The Singles Jukebox

One of these days your editor will not mistake her for Caro Emerald, but this isn’t then…

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[4.71]

Alfred Soto: A torch song graced by a fine Imelda May vocal and Jeff Beck’s solo but rather too much of a predictable thing. What is a black tear, and why are May and Beck so sad about it?
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: What clever artifice: black and tears together, two things potentially irreducible combining to form something of no obvious reality-based meaning, yet doubly monolithic. The song itself is befitting: ceremonial sadness; a stately, upright lament when everything is sinking. It’s like a lesser “Kissing a Fool” — not demanding itself be taken seriously, but sounding like someone is feeling very serious, very seriously. That makes it hard to argue with, and rather all the more attractive; artifice made invisible.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Imelda May’s story that got her to write “Black Tears” sounds more memorable than the actual product. “I looked like Alice Cooper,” she said, with streams of eyeliner coming down her face after a long goodbye. That image seems like a more complex cry, one you can’t help but to tear from a laugh because there’s nothing else to do. The tear shed in “Black Tears,” meanwhile, is plain and simple partly to a fault.
[5]

Katie Gill: Doo wop meets rock vocals and a bit of honky tonk guitar? There’s so much going on that occasionally “Black Tears” loses itself in the genre confusion. The minimalist approach lets May’s voice shine as she tears into those vocals and lets Beck’s guitar work shine in his solo, but I wish the song had a little bit more to support the two of them.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: It wasn’t Adele’s fault she beat Bey at the Grammys; in some sense, someone who sold that many records deserved to be recognised at a ceremony as industry-oriented as that one. But it is our fault for constantly finding it remarkable when white singers invoke black styles, particularly the trad styles that remind us of older times we can set comfortingly in aspic. Imelda May has a richer, smokier voice than Duffy or Amy Winehouse or Joss Stone, but nothing says self-own like “ft. Jeff Beck.” Sonny Boy Williamson’s reputed quip that the Yardbirds wanted to “play the blues so bad” — the punchline being that they did — has been true of such aspirants for more than half a century.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Norah Jones divided by Janis Joplin = much, much less than the sum of its parts. Jeff Beck tosses in some guitar licks that almost anyone could’ve done. 
[3]

Edward Okulicz: The torch and twang of the chorus recalls to these ears Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” as much as the rest could have been any white girl singing soul pop. Despite the weighty subject matter, the song feels lightweight — like it needs the weight of the production and all its breathy backing vocals and old-school drum sounds to keep it flying away, but instead gets flattened.
[4]