The Singles Jukebox

We don’t like him as much as his missus…

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[5.90]

Anthony Easton: There is a scene in The Special Relationship between the Blairs, where she is getting dressed, and he is in the bath. It is intimate, flirtatious, knowing, and suggests that the morality of public appearance flows naturally from private acts. Shelton, who has spent his career pivoting between public and private acts, is an expert in sorting out the tension between these two spheres — and though the song is pretty clichéd, his soft voice and dampened acoustic guitar make the same point as the film does.
[9]

Chuck Eddy: Never thought Blake’s forté was ballads, but he’s often good at them, and he puts over the male vulnerability here fine. The idea obviously is for ladyfans to say “hey, that’s about me — I like bubblebaths and chocolates and leave trails of clothes on the floor and break things and call Mom a lot, too! And my man never notices!” None of which details are interesting or new, though a guy on the country station here really liked the line about her painting her toes because she bites her nails. I like the quaint grammar and sexy metaphor of “I’ve not tasted all your cooking,” though. And “bookends” as another rhyme.
[7]

Frank Kogan: “Do you paint your toes ’cause you bite your nails?” Wait, does she bite her toenails? Oh, I get it, she paints her toes ’cause her bitten fingernails provide too small a canvas for her artistry. Anyhow, this is the one line that comes within kilometers, miles, or continents of anything requiring imagination; for the rest, we’ve got a good title and the lyrics not living up to it, just her sliding down the hall in socks and sinking into bubble baths, nothing you couldn’t find in a his/hers shop from 100 years ago or that implies this guy could possibly care what she’s actually like. Tune’s OK, and Blake, who irl is marrying a gunpowder-and-lead girl, sings this comfortably and, unsurprisingly, didn’t write it.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Dating Miranda Lambert has taught Shelton how to sound intimate without breathing heavily on his guitar strings, and he knows how much sentiment to wring from an almost Miranda-worthy line like “Do you paint your toes ’cause you bite your nails?” Easing past the casual sexist tropes (yeah, right, like guys don’t eat chocolate when they’re upset too), Shelton and the snug, twinkly production are in perfect tandem.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Whether you find this incredibly touching or incredibly creepy hinges upon whether you think Blake’s ever spoken to this woman. The fact that his vision of her is a collage of soft porn and Cathy comics leaves me unconvinced. Then again, this is a cover, so that’s not directly Blake’s fault; if only I heard something in his voice to change my mind.
[4]

Zach Lyon: There’s a sweet and true sentiment at the core here — that point where you want to learn everything about them, to know all of the things they only admit to themselves, in private. But Blake doesn’t really know this girl, does he? It sounds like he’s just staring at her from across the room, given the “my oh my you’re so good-looking” line and the fact that he doesn’t seem to know the slightest thing about her. It ends up just being creepy, listening to him create a fantasy of a girl he doesn’t know based on little more than her looks. Could reasonably be titled “Blake Shelton Programs a Sexbot.”
[3]

Michaelangelo Matos: How about that: a country-music answer song to Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Well, almost: gender play is not this song’s thing, but getting inside the head of a woman the singer is feeling obsessive about definitely is. The dynamic of the lyric is set up immediately, when the first line, “My, oh my, you’re so good looking,” is rescued by, “Hold yourself together like a pair of bookends.” It seesaws like that some, and the second verse really dips in quality; Blake doesn’t help by giving the innocuous phrase “in your socks” everything he can. But that’s window dressing. The “I wanna know, I wanna know, I wanna know” gives the track an eerily still center. So does the steel guitar.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: He sings it with some feeling and skill, and it rolls along pleasantly enough without ever getting exciting or moving, and I could do without the limp “my oh my you’re so good looking” as an opening.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: “Who Are You When I’m Not Looking” is a bit too sedate for Shelton to be this anodyne, particularly if he’s stuck with not even one decent rhyme for the chorus. “Book ends”? “All you’re cooking”? Both songwriter (Earl Bud Lee and John Wiggins in this case) and protagonist suffer from a severe lack of imagination; the most exciting idea the singer can conjure up about his girlfriend’s private life is that maybe sometimes she has a bubble bath. That said, it’s a smart enough idea for a lyric, and it would have been nice to hear what a writer like Brad Paisley, who is substantially funnier and more moving with his lists, would do with it. Shelton’s a likable enough presence that a dull song doesn’t make for a complete failure, but it’s a disappointing effort from a singer who usually takes his subject matter to far more incisive places.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: This thing’s somnnolent quality may work in its favor, the equivalent of a LOOOOOOOOOOOONG arm stretch before Blake moves to put his arm around the lady with the punchline, “When it feels just right are you thinkin’ of me?” But it’s a dangerous game he’s playing, because she might pass out first.
[6]