funky drums" redeem it from possibly resembling a ballad by Seal. Spin journalist Charles Aaron estimated the track nears success "as a haunting refrain, with its bursts of static and chilly '80s synths", though fails to function as a song. In a somewhat negative review for The Village Voice, Tom Breihan stated the song comes across as "designed to humanize all the bile" that it succeeds on the album, though criticized how the result is generally West "sound[ing] like he's falling apart". Breihan continued, calling the usage of Tears for Fears' material "sighing" and complaining about how "unsettling" it is to hear West utilizing breakup language. Accolades "Coldest Winter" was listed by NME as the seventh greatest song about snow in 2018, with Jordan Bassett commenting that West's question of "Will I ever love again?" ends up having "a happy ending" due to him bonding with his then-wife Kim Kardashian's family. The track was placed at the same position by the East Bay Times on their 2019 list of the top 25 songs for the winter season; Jim Harrington of the newspaper saw it as demonstrating West "at his heartbreaking best". On a 2021 list of the best snow songs during the winter weather, Time Out ranked the song at number nine, and the magazine's Andrew Frisicano asserted that it "is a tragic, haunting thumper". Glamour writer Anna Moeslein selected the track as one of her favorite songs about winter in 2014, while Ed Masley from The Arizona Republic named it as among the classic songs about the season the following year. In April 2020, GQ editor-in-chief Will Welch picked the song as one of the 50 greatest hits to listen to in self-quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Music video Background A music video for "Coldest Winter" was debuted via iTunes on February 22, 2010, and shared by American director Nabil Elderkin to his Vimeo page the next day. This release marked West's return to the public eye after his outburst at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, which came 15 months after 808s & Heartbreak had been released. The visual was directed by Elderkin, who had previously worked with West on multiple occasions, including directing the videos for fellow album tracks "Welcome to Heartbreak" and "Paranoid". On the day of the former's release, Elderkin informed MTV that the video differed from any previous collaborations, confirming it is "pretty minimalistic",