The Singles Jukebox

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd…

[Video][Website]
[5.43]

Iain Mew: What is the thing in the first verse that sounds like someone dropping a steel drum down the stairs? It’s the most obvious moment of many where Sun stretches the MOR sheen so thin that the song’s not so much smuggling in a bit of strangeness as waving over radio’s customs officials and saying “oh, go on.” I’m engaged by the personality and moments of wistful wonder, and the strong yodelling chorus bridges the song’s extremes successfully enough that they never seem forced.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: There are some weird production choices early on here (particularly the deployment of the “accidental second tab open” technique), but the breathless chorus is very insistent. A lot of the extended metaphor may be lost in translation (could those production choices be too?), but the catchiness is unavoidable.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: Pseudo-alternative pop yodeling on Mars, full of less inspired Auto-Tune slurs and hopefully inspiring someone to be themselves yet sounding like Ryan Tedder fodder all the same.
[2]

Alfred Soto: This Singaporean phenomenon plays with the melodic possibilities of the title as if reminding listeners of the medium’s possibilities. The arrangement reminds me of its constrictions too.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The metaphor suggests Dawn Richard’s excellent “Frequency“; the rest suggests an EDM remix of Dolores O’Riordan singing Jason Robert Brown, something I’m not sure it’s even possible for anyone to have asked for.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I’m here for the chorus, where Sun turns in a dusky yodel with a faraway look while a pixellated stomach churns underneath. If the whole song could be that it’d be great, even if I end up with indigestion.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Fidgety and tricksy, even before the yodeling comes in. But it awkwardly stops before the ideas all have a chance to breathe — there’s a lot going on, too much for three and a half minutes.
[7]