The Singles Jukebox

Yeah, she’s lucky, but is she a star?

[7.38]

Total writers: 13
Highest score: [8]
Lowest score: [5]
Controversy index: 0.83

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]

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]

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.
[8]

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Imagine what a day spa designed by Kali Uchis would be like...

[7.36]

Total writers: 14
Highest score: [9]
Lowest score: [4]
Controversy index: 1.20

Alfred Soto: Three weeks after living with Orquídeas, it came to me. The warmth of Kali Uchis' voice (as she heats up the electric keyboards on the verse): a nod toward the Bee Gees and other exemplars of late '70s pop. The rest of "Igual Que Un Ángel" works as a luxurious resting place from the album's relentlessness.
[7]

Kayla Beardslee: Kali is the master of harnessing grooves that are just otherworldly enough: at the first touch of that sexy, sophisticated disco beat, you’ll be lifted out of your body to a higher (and simpler) plane, yet left with enough corporeal feeling to appreciate the delicate breeze and scent of roses that swirl around you, summoned by the dynamic dance of her voice smoothing away the creases in a swath of velvet.
[8]

Will Adams: Kali sings the praises of an angel from above, but she's the one who sounds heaven sent. Swathed in reverb, her voice turns the relatively boilerplate disco backing into a hazy dream, where you dance in slo-mo as you breathe in the sweetest perfumes.
[7]

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Harkening back to a time when music made you shake, rattle, and roll...

[3.79]

Total writers: 14
Highest score: [6]
Lowest score: [1]
Controversy index: 1.43

Scott Mildenhall: A great audition: four chair turns and a message from Rag'n'Bone Man. All theatrics are plausibly deniable, but the vocal capabilities are conspicuous, with there never being enough of a song to intrude on them. A strong message to the detractors of treading water in the natatorial world.
[5]

Jacob Satter: "He began playing instruments including piano and ukulele, and watched YouTube videos of singers to help develop his vocal technique. [4][5]" -- Wikipedia
[4]

Tara Hillegeist: Oh, this is a very passably lovelorn piece of uptempo romantic angst, the kind that sounds like it could just as easily have dropped off the back of Cee-Lo Green's tour bus, circa "Fuck You." But it's not so passable that I can't help but have my main response to it all be "Wow, your man's such a tatted-up white lad, looks like he belongs on the set of a Guy Ritchie film, innit?" And now I've had that thought, I have to ask myself: when's the last time I heard something like this from someone who didn't, whose name wasn't T-Pain? And now I've asked myself that question, I have to wonder: should that question still matter?
[6]

Katherine St. Asaph: Thoughts and prayers for anyone persuaded to fuck to this song.
[2]

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Is this party a potluck? I can bring the croutons and parmesan and anchovy and th- oh... different Caesar. Never mind.

[4.05]

Total writers: 20
Highest score: [7]
Lowest score: [1]
Controversy index: 1.44

Iain Mew: Saltburn and all associated with it, mobile network adverts soundtracked by Bloc Party and Klaxons, rock bands as the most hyped new thing and launching their album with re-promoting their debut single: the UK has a big mid-'00s revival going on. In this case specifically, if likely coincidentally, it's a revival of The Hot Puppies. The Last Dinner Party's UK #22 hit "Nothing Matters" with all its theatricality and romantic determination pointing in the same direction, is at least as great as "The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful." There's no re-release edition of it to issue, though, so for new material we get "Caesar on a TV Screen," which sounds like a set of sketches for the four B-sides its CD singles would have had.
[4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Every year, there’s another Very Buzzy UK rock band. Usually shortlisted for the BBC’s Sound of… award, in recent years the title’s gone to Wet Leg, Yard Act, and now The Last Dinner Party. “Caesar on a TV Screen” is essentially a Queen song; the chorus, in particular, sounds like “Killer Queen” overlaid with “We Are the Champions.” The bombast is dialed so high that even the guitar disappears in the mix during the chorus, and there are instrumental touches that are almost inaudible, like the arpeggiated piano in the second prechorus. Meanwhile, the lyrics are crammed with redundancy. “Caesar” has a strong underlying concept, but the references to Leningrad are completely irrelevant to it. They’re never elaborated upon apart from a line about “Red Scare and how they got it right” (which is a [0], if you ask me). It also rhymes “Leningrad” with itself, hilariously, and couplets like “When I was a child / I never felt like a child” sorely needed another edit. I can’t ave this. 
[3]

Rachel Saywitz: One time in my undergraduate classical music history course, my professor played a clip of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, where mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly was playing the title role (because Caesar would normally have been played by a castrati in the 1700s). I was so in awe of this woman playing a domineering, brutish man, even as the music itself was light, airy, and elegant; I rushed to find the full opera afterwards to watch. “Caesar on a TV Screen” gives off a similar energy -- Abigail Morris sings as if she is the planet’s center, her melodies leaps into dark, blinding caverns but still manages to land lightly, feet first. The Last Dinner Party have made their splashy debut off of this dramatized glamour, which have lent themselves to a slightly polarized response. And “Caesar” is, no doubt, pretentious: it sweeps from 6/8 to 4/4 time like a corrupt, self-serving royal; its lyrics are at times bizarre enough to run the risk of performing empty metaphors (see the verse about Leningrad and Red Scare). But I can’t swear it all off, not when I hear, “I’ll be Caesar on a TV on a screen,” Morris’ voice layered with reckless abandon, and sharp horns and piano gassing up her cocky self-affirmations. That dream of adding a truly masculine edge to my femininity feels so unattainable to me, which is why I gravitate towards art like this. It’s a bullish want, to be a king. But just the want is enough for me, at least for now.
[7]

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