The Singles Jukebox

Forgotten soon enough.

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[3.75]

Scott Mildenhall: After setting off with two of the very best singles of the year you should know better than to release something so boring. Given the nature of those singles you should know emotional grandeur isn’t automatically better downcast too; the relentless, four-voiced force of “Don’t Stop”, a heady combination of mop-shaking early Beatles and drag-back-and-repeat Status Quo, far outstrips whatever this hookless mulch is going for. In any case, as far as pop-punk ballads go, the Madden brothers should know better.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: I have a dirty secret. It’s that my favourite Busted song is “Sleeping With the Light On” so I’m barred from hating this. It’s those damed “Linger” guitars.
[6]

David Sheffieck: I believe it was Paul Simon who taught us every generation throws a “Hey There Delilah” up the pop charts. I’m a fan of a classic flavor, but I can’t really argue with a Coke Zero version for the youngs.
[6]

Alfred Soto: But if he wakes up with amnesia, will he remember he loves her? 
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Diagnosis: garbage ballad. 
[1]

Anthony Easton: I like when country shoves its way into other genres, and like boy bands, and love the erotic languor of teenage self-discovery and issues of memory fascinate me. Emotional lacerations work for me: I was was emo once. Therefore, this should be up my ally, but mostly I’m just bored. 
[6]

Hazel Robinson: I didn’t get the first 5 Seconds of Summer song I heard, which sounded like if One Direction did not understand either pop or snogging. It is really important to understand pop and snogging if you are going to be a boyband. This song, by contrast, wants to lie on a bed with you underneath its 500 Days of Summer poster and tell you astonishingly boring things about its favourite shitty guitar in the mistaken belief that performative placement actually equals romance.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Five seconds of slumber. Look, bro: delete her sexts and download some goddamn porn instead, rent Eternal Sunshine and toss the whole amnesia thing into the bad-idea bin, give Justin Timberlake back his “Mirrors” hook (because “Mirrors” is still not finished playing), shake it off and stop singing through your adenoids.
[1]

Luisa Lopez: The greatness of boy bands is that they are perhaps the only genre of music permitted to sing, without irony, about the earnest anguish of being a teenager. (Whether the members are, in fact, teenagers — here, most of them are — is irrelevant.) They are allowed to wail I wish that I could wake up with amnesia! with the hope that the line will add a grown-up weight and sadness to the suburban driveway that still smells like first love. But here it doesn’t go far enough, doesn’t stay long enough, to share a shelf with the other titans of desperate-boyhood-broken-heart nostalgia pop, and five seconds after it ended I couldn’t remember what it sounded like. Fitting, I guess.
[3]

Elisabeth Sanders: I wish I could wake up with amnesia and have forgotten about this dumb gleeful neo-pop-punk boy-band who can’t seem to stop writing songs about girls who are very cool and definitely out of their league. I’m not fine at all about literal human people who aren’t even old enough to drink in America in the year 2014 singing “CAUSE I’M NOT FINE AT ALL!!!!” like they’re on the Fueled by Ramen roster in 2007. I mean that as a compliment. Call me, Ashton.
[7]

Will Adams: I don’t feel bad about comparing them to One Direction, because their effort to ride their coattails is so obvious that it’s impossible to ignore. So: this is a blatant rip of One Direction. With worse vocals. And stupider conceits.
[3]

Brad Shoup: That acoustic guitar is so basic, not that it matters, I guess. They could sell a three-quarter-size 5SOS model six-string that comes with the “Amnesia” cassingle and a shirt with the top two buttons missing. The boys low like cattle, the strings cover the sky like locusts. It’s so much flailing in the pursuit of a dubious goal.
[1]