Bubble, bubble, pop, pop…

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Patrick St. Michel: Turns out a carbonated “Beez In The Trap” is pretty awesome. 
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Appropriately for a collaborative EP, Le1f’s vocals on “Soda” share top billing with Boody’s production, which veers from drum’n’bass frenetic to “Beez in the Trap” sparse: cans opening and bubbles popping left and right. Once again, the video entrances and enhances with bright clothes, intense dance moves and intensely hot guys. Despite all these potential distractions, Le1f more than holds his own — as effective at deliberately-paced sloganeering as he was at the more intricate rhymes that characterized “Wut” and much of Dark York.
[8]

Brad Shoup: I was sad to see the jungle production go… I don’t have a lot of use for bubbles. Processing turns Le!f and his wonderful rumble into an ambient element.
[5]

Ian Mathers: If anyone was worried that Le1f was going to get more conventional (read: boring) after the wonderful “Wut,” “Soda” ought to assuage those fears. The production sounds like one of those old EPs where Aphex Twin let a bunch of cohorts take stabs and twisting “Ventolin” (or whatever) into weird abstract shapes that were somehow still catchy, especially when they lean hard on those echoed popping sounds that do sound kind of like someone chugging a bottle of Coke. And while Le1f’s wonderfully dextrous sense of language is present throughout, he also wrongfoots the listener by unveiling an even more opaquely catchy refrain in the second half of “Soda” than even “Wut”‘s indelible chorus. Because more than anything else, “Soda” is fun as hell. 
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: The beat sounds like a supermarket back room bursting apart, then Le1f emerges, shaking off the vocal rubble to drop mottos. I don’t remember the last time a track made me say, out loud, “…it’s over already?”
[8]

Jamieson Cox: I like the low-level menace that Le1f’s rumbling voice and the spare, popping beat lend “Soda,” but there are a few moments here where tension that’s been slowly building comes to a head, only for the song to settle back into its dark default mode. In those moments, I find myself wanting a larger shift, or a burst into new territory. To draw up a hacky soda analogy: the bottle gets shaken but never fizzes and explodes quite the way I want it to. 
[4]

Will Adams: Once again, I’m being asked to strain to hear vocals that lie several decibels beneath the clamor around it, often to no avail. This time, though, there’s no catchy sax riff, no animated stomp to distract me. Instead there are overbearing bubble effects and annoying vocal distortions.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Remember Spring Heel Jack? I do. Jungle plus musique concrète. It takes a wihle for Le1f to emerge from the bubblepop electric, but his murmured sibilants are hypnotic on their own.
[7]

It’s cash-in, bitch….

[Video][Website]
[3.27]

Katherine St Asaph: Behold: the collaboration hyped because bloggers conveniently forgot that the #willpower singles and “Big Fat Bass” both suck! The track is “The Time (Dirty Bit)” minus Dirty Dancing and any residual dirty bits. Instead, we have Britney, alternating between sounding like Lady Gaga mocking herself and like a soundboard loaded with Meme Britney(, Bitch). Will is nothing, except maybe on that part where he’s like “it goes on and on” right when you start accusing the track of it. There are crowd nothings, because it’s will.i.am. There’s a robot spouting bullshit, also because it’s will.i.am. I want every critic who fawned over Britney being a producer’s vessel on Femme Fatale to defend this, because it is your fault. 
[3]

Will Adams: My problem with will.i.am is that he is all tell and no show. His beat is so 3008, his beat is banging, oh my goodness, this beat is so hard, and when you hear this in the club, you’ll wanna turn that shit up (that’s just asking for it from the DJs, ain’t it?). The concept of letting the music speak for itself never crosses his mind. Instead he opts for throwing down some miserable vocals rapping miserabler lyrics, all swathed in gloppy AutoTune. The result is dance music so insistent on its danceability it might as well be propaganda flown in from the future. Will’s ego is too large to let Britney do any more than play backup singer and affect a ridiculous accent, a decision seemingly only made to attract LOLs the same way a Buzzfeed listicle does. He also holds Lazy Jay back, reducing a beatmaker with a diverse and unique CV to indulge will’s stale Eurocheese fantasies, to the point where will.i.am’s additional producer credit seems the most dubious aspect of the whole thing. And finally, if you’re gonna scream and shout, you better fucking scream and shout.
[2]

Anthony Easton: Britney has been on the vanguard of the computerized, the gappy, the unreal, and her refusal of the human is made even more explicit here, when it seems like she doesn’t even need to be in the studio and is most likely not even in the same room as will.i.am. She becomes a perfect encapsulation of Halberstam’s post-human. 
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Spears is most recognizable as a dated sample, and the production sounded dated when it was basically the same thing on “The Time (Dirty Bit).” Not falling for this, will.i.am.
[1]

Alfred Soto: It was only a matter of time before will.i.am or somebody condensed Britney into a major key note on a sampling keyboard — a sample that neither screams nor shouts, which puts more pressure on our boy than he’s willing to rise up to.
[1]

Jonathan Bradley: I think I heard this in The Ivy back in 2009. Heinekens were nine dollars a bottle.
[3]

Alex Ostroff: Why bother trying to elevate a flimsy, worse-than-usual will.i.am track with a Britney feature if she doesn’t even sound recognizably herself? The “Gimme More” sample conjures up the ghost of Blackout, when it was impossible to separate the person, the persona, and the performance, but the rest of the vocals are less Brit Brit and more Brit Awards. Or at least Lady Gaga attempting her haughtiest fake accent at the Brit Awards, mangled vowels littering the stage.
[1]

Ian Mathers: The weird thing is, around 3:30 in the beat gains some strength, the synths get darker and deeper, the singing gets more forceful, and for nearly a minute you get an idea what “Scream & Shout” could have been (maybe if it had just been turned over to Britney fully?), and it’s kind of heady and amazing. But the rest of the song just feels like a too-long prelude; even during renditions of the “chorus” the backing sounds like it’s building up to something, not like the song’s reached it. There’s really no reason to delay the good bit that long in a song like this.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: A slew of artless will.i.am sounds without any dancefloor appeal or hooks — two things even a non-fan must grant he’s awfully good at — is going to take a lot more than Britney making a funny voice and having her timeless throwaway (“It’s Britney, bitch”) thrown in for attempted giggles. will.i.am is a lot of things, but he doesn’t do funny. No, scratch that, he shouldn’t do funny.
[1]

Brad Shoup: Will only knows, like, five rhymes, so the quicker we get to Britney and that “oh-we-oh” indie-pop market research, the better. Spears won’t even hide her boredom; they have to (poorly) patch in a catchphrase. I approve of her bad English as a symptom more than as a goof. Nate Ruess, you’re on deck.
[4]

Frank Kogan: The beats are made of comic-book rubber, which I like extremely except that Korea did it way better two months ago. In the verse Britney is a strange talking signifier, an electronic demand for attention. But I don’t want her as a signifier, I want her as a singer. The fake Nicki fake British accent ought to be hilarious but is just kind of there. When Britney’s singing shows up in back of the chorus, it’s beautifully sad for a couple of bars. But then we arrive at vast expanses of will.i.am, who’s nothing but boring as a singer. So the song’s a debate between beauty and bouncy and what-the-fuck. Down in the beats and tones the whole thing is casually catchy, maybe brilliantly so. Yet the result is inexplicably subdued. Is it about not having it in you to scream and shout?
[7]

Somewhere, an actor is adding the role of “hipster in an Amanda Palmer video” to her resume…

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Ian Mathers: The album title is annoying. The politics around the album are annoying. Her touring is annoying. Her self-righteous justifications are annoying. The lyrics to this song are annoying. The structure of this song is annoying. Her faking suicide to prove a point to a drug addicted boyfriend is horrifying. The fact that she thinks that she’s an artist and therefore this is all moot is completely irrelevant and skincrawlingly awful. The fact that she thinks she’s some kind of brave, original artist doing shit that others have done dozens and dozens and dozens and times before is teeth-grindingly annoying. Absent all the other stuff, that last point wouldn’t mean anything — with all the other stuff, it adds up to how much longer do we have to pay attention to her at all?
[0]

Alex Ostroff: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I appreciate when musicians who are in the habit of saying and doing offensive, oppressive, or just plain infuriating things do me the favour of making songs that are, if not actively terrible, at least mediocre. That way I feel less conflicted. “Do It With a Rockstar” is bombastic piano rock, with a pretty great chorus melody, but the whole thing is vaguely reminiscent of British rock-revival haircut indie of last decade, and I (thankfully) didn’t waste much energy or time on that. The mostly snide Britney joke doesn’t help either.
[4]

Iain Mew: I already did the disillusioned with the Amanda Palmer cult thing last time even before she took it to whole new levels and finally started getting the levels of (negative) wider attention she appeared to be after. The straw-manning of this video that tries to paint calling Palmer ableist as being on the same level of ridiculousness as calling her a Klan member is vile, but not surprising. Unlike last time the song is good, if very much in the same hammering vein as “Guitar Hero”, but I wish it wasn’t. Amidst all of the indulgence on her album there are some really outstanding songs. I thought that I would never find myself using the words “guilty pleasure” in seriousness again, but here we are.
[7]

Alfred Soto: So this is what sampling the triumphal part of a U2 chorus sounds like grafted to 2003-era garage rock. 
[3]

Anthony Easton: Is Amanda Palmer the last person on earth convinced that rock and roll, or the sexual potential of rockstar-dom, is still politically transgressive? Did that trope not disappear around the time of the Rolling Stones singing “Cocksucker Blues” or Louise Bogan telling us all to “Shave ’em Dry”? This Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox of deconstructions of second-wave feminism makes me miss Courtney, who at least was interesting when she was pulling this shit.  
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: If the lyrics I’m reading are accurate, Amanda’s got some colossal (and probably bedazzled) stones to drop “noblesse oblige” in a song released after she, the noblesse, very publicly refused to oblige a cent. Likewise the “hit me baby one more time” reference, which retroactively renders her sniffly “What’s the Use of Won’drin” ironic — backpedaling worthy of Unapologetic. Likewise the crisis in the Middle East — cynics will note how vague she left this — or namedropping INXS in lieu of playing like them. (You get what you pay for.) I’m very OK with women co-opting dudes’ groupie fantasies, and more or less OK with Kristeen Young-lite piano rock, so I can’t dislike this exactly. I just wish it weren’t so much rock ‘n’ troll.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Well, it’s an actual song, with one great internal rhyme (the DVD bit) and an undersung if sufficiently urgent and punchy chorus. Take a step back, and it’s an invocation of Stockholm Syndrome. In the headphones, it’s a nice break from the bullshit.
[6]

She’s no Kylie or Cheryl, but I do feel offended on Ms. Piper’s behalf…

[Video][Website]
[4.75]

Iain Mew: Not that Billie, no. This one adds a kind of faded Paloma Faith drama to Netsky’s bleeps, which in reaching for the ecstatic don’t manage to make the moment sound vital any more than Billie does.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Where’s the goddamn puppy?
[4]

Alex Ostroff: I prefer my dance tracks to gradually bloom into newer and newer shapes and forms instead of stuck in one endless groove, no matter how groovy said groove might be. Also, I was promised a puppy.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: The vocal and the plinky keyboard sound nice, but that’s pretty much everything of note going on here.
[5]

Ian Mathers: The intro is promising, but then Netsky brings in some pro forma “uplifting” synths and the kind of stiff backbeat that needs something either more lockstep or more free than what he does with the rest of the track. Then he locks the track into a pattern that, while not bad when heard once, is allowed to remain far too static for most of the duration. Basically, neither the vocal refrain nor the little bleep-bloop melody is compelling enough to repeat without variation that many times. And these elements are so close to being something compelling, but the composition is just a little off in too many ways and the result is seriously disappointing.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Best parenthetical since (Naked), and just as versatile: “I Belong In Your Arms (Puppy)”, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Puppy)”, “Pussy Is Mine (Puppy)”, “Let Me Love You (Until You Learn To Love Yourself) (Puppy).” What, there’s a song? It’s just a bunch of bosh, keyboard noodling and YOLO? Whatever, puppy.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Maybe there’s something refreshing about Billie’s almost conversational delivery of the title, which is essentially the thrust of every uptempo pop tune ever made. It dovetails well with the contemplative take on French house, that filtered synth funk that’s eating its way through the floorboards.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Carpe diem rarely sounds so boring.
[5]

Who’s Mike Delinquent?…

[Video][Website]
[6.88]

Alex Ostroff: Since Lady Leshurr first caught my attention with her flip of “Look At Me Now“, her mixtapes, freestyles and guest spot on Lea-Anna’s “Murder (1st Degree Remix)” have consistently wowed. Still, I’ve been waiting for a star-making turn that isn’t just a couple bars on someone else’s track or a remix of an existing hit. Meanwhile, The Mike Delinquent Project were responsible for a very 90’s dance remix of Yasmin’s well-regarded (in these parts) “Finish Line“. So “Step in the Dance” is a welcome surprise — the production begins as a double-time bit that wouldn’t be out of place on Run the Road, before revealing touches of wub-wub-wubstep and pizzicato strings. Lady Leshurr nimbly dances across the beat, switching back and forth between more aggressive grime vocals, Busta Rhymes-esque growls, dancehall patois, toasting and singing, proving more than capable of morphing with the music as necessary and dominating it when needed. There’s likely not a big enough pop hook for this to crossover, but it’s a step in the right direction.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Mike Delinquent’s name is on the marquee, and he gets the lion’s share of the namechecks in the song itself, but let’s not kid ourselves that anybody but Leshurr owns it, any more than “Perfect Stranger” was loved for Magnetic Man. Here’s hoping we get at least a “Broken Record” out of her.
[9]

Anthony Easton: I was alternating between finding this brilliant and finding it obnoxious, but I was at the SAQ today looking at the Christmas selection and was reminded of the line “We’ve got champs, we’ve got rosé”; I decided that if the line left that much of a memory, it was closer to brilliant. Extra point for how she sings “dahnce,” extra point for the percussion, extra point for handclaps.
[8]

Brad Shoup: Tame production, although I’ve been bingeing on d’n’b of late. (When the broken beats arrive at the end of this song, they do so by kids’ Casio.) Lady Leshurr’s syllable waves provide the fun, a la Eminem in “Just Lose It”.
[5]

Ian Mathers: I almost feel like the Amen break is a cheat here; I love it pretty much whenever it’s deployed, sure, but I like the first half with the rubbery, rounded synths and the slink in Leshurr’s voice on the chorus more than the coda. Both parts are good, but the first one is better, and the join is a little too clumsy to really pull off the shift. And having that distinct shift in a three-minute song seems unnecessary (unless it works).
[6]

Alfred Soto: I had a weakness for this sort of grime but this is closer to the generic end.
[3]

Iain Mew: Lady Leshurr doesn’t get to go quite as blistering as on some of her own stuff (“Good God” is particularly great). But the instrumental is easily snappy enough to stand up on its own, and she still dominates it thoroughly enough for “Step in the Dance” to be a very fine showcase. My favourite moment is a close tie between her “Drop. Bass. Out. Go!” announcement ahead of the manic end section, and the reference to Emeli Sandé’s “Next to Me” which is amusingly at odds with its original message.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Lady Leshurr deserves a lot of credit for keeping up with “Step In The Dance”: Mike Delinquent takes the music from a brisk, bass-assisted run to a bit of a cool down to a drum ‘n’ bass finale that moves a touch faster than anything that came before. The production is impressive enough, but Lady Leshurr keeping up vocally — and sounding really good while sprinting alongside it — is even sweeter.
[8]

Sadly, not about the hairstyles of blue collar America…

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Anthony Easton: I like these kinds of country songs about communities pulling together to approach an ongoing problem, and it’s good they’re finally acknowledging the recession is happening (five years after it started). Some of the details, including the line about selling the car, are efficiently haunting. But the rest of it is political grandstanding and emotional manipulation.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Adkins’ burr of a baritone would on first listen be the no-brainer means by which he applies sentiment to a rural narrative, and it might work if the guitars didn’t settle into such a perfunctory chug and the tropes weren’t so hackneyed if not incorrect. The price of gas might be up but so is the stock market, which means trouble for the tough people whose bootstraps Adkins wants pulled. He’s not the Great Commoner — he’s the Great Commonizer, insistent on reducing his audience to the redneck stereotypes in which “talking heads on CNN” traffic.
[2]

Josh Langhoff: “Trace Adkins says he wasn’t trying to make a political statement when he performed… ‘Tough People Do’ at the Republican National Convention…” Before I accuse covert RNC operatives of chloroforming Trace Adkins, I’ll assume he just doesn’t know what the word “political” means. Frequently in public discourse, even among the CNN pundits Adkins rightly dismisses, people are either too lazy or scared to examine large-scale problems in all their complexity, so they use words like “political” or “bootstraps” or “sold my car” and assume they’re saying something. (Compare to the Coup, also carless but far more realistic: “Catchin’ buses be gettin’ me to work late / And you know that slow down my pay rate.”) That’s why “Tough People Do” makes me wanna smack it. Even though its facts are basically correct, it thinks it can make everything better by calling platitudes “headlines,” ignoring huge swaths of the country, and selling that ignorance by making it gorgeous. And really, this song is gorgeous. You half expect to see Randy Newman in the credits, so rarely do assholes find themselves in songs this pretty.
[7]

Ian Mathers: All those tough people “fightin’ like they don’t know how to lose”? That “like” is important, because in real life lots of them actually lose, every day, regardless of how tough and good and hard-working they are. This America-is-a-meritocracy-on-a-level-playing-field bullshit is helping precisely none of them. And nothing in the dunderheaded plod of the song redeems the contents on musical grounds, either, so this is precisely the kind of filler shit that keeps a lot of people thinking all modern pop country is dumb and boring, when plenty of it plainly isn’t; so Adkins isn’t helping there either.
[1]

Ramzi Awn: Adkins’ voice does what you need it to, but the chorus lays it on a little thick. By-the-book is not a bad look, and “Tough People Do” would have benefited from simplifying things even more. Still, the catchphrase works.       
[6]

Alex Ostroff: When I’ve enjoyed Adkins’ songs before, it’s been due to the weight of his deep voice, which is heavy and reliable even by country’s standards. But here it’s paired with a plodding tempo and endless strings of clichés; even harmonies that split the difference between Mutt Lange and church choir can’t make “Tough People Do” genuinely inspiring.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Big booming voice, overblown, leaden song. Even Springsteen couldn’t make this one soar.
[4]

Iain Mew: The guitar takes the of insistence of Coldplay’s “In My Place” riff and goes back to source to meld it with the shimmer of Ride. Coupled with the organ bubbling up and the power of Adkins’ choir-backed certainty, it’s almost enough to stop me from wondering what happens to all the not tough people who presumably don’t last.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Was this sponsored by Rhonda Byrne?
[3]

And now, some small-w “wallpaper.”

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Edward Okulicz: Perfectly adequate electro-pop fodder underpins a song that’s not sure if it’s deliberately understated, serious or a comic exaggeration of the slight lameness of its sonic cousins. I’m guessing that it’s half-hearted, because Das Racist aren’t distinctly talented enough to pull off a woozy electro-loverman pop song, nor are they that funny at their best, which this isn’t. Besides which, knowingly pastiching something kinda lame generally produces something really lame, and this is just inoffensive.
[5]

Andy Hutchins: The sexual assault allegations that were brought to light about Das Racist on Reddit are among the most staggering in a minute, because “Womyn” and “Booty in the Air” and “Selena” all exist, and because Das Racist has seemed to be more feminist than just merely non-misogynistic for most of its existence. “Girl”‘s “And I know, and I know, and I know what we came to do / And I’m pretty sure that you do, too” sure sounds different in light of them, though. (That’s the Pitchfork-ready review; the real one is about how sunny and warm this seems, even when it’s on a Kmart commercial, and how effortless that little snatch of melody at the end is.)
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: The Das Racist story so far: Brooklyn rap group nabs Internet attention thanks to an idiotic song about a dual-franchise fast-food stop. Said outfit surprises a bunch of critics with a pair of smart and catchy mixtapes that hint that maybe they aren’t as lunkheaded as initially believed. Group signs to major label and releases an album that’s just sorta “meh.” Group eventually scores Kmart money via “Girl,” one of their least interesting songs and one devoid of humor or cleverness unless not rapping well constitutes either. The world is a strange place.
[3]

Anthony Easton: Really dumb, but the line “plus, I heard you had a pool” made me laugh — which is worth something. 
[4]

Alfred Soto: With a sequenced bass line that sounds lifted from a Robyn track, I expected these fools to submerge their doggerel beneath the beat. Turns out the meathead rhymes deserve a hearing, especially the one about the pool.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Trading in jokes and politcal, uhh, consciousness for some half-hearted blog-ballad crooning is one way to ensure you end up on a lot of web-distributed crush mixtapes, I guess. But is there a career in that?
[6]

Brad Shoup: Produced by Blood Diamonds (a 2011 Dumbest Interview finalist), which explains those fucking marimbas popping up in the mix. If you’re, like, Xgau-heavy into these dudes, you’ll give ’em credit for any of a half-dozen shruggingly dumb phrases. Hey, it might even be a parody! It turns out you can have it all.
[5]

And his aim is lousy by the sound of it…

[Video][Website]
[7.17]

Anthony Easton: That riff is almost as apocalyptic as the lyrics deserve, and the vocals flirting with speaking, or being flat, put emphasis on the words themselves: cryptic, difficult, and haunting. 
[9]

Edward Okulicz: It’s late November, so it’s not too early to crown this the riff of the year, and it’s used brilliantly, snaking through a track which remarkably has a few other A-grade tricks to reveal. The vocal interplay isn’t sweet-and-sour, more sour-and-sourer. There’s a weird tension and menace that comes from both that steady beat, the slapdash taps on the piano and the lyrics that are an apocalypse writ small, and it all comes together in a beguiling fashion.
[9]

Ian Mathers: Melissa McClelland and Luke Doucet have both been hanging around the Canadian music industry for a while now, so it’s not surprising that their work as Whitehorse is smoothly assured, although thankfully not too polished to be interesting. The duo vocals at the beginning remind me of Mother Mother, although “Devil’s Got a Gun” is less fervent than that band (but also less goofy), and the song shifts easily into loping, singalong chorus. It’s the kind of unobtrusively catchy song that you might not think much of at the time, but catch yourself humming the next day.
[7]

Alfred Soto: If any hook defines “effortless,” it’s this one. So lockstep are the lyrics delineating a personal if not global apocalypse, so assured are the two voices harmonizing that the performance, like Nashville product, flirts with mere facility. Sometimes I think it goes all the way.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I think I get it… it’s one of those ABBAesque dioramas of dysfunction, high-swiped acoustic chords and all. The song keeps pivoting from a kind of back-porch twangy tango (twango!) to pop performativity. It’s all very woozying. I do wish I liked the singers more.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: The closely twined singing, riff, percussion loops, and lyrics are so assured that I’m almost convinced I’m being pulled along in the song’s wake. But it turns out there’s no actual forward momentum, just a really tricked-out seesaw.
[6]

I dunno, I got used to seeing them less clothed than this.

[Video][Website]
[3.00]

Anthony Easton: The “dododo”s are so simple it might be lazy, and the whistles add to the saccharine quality. I should hate this, or seek it out as a genre exercise — can you imagine Stephin Merritt doing it? — or appreciate it ironically. But apparently according to The New York Times, irony is dead, so I like this earnestly enough. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: Songs are hard.
[2]

Ian Mathers: As someone who does not live in the UK and was not paying attention during McFly’s chart-topping years, so I have no idea if this kind of gentle, lightweight strum-and-grin is their normal metier or what. And it’s not like it’s either hard or damning to write another happy song about love that says absolutely nothing new about the subject. Which leaves “Love Is Easy” in a fairly normal limbo for radio fodder; unlikely to inspire much devotion, but unlikely to be turned off either.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Science has demonstrated, without anyone wishing to know, that it is indeed possible to make One Direction look like Mötley Crüe.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Making the ukulele not sound cloying, though, is hard for these guys.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Does the job for a McFly single, which is to exist, have a video, promote a greatest hits record and be purchased in some form or other by their dedicated fan-base. It’s workable commerce, mediocre art and the opening half with ukuleles makes Jason Mraz sound dangerous. The second half at least hits at some of their more energetic, catchy earlier work, but the only thing they’ve added in the last ten years is inanity.
[3]

Brad Shoup: I’m not really up on my McFly… does Tommy always sing like his hands are full of teeth? If you explained the Beatles to a six-year-old, this is the exact song they would write — the It’s a Wonderful Life bit would be his take on “Revolution 9,” God bless him — and now that I’ve typed that, I realize I’m not allowed to give this a bad score.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: I keep clicking back to the song to make sure the clip isn’t actually stuck on a Campbell’s soup ad.            
[1]

Will Adams: Jesus fuckballs, there are a lot of candidates for the worst part of “Love is Easy.” The ukelele? The doot-dos? “I’m laughing the clouds away/I hear what the flowers say?” The whistling? “Twee-he-ee-he-ee-ee-heee/Twiddle-de-dee-dee dee?” I’ve never wanted a song to end more than “Love is Easy.” The central conceit pushes my cynical buttons in all the wrong ways, and Tom Fletcher’s syrupy vocals don’t help. This perfect storm of Jason Mraz and Owl City has made my winter much darker and colder.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: FLOWCHART FOR GENIAL WHITE DUDES WHO WISH TO MAKE GENIAL UKELELE WHISTLE SONGS: [image unable to be rendered, as it pummels with malware anyone who’d open it)
[1]

Three whole integers in a day! Hooray math! (Also, hurrah maths!)

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Anthony Easton: It makes sense that the only virtue of a song called “Not Giving In” is its relentlessness. Too bad that it refuses to use that relentlessness for anything interesting. 
[2]

Iain Mew: The last time we reviewed Rudimental and John Newman I spent much of my review decrying Alex Clare on the basis that “Too Close” was so bad at all the same things that “Feel the Love” was good at. Now they’re working together! Inevitably the results fall somewhere between the two, at their best when concentrated on rhythmic propulsion but at their worst when giving space for the grizzled vocals to annoy.
[5]

Will Adams: The chorus is more drum & brass in the vein of “Feel the Love,” but the euphoria’s deflated thanks to the dense half time verses. Elsewhere, “Not Giving In” is similarly disjointed. John Newman tries to hack up all the molasses that’s clogging his throat while Alex Clare caterwauls like he’s auditioning for X Factor. Maybe some more horns could have tied it together.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Newman sounds uncannily like Joe Cocker in pieces here, which pretty well sums up both the lineage and the ambition of this feel-good washcloth.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Love the vocals here, and it’s nice to see that quiet/loud/quiet is still a formula that works. For my money, the bits where the beat really kicks in is just as effective as a Nirvana track, although it’s probably doesn’t hurt that I already loved that beat from “Scribble” and elsewhere. It doesn’t quite build/gel as strongly as it feels like it could, but the ingredients here are mostly quality (love the horns, especially). Boo to the video for cutting the music at a climactic moment for the purposes of melodrama, though.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Alex Clare and John Newman on the same track? It’s an embarrassment and riches. This one don’t put me into a world-historical benevolence like “Feel the Love,” but I could see someone in the Aggie athletic department using this for a montage of Johnny Manziel scrambling for first downs. The bass drop is more like a slide across the table, Newman doubles down on the soul cry, and those uncredited cooing women represent the crossunder potential. These guys have a real sense for pop songcraft, that’s for certain.
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