In which we ponder how well he does actually know himself…

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[4.09]

Brad Shoup: Wikipedia calls this “electropop.” I’d say the same if I turned the song off after 5 seconds. It’s actually surging adult alternative pop/rock with a sleepwalking piano ostinato, muffled snare raps and Lambert’s big boring pipes.
[3]

Matt Cibula: Oy, there’s gonna be so much squandered talent in this guy’s career by the time it’s all said and done. I like the few actual details in the song, and his voice (because I don’t mind a belter), and a coupla other things, so this doesn’t actually piss me off. But the pacing is weird, the scenario has been done before, we hit unearned emotional plateaus way too early — just a myriad of wrong things. Plus the Coldplay-clone piano line does kind of piss me off for some reason.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Having found his niche as a male Pink, he now needs to find the well of good songs to suit his style. He clearly hasn’t found it yet if this blustery slice of emotional limpness is the best his people can muster. A few high notes doesn’t salvage this small song from the damage done to it by a big, big voice in search of something better. He’s belting the song, and I don’t mean that in the sense of volume here.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: I enjoyed Lambert’s time on Idol — he has a good instrument and a great sense of showmanship. Translating that into the current pop market has proven difficult, however. Belted power ballads and saucy Gaga-derivative electropop respectively suited his voice and public persona decently enough, but it feels like his potential is perpetually being squandered. I will say that the production on this does a much better job at “electronic Timbaland-esque power ballad” than that Joe Jonas track from a while back, and the verses are nicely understated before the drama blasts into the stratosphere. Still, if I ever want to wallow in gay relationship melodrama, I own all three Bloc Party albums.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Sometimes staying in a relationship because you are convinced that the person is better than you and you will find no one better is codependent, and codependency really makes no one happy. It might make you so unhappy that you make shoddy rip-offs of better, more massive, and more overwhelmingly splashy Europop.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: Destined to be the featured song in the trailer of the first mainstream gay romcom. Lambert needs bigger, badder, pretty/uglier songs, and this dreck — a total codependent whinefest (thanks, Claude Kelly?!) — is really not a good direction for him.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: The verses turn to choruses much the way that snow turns to slush; in songwriting as in nature, the latter lasts longer.
[5]

Iain Mew: Adam channels Daniel Bedingfield for the chorus, ready to take off out of the constraints of the song and into the stratosphere and/or total madness. Unfortunately, for all that he does throw in a few “You’re the only thing in this world I would die without” type lines, he doesn’t manage to keep up that level of psycho melodrama over the whole song, and everything around him sounds far too small and tame to match any such emotional stakes. The results are a bit comical and faintly queasy.
[3]

John Seroff: I would be hard pressed to think of a more skilled practitioner of take-it-to-the-edge, push-it-to-the-limit, power ballads than Lambert and he’s certainly at the top of his game in “Better Than”.  More’s the pity for me that this is my rough equivalent of knowing the best rhubarb grower at the local farmer’s market:  I’ve no taste for the stuff, regardless of obvious quality.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The problem with only having one setting — flat-out — is that you end up belting ballads which can’t live up to the drama you’re manufacturing.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The only good gay artist is a good gay artist.
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