bigmiskate

Some of these songs are very pretty (Peter, The Black Dog, loml), some of these songs are fun (Guilty as Sin, Fortnight, the chorus of Down Bad), but the rest of the songs are so miserably awful to listen to that I cannot help but hate her. Arguably the artist with the most creative freedom in the entire world and she makes "Florida." Unreal.

I like this one a lot! Sort of a Gen Z successor to that booming sad boy banjo sound that dominated the 2010s, but it sounds good, Kagen performs it well, the production is solid (if a bit color-by-numbers, he doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel here), and the lyrics are nice. Not bad.

Some nice melodies that get absolutely dragged to hell by endless cliches and agonizingly corny lyrics. There's some interesting things being said from the perspective of an addict, and I appreciate the gendered reversal of a man singing about a tortured female addict in the way women often sing about men, but the cornball "guy in your MFA class" lyrics stifle anything genuine or real here.

Cloyingly overproduced and weirdly pop-rock in a way that evokes a former Nickelodeon star trying to shed her sitcom image by singing about booze and pills. On top of that, Wade's vocals are shaky like she can't fill out the material, and it doesn't help that the production is constantly eating her alive.

All in all, Wade comes off as desperate to earn credibility as a country music bad girl, but ends up falling short of the mark, and instead comes off as an overeager tween at a college party ... read more