Ronettey!

[Video][Website]
[4.57]

Jonathan Bogart: In which the girls who were so much fun shit-talking and ball-busting are far less convincing in seriousface Winehouse drag. They have pipes, sure, but absent the colorful personalities and irreverent nose-thumbing at the very idea of pop, they’re swallowed up by their own solemn production. Even the gorgeously saturated video walks through a rote cheating-man, lady-solidarity script, and remains depressingly dignified throughout.
[5]

Kat Stevens: All credit to the girls who are singing seven shades of crap out of this, but the plodding Shangri-Lite backing is so uninspired that I can’t mark this higher. E.g. those gaps at the end of every phrase where nothing happens — that is where you put, oh I dunno, handclaps or a rave horn or something.
[3]

Anthony Easton: This is so recursive it must be camp, but I am terrified it isn’t.
[2]

Jer Fairall: A beyond-obvious pastiche done with a reasonable amount of craft and sincerity, but do such conversations really represent the tensions between parents and children anymore? The disconnect leaves the song feeling regressive rather than innocent, like a Mitt Romney vision of a world that no longer exists. When the singer takes the opportunity to bust out with a fierce spoken word bit at the very end, I take the would-be homage as an encouraging last ditch act of transgression.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Even after listening to this a bunch, I can’t sort if they’re sending up the girl-group ballad, trying to cut the usual I-choose-the-bad-boy defiance with a little terror, or just mailing in a jumble for the sensitive second single. There’s a bit of their snap in the ad-libs, but I’ve talked myself into oblivion and out of a higher score.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: I hesitate to say this, as it resembles the commentary that’s put Stooshe half in a filthy pigeonhole, but though their schtick works when it’s dirty girl-group music, it doesn’t work when it’s merely edgy. For all their quailing, cooing emotion, Stooshe’s only imitating music whose heart was already thoroughly dark. The only monster that’s new is the ghost of Mark Ronson.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: Why would the Pipettes invite Adele to join them?
[3]