bold take on the challenge, and to be honest after the discussions of challenges past I expected more people to take liberties with the rondel. Judging by your example, we probably should have done, this is great. Love the repetition in the vocals and the production is great, spoken rondel in the middle is clever and well-written.

This is pretty god damn awesome. The music is amazing and loving the Pet Shop Boys like vocals. The use of repetition is really effective and your production is top notch. I have to admit I am struggling to see the Rondel structure in the lyrics. I think it is there in the verses but I can't see it. Either way I think if you had stuck to it strictly it wouldn't have been anywhere near as good and I'd rather listen to a decent song than one that follows the rules to the tee.

Well, there's a rondel in there, isn't there? Props on making the spoken word bridge sound great. It's nearly perfect. The problem I have with judging this song is that you completely eliminated the awkwardness of the rhyme scheme. You should get credit for so deftly handling it. However, you ended up lower on my ranking because it's a relatively small part of the song and I felt other artists deserved to get more credit for tackling, and overcoming, the restriction of the challenge without resorting to diminishing that aspect of their song.
All that being said. This is my favorite song of the fight. I love the cool, driving rhythm, the dark thick sound and the over all feel. The bass feels good in a gritty sort of way. Maybe I just love the dark feel. Regardless, if I could only listen to one song from this round it would be this one.

This is the third time in Nur Ein history that the challenge has been a strict poetic form. And I admit, this one is a little weirder for me than the other two. I studied creative writing in high school and college. I took years of poetry classes. I know sonnets and villainelles. They're practically second nature; I can feel their form in the same way musicians feel a time signature. But somehow, I'd never even heard of a rondel until it was suggested for this challenge. Maybe I had, but it didn't stick; I certainly don't recall reading many of them. But I did look up what the rondel form is and how it's generally used and interpreted, and after a quick perusal of the lyrics, I was ready to give everyone a pass on their challenge takes here. Except yours. Halfway through the song I was wondering, "Did they just completely fob off the challenge? Is there going to be a circular fountain in the lyrics somewhere?" Finally your spoken-word bridge came, and I was initially puzzled. Is it a fair way to engage with the challenge - to write a conventional pop song with a verse-chorus structure, and to place a rondel in the middle of that structure? On the one hand, this is the only song in the round to have a chorus, and that aids its memorability. On the other hand, remember when I said this?
Well, you certainly took that to heart! Of course, the big difference here is that Add simply took the existing form and added a simple refrain at key points. You wrote a whole dang song around the rondel. But in the end, I had to agree that the challenge was met. If have a chorus gave you an advantage, it wasn't an unfair one, because any of the other entrants could have tried this approach. So, onto the song itself! I think your vocal performance is on point, if a bit too forward in the mix. However, your lyrics are chock full of that specificity that I mentioned See-Man-Ski's entry lacking. "Books on tape commute," "Vodka shots for strangers and a couple for herself." "Thursday is the beach / When summertime is over she's not sure what that'll be." These are great details that make the word-picture you're painting pop, and these details stick in our minds. And of course that repetitive hook, which could have been annoying, works really well for me, and is the most memorable hook of the round. The arrangement suits the song brilliantly. So, your gambit paid off!