“Like I Love You” is ten years old this year…

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[6.64]

Jonathan Bogart: If Justin Timberlake refuses to make Justin Timberlake music, well, nature abhors a vacuum. Someone’s gotta make Justin Timberlake music.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: This should be terrible. Bieber’s musical growth spurt’s been driven not by charisma but swag coaching, not by maturity but marketing, meaning that half of this sounds like Justin Timberlake before his hooks dropped and half of this sounds like the Ying Yang Bobbsey Twins. Yet somehow he doesn’t screw up the fantastic beat he’s been given — then you realize that beat came from Mike Posner and that neither he nor Bieb nor anyone else realized it was good enough to keep using, then realize that here as in “Baby,” courtship for Bieber means cash, then realize that in the teenpop signifier game, all this makes him somehow a bad boy. Everybody flagellating themselves over liking Carly Rae Jepsen has no idea what awaits.
[5]

Iain Mew: Alien ghost whistles and bright, crisp guitar doing an adorable not-quite-strut! Those sounds are so enjoyable that I barely even care about the song over them.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Less a Justified ripoff than the product of someone who recognizes no other route to adulthood than the well-trod one that goes through eerie R&B minimalism, skittering acoustics, seductive half-raps, soulful falsetto twists, wink-nudge allusions to profanity and, apparently, Swiss cuisine. Whether this Justin has a “Cry Me a River” or a “SexyBack” of his own in him remains to be seen, but this waif of a track surely isn’t it.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The Bieb goes Ying Yang Twins by invoking the spirit of 2002-era Timberlake — the Timberlake hovering between “Gone” and “Like I Love You.” Whispering tough with the memory of tasting a girl’s mouth for the first time, promising to be a gentleman because that’s what thousands of dollars in training taught him, cooing over acoustic strums like it’s the first time he’s ever heard one, he comes closer than ever to being the star he’s supposed to be, and the world is better for it.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Biebs is too dorky to make the whispery verses appropriately dangerous — I’ve decided to believe he’s in on the joke of “I could be your Buzz Lightyear” — but that doesn’t matter when that dreamboat acoustic guitar flutters in to life for the chorus. May Bieber remember that Justin Timberlake ushered himself properly into adulthood with an assist from Pusha-T and Malice. How long until the Next Justin and Odd Future turn their apparent mutual admiration into an Internet-breaking collab?
[7]

Brad Shoup: “I could be your Buzz Lightyear”: well, we scotched that. The tempo’s sluggish, the vocals enervated yet still overpowering and stacked as if to paper over shaky technique. It seems his enthusiasm’s skipped adulthood and gone straight for middle age.
[4]

Kat Stevens: In my continuing dedication to reviewing things properly, I’ve got one YouTube of “Boyfriend” open and another with Captain Beefheart’s “Electricity.” WHO KNEW.
[7]

Andrew Ryce: This kinda sounds like a parody song, but for that reason I have trouble hating it. Swag. Swag.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Was genuinely suprised at how much I liked this, and I think it’s because it is mostly dripping with vulgar sleaze. There is nothing good here, nothing right, and it’s on the right edge of wrong. Also: unironic love of fondue and a sudden ending. 
[9]

Edward Okulicz: I’m giving this a scarily high score in spite of my reservations about Bieber — he’s not for me as a popstar or a fantasy object, and his songs certainly aren’t good enough to make me swoon for their sounds. But this one, this one is good. Bieber struts as if he’s Usher, the song might as well be “Girlfriend (Remix)” without Nelly, and it has the same promise of sexual awakening-fuelled development as “I’m A Slave 4 U.” Even if you’ve spent time as the Western Hemisphere’s most desired teen boy, you’ve also spent time in the private corners of lust you don’t speak or sing aloud. I feel like this is going to be massive, and for once I’m on board nice and early.
[9]