How Many Drinks

Miguel's slow-burn is one of the most unnervingly honest songs about seduction ever to get radio play, and its power comes from refusing to hide what it's asking. Over a hazy, psychedelic guitar figure and a beat that lurches like someone finding their footing, Miguel wonders aloud how much alcohol it will take. His falsetto is gorgeous — smoky, elastic, slipping between registers — and that beauty is precisely the discomfort: the prettiest possible framing of a transactional calculation. He knows it, too; the song is self-aware enough to sound faintly disgusted with itself, which is what separates it from the countless songs that make the same request without noticing. Kendrick Lamar's verse on the remix sharpens the edge further, moving from bravado into something closer to a character study. Released in 2013 as *Kaleidoscope Dream* was establishing Miguel as the most interesting man in R&B — weirder than Frank Ocean's peers, more sensual than the Weeknd's nihilism — it captures a specific hour: 1 a.m. at a bar, decisions narrowing. It's a headphones song, best when you're alone and willing to sit with ambivalence rather than resolve it.