The Singles Jukebox

Once again following the “throw every song out there as a single and see what sticks” approach…

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[6.00]

Thomas Inskeep: Build-and-release EDM-pop of the laziest variety, fronted by one of the UK’s most annoying, whiny vocalists. Kinda hard to believe this is from the same man who just six years ago brought us “I Created Disco.”
[2]

Alfred Soto: “Lights” shook its post-Robyn twinkly melancholy as soon as it stuck itself on top forty playlists in 2011 and 2012. I wish I’d rated it higher. Calvin Harris’ last interesting work involved Dizzee Rascal, but the track’s ambition to achieve a classical simplicity gets realized thanks to Ellie Goulding’s key shifts in the verses and despite those bleating synths.
[6]

Crystal Leww: Music criticism’s olds (even poptimists) love to hate on EDM as a genre, especially how it removed the visible elements of artistry during live shows and replaced them with a laptop and lights. They’re the same (terribly misguided) criticisms that have faced EDM since the beginning, and Calvin Harris is the face of it all. Criticisms of the EDM live show seem to come from people who haven’t ever been to one, though — just angry folks who have time to sneer before trudging off to The Black Keys at the opposite stage. It’s too bad; an EDM live show is aggressively dead-feeling when someone bad is playing and electric when a good DJ is performing. Harris is the best at uniting a field full of people having a good time. I’m not surprised; someone instrumental in creating the people-pleasing pop tracks on 18 Months (whose hits were on radio for about that long, too) would also know what pleases crowds of live fans, too. Motion‘s rollout has been overshadowed by Taylor Swift, but it’s inevitable that these tracks will be big anyway. Hate all you want on Goulding’s vocal, Harris’ tinny strings, or his formula — I can’t imagine the crowd do anything but react automatically when the EDM king drops this. It is gut-wrenching and massive and it wants you to believe in the obvious and the heartbreaking. Welcome back, babe.
[9]

Iain Mew: It’s remarkable how much a typical Calvin Harris build is enhanced by just a slight change in its instrumentation. The sound of strained strings gives a sense of not only grandeur but also physical weight, especially coupled with doubled up drums. It’s effective enough that it doesn’t need much from its singer, which is fortunate — Ellie Goulding is best at dealing in a specific uncertainty and “Outside” is all about vague certainty.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Harris’s melody is so strong, Goulding’s verses become a de facto duet. On the hook, she sounds a bit like Sophie Ellis-Bextor: a royal experimenting with abandon. And then there’s that string bit with which to contend: serrated and wheedly and more than a little pissed-off. As pop texture it’s bad taste, or maybe just avant garde.
[6]

Will Adams: Those abrasive strings gnash their teeth through the majority of the mix, while Ellie Goulding gets pushed upstage. The song’s another serviceable EDM-pop trinket that’ll whet radio’s appetite, but Harris seems to be at the final stage before entering the zone of diminishing returns.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: There’s a missing link from good to great here, and much of it lies in the lyrics. None of them are any good. None are any bad either; they’re just the vaguest, most non-committal suggestions of sadness Harris or Goulding could come up with. The only time she deviates vocally is in the quickfire, two-line pre-chorus too. All round there’s a deflating ignorance to any of the drama so deftly developed instrumentally.
[7]