This song confuses me like few others have this year. It's currently number 10 in the UK chart and number 12 on the Billboard US top 100, yet I have no idea how or why it's been such a big hit. Usually with songs I don't like I can see why they become popular - 'Juju on That Beat' has a stupid dance for example - but 'Issues'? I suppose the sparse instrumental is distinct from the rest of the hot 100, but it's not exactly good. It's not very catchy and is extremely sleepy, and when the weird cut up vocals come in during the verse it stops even being pleasant to listen to. The breakdown of the song is a bit better, but it suffers from my personal biggest problem with the song - the ear-scraping vocals. At this point I'm super-tired of female vocals on EDM tracks that are so smooth and pitch perfect that they sound as robotic as the beats behind them, but compared to Julia Michaels warbling, uncomfortable vocal performance I'd take the EDM banger any day.
It's rare for me to find a voice I can't stand so much I have to actually turn off the radio, and even vocal performances that I initially dislike can grow on me, as I realise people can't help what they sound like (Tom DeLonge and Ariana Grande are two examples of voices that have massively grown on me over time.), but after giving 'Issues' a month I can safely say that Michaels's' voice is not one of these. It constantly sounds like she's singing slightly too high for it to be comfortable for her and she always sounds on the brink of tears. The lyrics are also variable, the lowlight being the couplet where Michaels rhymes 'Break things' with 'Fix things', but despite how fear-stricken Michaels sounds, the lyrics are more upbeat and have a more positive message than most of the stuff on the charts.
With all of that said, I do believe there is hope for Julia Michaels. She's written and co-written some massive hits over the past 3 years including 'Sorry' by Justin Beiber and more recently 'Heavy' by Linkin Park (A review of which is coming out very soon.), so if she improves her singing she may end up producing some decent material. But I never want to hear 'Issues' again.
3/10
