Checking in on the Britz…

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Iain Mew: Does the idea of “Heaven” with added rap verses about teenage pregnancy appeal to you? That question is likely to determine how you feel about “Falling Down”. Mz Bratt cutting straight across the chorus is the only trick that works that isn’t stolen wholesale.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: There’s not an artist in Britain who could salvage this glurge, but Mz Bratt gamely pretends it’s not a Rihanna rewrite, Khalaeliah bribes the lyrics sites to pretend she’s not singing “never ever thought you’d ever be this pitiful” and the music stirs drama as if nobody’s pretending.
[6]

Brad Shoup: We have all the speeds covered: mid-tempo drum and bass connecting Mz Bratt on the quick end and big draping piano chords on the slow. It sounds a bit like U2 remixing Kosheen. I kid but I’m totally in the song’s headspace: grand mourning gestures from the keys and Khalaeliah’s contralto (and co-writer Emeli Sandé). It seems that the Anglophonic charts are turning into the lost-youth version of the New York Times‘ “Portraits of Grief” series. But there’s no Furtado to look up — even Bratt’s guests on the remix refuse to paint a little light — which makes this track quite admirable and makes me a poor Augustinian. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: A throwback: think Tasmin Archer’s “Sleeping Satellite” or one of those Neneh Cherry numbers in which the singer seeks justice on behalf of a lovelorn girl. Admittedly, the piano does the throwing back; Mz Bratt’s don’t-give-ups evoke the timbre of a half dozen contemporary R&B singers, including She Who Must Not Be Named. The rest is a well-intentioned gesture.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Emo-rap is, of the big commercial hip-hop forms, the hardest to do well and the least critically rewarded when it is. I wouldn’t mind hearing this every hour on the hour, not at all.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Everything about this sounds tired, from the blandly uninspiring “inspirational” narrative to the Amen break underpinning the instrumental. There’s no comfort or catharsis in this catalogue of woe, just the mistaken assumption that grit can make up for one dimensional storytelling.  
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