A pa!r!ng for. anyone who loves superfluous punctuat!on…

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[4.45]

Alfred Soto: P!nk and piano — a change of pace! She flattens vowels like an elephant does potato chips, which mitigates the effect of those treacly lyrics, but not enough to mitigate her co-singer, who’s not mitigated off the track. This reminds me of how louche Pink’s career has remained since 2002; she’s either chasing trends that pop has started to abandon (think OneRepublic) or sought a place for pop-inflected punk. Time may absolve her.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Despite having little good to say about her career direction from Funhouse on, I’m not opposed to P!nk getting deep over the drum style of the day — that was Missundazstood, and that was OK. Nor is a P!nk piano ballad a bad idea, per se, although I’d prefer that either the industry or P!nk’s position in it were such that the combination wouldn’t mean a Glee fake book page or post–”Someone Like You” blandness but something more like Fiona Apple. Nor is P!nk sounding unnervingly like a Nate Ruess demo bad, I guess; as a songwriter she’s been on the other side of this often enough. But P!nk aside, Bhasker and Ruess together is some weird alchemy. Sometimes you get “We Are Young”; others, OneRepublic.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: First and foremost, “Just Give Me a Reason” is a really good song. But it is just as fascinating to imagine how P!nk, Ruess, and producer Jeff Bhasker sat down and planned to make the pop ballad feel different without turning any of the conventions on its head. P!nk’s delivery neglects to subscribe notes to the ends of many of her first verse’s lines, so that the vulnerability feels real rather than measured (the fall comes on “of our love”); Ruess is the maximalist, finding ways to play with his vocals, never playing it straight, wavering as he swings at new deliveries and melodies, a man who gives his performances footnotes; Bhasker, still mining the potential of an old school lumbering drum loop, subtly adding layers of guitar and strings on top of them, but understanding that a burst of a cappella P!nk functions as a widescreen emotional climax as much as any string arrangement could. They know what they’re doing.
[8]

Anthony Easton: This sounds more like begging and less like music for inspiration, and for once I don’t believe that P!nk believes her own theatrics. Minus a point for the obvious piano interlude. 
[4]

Rebecca A. Gowns: I actually kinda liked it until the guy from fun. came in. I can’t stand fun.
[1]

Jonathan Bradley: Fun. likes marching rhythms, and if the fevered enthusiasm of “We Are Young” or “Some Nights” suits your tastes, the band’s brisk stomp aptly complements the rousing quality of their music in the same way a military drummer buoys the spirits of a troop of green recruits facing the enemy for the first time. By the same token, however, the fun. trudge too often involves being hectored toward a destination at which you never wanted to arrive anyway, with the fervor coming off as a futile attempt to maintain constant flagging morale. “Just Give Me a Reason” is P!nk giving herself over to a fun. track; she engages in neither the cartoonish horseplay of her pop tunes nor the prickly vulnerability of her ballads. And yet Nate Ruess is as etiolated a presence as his duet partner; these lovers’ are so detached they don’t even sound as if it’s one another from whom they’re estranged.
[2]

Josh Langhoff: Not only do they share a vocal range, evident during one hilarious passage where they sing in perfect unison for a long time, but P!nk and Nate benefit from melding to one another’s songwriting styles. Nate realizes he doesn’t always need important metaphysical anthems, while P!nk learns that Real Life doesn’t always require an exclamation point. Best song off her last album.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: Done well, this type of man-and-woman-singing-over-and-at-each-other-about-how-they-don’t-love-each-other-as-much-as-they-used-to ballad really hits the spot. It seems like quite a ’70s thing, and while that might well not be the case in reality, “Just Give Me A Reason” feels particularly reminiscent of the United Kingdom’s 1977 Eurovision entry, Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran’s “Rock Bottom,” despite being absolutely nothing like it, theme aside. It should be a rule that all videos for duets like this feature the back to back pianos and rotating camera shot setup that de Paul and Moran pioneered, because having thought about it, that’s what’s missing here. If they could stretch to a revolving floor, even better.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I suppose this is P!nk’s “Stay.” It’s also Jeff Bhasker’s Ben Folds cabaret act and Nate Ruess’s Last Stand.
[3]

Ian Mathers: The exercise thing I go to a few times a week keeps putting “U + Ur Hand” in the rotation while we’re working out, which has reminded me of how much I love that song (and “Please Don’t Leave Me,” and “So What,” and etc.). But “Please Don’t Leave Me” managed to do something interesting with what could have otherwise been really boring romantic angst. This doesn’t. Also, it turns out I do hate the singer from fun.’s voice!
[3]

Will Adams: She’s never sounded better, he’s never sounded worse. Split the difference?
[5]