Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Kris Allen – Live Like We’re Dying

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



[Video][Website]
[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]

7 Responses to “Kris Allen – Live Like We’re Dying”

  1. Had no idea what Kris Allen looked like until this, his song sucks but WS x a milli.

  2. Word to Chuck for insinuating that this should have been a Tim McGraw cover rather than a Script one.

  3. Pete – are you describing Jim Robinson’s heart attack in Neighbours there?

  4. don’t know if any of you have heard the script’s original, but kris’ take on it is pretty identical, all the way down to the adlibs.

    also worth noting is that this song just passed the 1m mark in paid downloads this week.

  5. I’m surprised no one gave this a 1. I mean, if your plane were to fall out, the sky/who would you call to say your last, goodbyes. Maybe I’m just constitutionally opposed to bland pretty adult contempo nonsense, but I don’t get what one’s supposed to get out of a song like this. Is it the sort of thing girls in tight-knit cliques play when they muse over their dear friends? Or… does one listen to it for inspiration on a slow day, and if so, how dumb does one have to be to find this crap inspirational?

  6. We all listened to this whilst holding hands and picking daisies out of each other’s hair.

  7. I’m surprised no one mentioned this song’s resemblance to the worst thing ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3NE6UuaLiY