Second-highest score of the yee-uh, babe…

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[7.38]

Erick Bieritz: The “Love Letter” album is raking in plaudits because the classic soul references are an easy point of access for critics who have lowballed his previous material, but the approach is more than a marketing tool. The sincerity is most evident at the end of the final verse, when Kelly mentions texting, almost as if he’s so impatient for a response to his letter that he “breaks character.” It’s the only explicit acknowledgment of the anachronism at the heart of the song and exemplifies how it’s more than just a backwards-looking homage.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: I have a quandary with Love Letter the album in that I definitely love at least its concept, but (with a couple exceptions, like “Taxi Cab” and maybe the Christmas song), the songwriting generally strikes me as perfunctory-to-nonexistent. This song is fairly typical; the words are, as far as I can tell, mostly a list of non-sequiturs that have little or nothing to do with anything that anyone would say in an actual love letter (though admittedly they made slightly more sense when I read the lyric sheet and learned that “wedding bells, baby showers, vacation, cellphones” actually ended with the word “sailboats” instead), so the music never really connects emotionally like this kind of mush is meant to. The thin, rather rinky-dink sound falls short on sonic terms as well; there’s a tasty hint of yacht-samba in the groove here, but something’s missing; compared to a crooner even as forgotten and inconsequential as, say, Glenn Jones, I’m not quite convinced R.’s voice would have been full enough to cut it in the ’70s or ’80s, at least given a production as lacking in lushness as this (“When A Woman’s Fed Up” got it right, somehow). Still, both song and album as a whole are likable genre exercises regardless. And seeing how this guy’s personality can be so unattractive (and not goofy-clever on an Oran “Juice” Jones/Richard “Dimples” Fields/Ray Parker Jr. level either), I’m not sure I’d like it all more if the songs did convey more personality. So I’m giving this the benefit of the doubt, with major reservations.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: I like his voice, but I like him best at his most bizarre and original moments, and this is surprisingly old-fashioned, basically a smooth soul number, rather politely romantic. I like it well enough, but it feels like a filler track really; I want the weirder R Kelly back, please.
[6]

Josh Langhoff: This is Kelly in his sunniest mode, stepping through not-exactly-bygone R&B while canned drums burble gently in the background. The lyric is pretty brilliant, too. It’s a deceptively artless stream of consciousness on people’s motives for writing love letters, incorporated into his own act of writing, so that, without a shred of detail about Kelly’s surroundings, I can envision him sitting at his dining room table writing his letter, pausing every once in a while to ruminate on the nature of letter writing itself. And in my imagination, his dining room table is my dining room table, which in turn makes me think I should catch up on my correspondence. I mean, wow — talk about collapsing distinctions between life and art, between artist and audience.
[9]

Al Shipley: The putrid retro of “When A Woman Loves” nearly scared me off of the parent album and follow-up single, and I’m glad it didn’t, because this a wholly different beast. Really, it simply wraps Kelly’s classic influences in a creamy modern exterior of synths and drum machines more in line with his Chocolate Factory era than anything else, although the beat keeps reminding me of early Ne-Yo/Stargate hits as well.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Oh, so it ISN’T a Stargate production. Since it’s R. Kelly and he’s taking such care with this phrasing these days, some listeners will find his no doubt sincere listing of cocktails, happy hours, sailboats, and puppy dog tails as signs of maturity. Me, I never trusted the bastard, which is why I wish Mario or Ne-Yo had helmed this.
[6]

Tal Rosenberg: Between two and twenty years ago, had you presented me with a song joyfully celebrating sun, smiles, good times, miracles, birthdays, good cheer, etc., I would have reflexively gagged. I’m not sure if I’ve changed or pop has -— maybe both. In any case, “Love Letter” feels like an injection of genuine uplift into a grey, morose, defeated bloodstream. It’s not just the absolutely infectious melody, which has been Kelly’s forté for God knows how long. It’s also Kelly’s absolutely terrific performance, the judicious timing and separation of the harps, keys, horns, percussion, bass, and the simplicity and unbelievable obviousness of the lyrics. It certainly feels like no art I’ve come across in recent memory has dealt so plainly with such elemental sources of happiness. And it’s this somehow earthly and otherworldly combination of the most basic templates of positivity that feels like a panacea on this incredibly soul-crushing world, the sunshine in the clouds, the smile on my face driving south on I-90/94, the impossibilities of the world blowing out the car window in a gush of gooey and totally welcome sentimentality.
[9]

Zach Lyon: Still with the awful MIDI horns, but I am indeed swooning, so it’s a success.
[7]