Marcel Winatschek

Aino Jawo and the Minor Problem of a Decent Song

Aino Jawo is one of the most beautiful humans the evolutionary process has ever bothered to produce. This is context, not a review.

With that established: Icona Pop’s new single Just Another Night is genuinely not bad—a hybrid of ballad and restrained pop that holds up even when I’m trying to engage with it on its actual merits. After I Love It became the inescapable anthem of 2012 and their Coca-Cola sync turned them into European wallpaper, I’d braced for something more calculated or simply worse. This is neither. It’s warm, controlled, and hook-forward enough to stick. Whether I’d have noticed any of that if the band looked different is a question I’m choosing not to pursue.