Two UK number ones for the Essex teen – hey, isn’t this easy…

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Chuck Eddy: On “Mama Do,” I got the idea she was trying to be soulful, and failing. Here, it seems she’s trying to be bouncy, and succeeding. An improvement.
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Martin Kavka: This is better than “Mama Do,” but only because there is a Wall Of Sound between her and my ears. Extra point taken off for the ridiculousness of the lyric “something’s going on and I think it’s going on right now.” Really? You think?
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Hillary Brown: I was in the minority on her last single (which means I actually liked it), but this one is significantly boringer, with electronic accent thumps that sound straight off the righthand side of a Casio and wouldn’t be out of place in a Chevy dealership jingle.
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Martin Skidmore: Pixie’s thick-voiced singing is less annoying than last time, but she still doesn’t seem to have more than a couple of notes in her range.
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Doug Robertson: She’s so emotionally disconnected from what’s going on that she might as well be reading the latest Dan Brown novel instead of being the pop star she supposedly is. No-one’s forcing you to do this, y’know.
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Pete Baran: The British pop computer is a rum old deal, creating identikit ingénues who can plug in a slightly peppy backing tack and happily make it to the top ten. But there really isn’t anything worthwhile going on here; she has zero personality on this record, and beyond the intellectual idea of making a Frankenstein pop star, I just don’t see the point of Pixie Lott.
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Matt Cibula: Might be sacrilege but I think just a lot of this is charming, from the retro horn- and percussion-noises to her shameless mugging on the record and in the video and with her own damn name.
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Alfred Soto: Who says the Brits can’t have their own Pink? But this misinterprets Pink: the horns are tepid, the chorus goes nowhere (I don’t need reminders that boys and girls “got it goin’ on”), and Pixie’s vocals are as fervent as your sister singing in the shower.
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Iain Mew: That this was her second UK number one is probably the most interesting thing about it. In the past few years, with download sales gradually building ahead of a CD release, we’ve had a slow chart turnover compared to the early 00s days of a different #1 every week. Now downloads dominate enough, we’re back to pre-release hype and long lead ups, and totally unremarkable songs getting to the top then dropping fast. I guess that as a side effect of more people buying singles again, a few of these isn’t too much to put up with.
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Anthony Easton: I am shocked that this Richardson-lite aesthetic of trashed out pseduo-decadence has lasted this long, and between this video and the photos illustrating the story in the New Yorker this week, it might be the death of it.
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Dave Moore: It’s back to school, kids! Grab your SEARS backpack, SEARS seasonal outfits, SEARS multi-subject binders, SEARS fully customizable iPhone skins, and uh…do you need a SEARS protractor? Don’t worry, this one’s on mom ;).
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