Iris Xie: Sad and moody house music always amuses me, because they’re really good for trauma recovery naps on sunny blue days. When the beat fizzles out and gets replaced by strings and multi-tracked vocals, it’s like the clouds clearing after an evening rainstorm to allow weak rays of sun through patches of blue, which is kinda nice but insufficient to make up for a song which seems confused in its intent - neither layered enough to be interesting or direct enough to bang. Vikram Joseph: A murky, hookless track which feels like a disco in a padded cell, with both vocalists sounding like they’re trying to move through a thick, suffocating smog. It’s most evident, though, in the lyrics, which are the sort of beautiful dancefloor gibberish that takes on a certain profound quality in their lack of coherence. The strangeness of the track pervades its every aspect, from the double vocal-approach that Robyn and Kindness take on to the way the beat behaves, synths falling in and out seemingly at random. Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: “Cry Everything” is at once intimately familiar and alien-sounding, like a standard piece of disco revival as seen through a smudged mirror. As someone who is so often placed in the spotlight of her songs, the recession is entrancing. She sounds only half present, like she were dissolving away before she can bend the track to her will. Jonathan Bradley: Kindness’s crumpled-up deep house disintegrates into low harmonies and brisk pulsations before Robyn can properly latch her pop hooks into it. In a nod to “Honey” closer “Ever Again,” where Robyn vows to never be broken-hearted again, “Cry Everything” suggests a new method of processing a break up, where tears are a sign of progress rather than despair, and where optimism suggests openness rather than positivity. You can almost hear the song straining at the edges as Kindness unravels a chorus of anticipatory wails behind Robyn’s clear-headed vocals. Natasha Genet Avery: “Cry Everything” is surprisingly contained, teasing a moment of pure, unbridled emotion without ever providing that release. Katherine St Asaph: Something is dreadfully wrong - surely a track called “Cry Everything” with Robyn on it shouldn’t sound this emotionally blunted? Even stranger that the failure to convey this particular sentiment is coming from Robyn, of all people. Will Adams: So… where’s the crying, then? The vocal and string arrangements both hint at it, but the titular melody sounds ambivalent at best. For a disco-informed song about crying, the thrill and the hurting both feel unnecessarily blunted. I guess the chorus turns on wanting to cry it out, but the string coda, while gorgeous, is too short to properly resolve the tension.
That abundance of texture isn’t necessarily positive it suggests orgasm and sorrow in equal measure, appropriate for the song’s liminal emotional state but mixed too low to overwhelm appropriately.
Leah Isobel: The drums have a soft, pleasing physicality that provides a comfortable bed for the walls of vocal texture.
Sometimes prioritizing production over personality pays off.Īlfred Soto: Continuing in the murmuring, understated disco of Robyn’s Honey, “Cry Everything” benefits from the low wail of a Todd Rundgren sample and Robyn’s own refusal to yield to the title’s cathartic possibilities. And the final 30 seconds are astounding, with strings and pans and what feels like a million voices melting together into a gorgeous celestial sunset. But there’s so much more going on here: the bass wanders around the mix, a shaker echoes in the distance, choral swells phase in and out like the evening tide. Julian Axelrod: I tend to find Kindness infinitely less interesting than his collaborators, so a song that hitches Robyn’s superstar charisma to Adam Bainbridge’s paper-thin croon shouldn’t click. Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment.I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES.Email (song suggestions/writer enquiries).