R&B/HIP-HOP
On the title track to her forthcoming album (due around February, when she'll perform at the Super Bowl halftime), Blige once again battles and overcomes self-doubt. "I'm so tired of feeling empty," she sings in a gritty croon over a slow-rolling, vintage-style soul track, abetted by a moody string arrangement. But she's got the solution: looking in the mirror every morning with the self-affirmation, "Good morning, gorgeous." She adds, "I ain't talking about getting no hair and makeup/I'm talking about soon as I wake up." The video makes clear she's waking up in a mansion, toned and bejeweled, a long way from "all the times that I hated myself."
JON PARELES, New York Times
POP/ROCK
This song is an exercise in tenderness. It is a welcome departure for Alynda Segarra,who typically makes warm folk-punk as Hurray for the Riff Raff, here trading grit for cosmic reverie. In a breathy whisper, Segarra coos: "Seven revolutions around the sun. Blessings on our way, it has only begun." The video juxtaposes celestial NASA images with found footage of people dancing to the Afro-Puerto Rican genres bomba and plena. It is a galactic prayer, a belief in the promise of the future, rooted in the vitality of the past.
ISABELIA HERRERA, New York Times
Recently "semi-separated" from Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, with whom she has a child, Grimes coos club-ready recriminations in "Player of Games," which she sometimes sings like "play your love games." Over a brisk house track, she asks questions like "Baby, will you still love me?" and "How can I compare to the adventure out there?" as the arpeggios repeat and the four-on-the-floor thumps. "If I loved him any less, I'd make him stay," she asserts, teasing the gossip-industrial complex.
