stardust / I know that I’m perfect even though I’m fucked up” is a couplet that sums up Kesha’s music on Rainbow perfectly: acknowledging trauma and loving yourself, revelling in the magic of being alive. I know hymns aren’t meant to be catchy, but given Kesha’s ear for hooks (especially when her one other self-empowerment anthem is loaded with them) I was disappointed.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The sadness drifts across the track like mist on a pond, and when Kesha shatters the placidity with a sudden shriek it’s like a stone tossed in that pond. There isn’t much we’d stand up for these days. As ballads go, I can imagine Pink taking this into the American top ten in 2013 but we weren’t kind to ballads sung by women in 2018, not when it should be “Elegy” instead of “Hymn.”
[7]

MR BLACK - EL MATRIMONIO

[6.50]

It’s a nice day for a Black wedding…

Juan F. Carruyo: This is pure craft. The song undergoes at least 3 gear changes, adding a nice proggy structure to the proceedings and the lyrics are a vivid if literal, distillation of what love can make you experience. I can’t help but feel touched at how fearlessly Mr Black is willing to bare his emotions. He’s also savvy enough to kill to birds with one stone, shooting the promotional video at his real-life wedding.
[8]

Crystal Leww: While reggaeton and Latin trap are getting all the press buzz from Anglo media outlets, the success of Mr Black’s “El Matrimonio” is a reminder that Latin American pop is a vast and varied landscape. This isn’t particularly exciting and is probably not going to make the club pop off, but this is so sweet! I’m hoping that at least one granny busts out the dance moves at her grandchild’s wedding somewhere to this song.
[6]

Julian Axelrod: To this day, I still remember watching the Kimye wedding episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians with my then-roommate and being furious when, after an hour of buildup, we didn’t even get to see the damn ceremony. I felt a weird sense of betrayal, not only because this intensely public couple wouldn’t let us see their wedding but because the buildup was so boring. Mr Black may not be as big as Kim or Kanye, but the Colombian champeta superstar deserves credit for turning his highly publicized wedding into a hit single in a way that feels joyous rather than craven. The song shifts from a wedding vows ballad to a reception-ready banger that values stateliness over schmaltz. Meanwhile, Mr Black presides over the proceedings with the elegance and charm of a best man. It’s an impressive display of modern celebrity: a shameless celebration of the self that’s generous enough to let us inside.
[7]

Alfred Soto: With a guitar figure recalling high life, “El Matrimonio” pushes Mr Black into convincing shows of emotion. I suppose I’ll get used to the rhythm change.
[6]

Iain Mew: Gliding smoothly from ceremony to reception to party, its all-in-one approach to wedding as a theme is the biggest strength and weakness. It keeps the new ideas flowing, but they come with a bit of a feeling of checking boxes.
[5]

Adaora Ede: The Nigerian in me would confuse this with literally any and every 1970s Highlife song that would play at some distant cousin’s graduation party. And it makes sense: according to my research, Mr. Black is the leader of Champeta, a heavily Afro-Colombian genre that is a creole of west and Central African genres and cumbia. In “El Matrimonio,” Señor Negro modernizes the folk tune, slant rapping over jazzy guitarras, spitting out couplets, triplets about the beauty of matrimony. A cross-linguistic, intra-diaspora marriage bop if I’ve ever heard one. Sidenote: Mr Black bears an uncanny resemblance to one of my mom’s favorite Nigerian musicians, Flavour N'abania and imma need someone to drop the English version so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

AOA - BINGLE BANGLE

[4.86]

Sorry Jessica, our bad :(((

Jessica Doyle: Now we’re reviewing AOA?
[4]

Adaora Ede: As a longtime K-pop fan, I’ve always censured the criticisms flung at Korean girl groups for immature and vapid music. On the other hand, this literally sounds like a song out of a Disney production, and not from the well-crafted Disney Original Musicals that graced my childhood in the late 2000s, but a theme song from a throwaway Disney Junior program. Anything with repetitive onomatopoeia is a general red flag for me, but last year’s “Bing Bing” proved itself, brass loop and all. The whistling and the jangle guitar sound promising at first, but it sharply swerves from possible popabilly into the lane of reckless TV show pirate music. Ugh, those wasted Max Martin piano beats from the beginning! Disregarding Jimin’s solo verse and the horrible whooping riff, the verses – I particularly liked the pre-chorus – and the bridge are somewhat auspicious in that they are unadulterated skippy fun. Although I strongly dislike many, many parts of this, I can’t hate on the whole.
[5]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: I was a bit skeptical about a ChoA-less AOA comeback, but this tune is here to prove two important things: 1. That the group is just as strong, and it’s still full of talented performers, and 2. That they’re still the ineffable queens of the K-Pop Summer Jam. “Bingle Bangle,” with its disco-indebted bassline, its acoustic guitar breakdowns, and that über-catchy whistled melody, is a shoo-in for millions of beach-party playlists across the globe.
[7]

Crystal Leww: Floats by like any spring afternoon, but not like one that you’d remember for beyond the weekend.
[4]

Alex Clifton: AOA have been known for their extremely sexy singles, which is what made “Bingle Bangle” a surprise; it’s peppier than their older material. I mean, for god’s sake, it’s in a major key! It’s also their first single since the departure of ChoA, whose voice would have added some depth here. It’s blissfully devoid of Jimin’s signature “Hey!” hook but also seems devoid of some of their usual (excellent) drama, probably because they’ve forgone that route for an upbeat song. For the first time in ages, it sounds like they’re having fun being themselves and not trying to do a ~sexy~ dance for anyone, which is a nice change and part of what makes this so infectious. I’m just bummed we never got any of these chirpy tracks while ChoA was still with the group.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: It’s not AOA’s fault that their single reminds me distinctly of Karmin, but it does.
[4]

Ramzi Awn: AOA’s forgettable whistle overproduces a basic AF soccer montage and turns it into the perfect teen vampire show. Unnecessary.
[3]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]