Santigold – “Radio”

Santigold – “Radio”

What happened to Santi White? Ever since Santigold swapped out the “o” from her name, she’s been in descent. Her sophomore album, Master Of My Make Believe, never went anywhere, partly because of some major label messiness, but mostly because it was largely forgettable. In the years since, she’s been treading water with a series of movie or television soundtrack tie-ins with the likes of Girls and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. White has enough goodwill and brand name clout built up from her still-very-good 2008 debut that she managed to snag a spot on the Paper Towns soundtrack, but her original song contribution feels like it could have come out seven years ago and no one would bat an eye. “Radio” is catchy, but it definitively feels like a movie soundtrack one-off, and doesn’t really have much life outside of that context. I still think Santigold could turn it around at some point, but it feels like it has been diminishing returns for a while now. Apparently, she’s hard at work on her next album, which is scheduled to be released later this year — we’ll see how that goes. Check out the new song below and judge for yourself.

The Paper Towns soundtrack is out 7/10.

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