The reigning American Idol is not a man given to looking interesting…

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[4.10]

Ian Mathers: How does such an intermittently fascinating show produce such consistently dull music?
[3]

Alfred Soto: “We can make a feast of these crumbs” is the kind of howler a Neil Tennant or Mary J. Blige could infuse with wit or need, respectively. But Allen’s perfectly OK regular-guy pipes treat it like they don’t know the reason between living and dying. Such a nice boy, though.
[4]

Martin Skidmore: Not that I was a fan, but he did a decent job on soul standards on American Idol. However, here we have an ultra-lite rock cover. He delivers the overcrowded lyric with a nimble touch (helped by two vocal tracks), but there isn’t much on offer to a singer beyond avoiding sounding too rushed.
[3]

Michaelangelo Matos: Idea: urgent. Execution: glib.
[4]

Al Shipley: “86,400 seconds in a day/ to turn it all around or throw it all away/ we gotta tell ’em that we love ’em while we got the chance” — so, an ode to expressing affection for units of time, which is a strange concept. Musically, it’s the kind of bland pretty adult contempo nonsense I’m usually a sucker for, but even I can tell when it could be better.
[6]

Doug Robertson: While cramming the entirety of a mawkish self help book into a three and a half minute long pop song is undoubtedly a timesaver, it’s not exactly a worthwhile task.
[3]

Pete Baran: I am naturally predisposed to like songs with a glass half full philosophical message, and rather like the way the chorus plays. It is therefore a misfortune that Kris has picked upon my least favourite aphorism; whilst the majority of the dying I have ever witnessed has been mocked up by actors, most of it seems extremely painful. The last way I want to spend the rest of my life is clutching my chest wildly, in the throes of some never ending heart attack, or with the exquisite pain of a gunshot wound.
[4]

Chuck Eddy: No lie — when I first heard this on the radio, I actually guessed it might be the collaboration between Bono and Jay-Z for Haiti (which I still haven’t heard, apparently.) Switched stations too soon to learn otherwise, too. Funny, but I still have to dock the guy a notch for not spending two-point-seven seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.
[5]

Kat Stevens: After a shaky Bruce Hornsby start, this flowers into a pleasant lighters-aloft call-to-arms that wouldn’t be out of place in the closing credits of a romantic comedy. I think if this young man was serenading me outside my window in an attempt to atone for some minor faux pas, then I would wait until he’d finished the song before chucking a bucket of water over him.
[7]

John Seroff: “Live Like We’re Dying” teaches us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, not to sweat the small stuff, all we are is dust in the wind, you only get so many sunrises, a stitch in time saves nine, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile. You can’t judge a book by its cover but if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
[2]