Probably about twice as high as we’d rate a new Arcade Fire single…

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[5.50]

Edward Okulicz: If you like Taylor Swift, and you like “Rebellion (Lies),” you’ll find this song to be completely average and inoffensive. I can’t get into any other frame of mind to work out why you might love it or hate it.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Scuttlebutt (YouTube scuttlebutt, but still) detects the Arcade Fire in the ringing piano spine and rock-steady backbeat. And it got me thinking about the Neutral Bling Hotel project. NBH isn’t a total success, and it seems like one of these projects comes down the RSS pike every few months, but there’s something delightful about this particular sacrilege: taking a legendarily personal psychosexual journey and making it serve brash masters. In a way, it’s true to how a lot of listeners consume music: weaving the tapestry from weird cloth. Nothing against Mangum, though, or even the Arcade Fire — I’m certainly unaware of anyone else in any creative field taking on suburban ennui — but I must admit, I dig the piss-take. Goodrem opens with animal calls and segues into uncut VH1 ecstasy. Her upper register is heartmelting, and the song keeps sending her to that mode, a tremendous release built from the beat-hugging cadence of the verses. It’s nonsense, but not, and a savvy encroachment on the alt-rock palette. (It’s also super redolent of the tapioca entreaties of evangelical worship music, and that’s doing it for me too.)
[9]

Iain Mew: As much New Radicals as it is Arcade Fire, more’s the pity, but hearing a different type of singer take on this stuff does offer its pluses as well as minuses. The way that she sings “you-ooo” conveys more than the rest of the overstuffed arrangement put together. 
[4]

Ramzi Awn: A great pick for Australian Open tennis coverage, “Sitting on Top of the World” does a fine job of sounding completely needless. If this is what being on top of the world feels like, we’re in trouble. It’s almost a feat that a song about the heights of love manages to sound as uninspired as it does, but not quite.   
[3]

Alfred Soto: About time a shrewd producer paid attention to Arcade Fire’s 2010 Grammy win long enough to sample them, and Goodrem’s euphoria, keyed to the workaday concerns of airline stewardesses, Starbucks baristas, and shopping mall cashiers, is almost as transporting as Win Butler’s (the suburbs boast all those jobs, right?). The title metaphor makes sense, alas: Goodrem sounds like she’s tied up in a chair, lucky to sing a tune that might be used for the trailer of an HBO drama.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: YouTube’s related videos suggest that the push behind this is not unrelated to the success of “Call Me Maybe,” and there’s definitely a similar bright, chipper earnestness that I associate with the Commonwealth, and also with the late 90s: “New Radicals”-y is one of the highest compliments I can give. Sadly, the way the chorus almost skids into “Come and Get Your Love” before pulling out of it is the most memorable thing about the song.
[6]