What about who?

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[3.82]

Will Adams: I was sorta hoping this would swipe more from the fantastic Brandy song of the same name. But apart from some paraphrased lyrics, The Saturdays’ rendition is resolutely 2010, employing equal parts “California Gurls” and “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love.” It’s also oppressively loud, perhaps for the best; the Saturdays strike me as a group that couldn’t keep up with a track that was half the volume, and Sean Paul’s yammering steers the whole affair toward absurdity.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: “Been a long time coming,” note the largely anonymous, but ever-dutiful fivepiece, and while they’re obviously talking about Love they could easily be referencing the fact that, after five years of dogged persistence and consistently moderate success, this is their first number one single, arriving with their best ever weekly sales (by a long chalk) and the best of anyone so far this year. It’s all a bit surprising, especially as they’ve released so much better. There are great aspects: how Sean Paul sounds so “just happy to be here,” his feature probably only a serendipitous effect of the group’s budget no longer being able to stretch to Featuring Flo Rida, never mind Featuring Pitbull, neither of whom would have provided such audible joy anyway, and the array of baffling accents on offer from The Saturdays themselves — definitely cod, presumably Jamaican. But beyond that? Well it’s their least subtle effort to date, putting the listener under a quite figurative cosh of bosh, so perhaps that’s pricked people’s ears up, but the end result is that it just sounds like Capital FM, and there’s nothing special about that.
[6]

Iain Mew: The Saturdays’ first ever UK number one single! An achievement in no way lessened by being replaced a week later by a nineteen year old novelty song, oh no. It feels like a reward for persistently playing the fame game as much as anything. Very little has changed from the last time we covered them and they sounded like they weren’t even convincing themselves. There’s an awkward Sean Paul appearance, but the effect is pretty much neutral.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: In which the Saturdays sound like four or five massive dance-pop songs of the past several years mushed together, with all the individual, eccentric, or interesting bits removed. Like they always do.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Ugh — this programming, those synths? The Last Saturdays more like.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: “What About Us” needs a splash of anything to sound more than just OK. The song bounces forward on the sort of electronics that can sound great — I’m sure this slays on a weekend club night — but also could come from a random EDM-song generator. Their solution? Dust off Sean Paul, which ends up adding nothing positive or negative to this.
[5]

Brad Shoup: I guess the track reminded someone of Cover Drive, so they added the original Caribbean Comedown. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: “You Make Me Feel…” reprised past its relevance. To some exec somewhere, this probably codes “tropical” now.
[2]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Another artist co-opting Sean Paul’s perfect (perfect!) voice for evil non-riddim-related means, but the man himself is as much to blame for (A) his history of terrible haircuts, (B) his recent career revival a.k.a. “doing a Pitbull” a.k.a. the Schlocka Paul Years. And yikes: he butts into the Saturdays’ verses like a lagered-up brute, offers a dull verse and unintentionally rips off Lil B’s “brang-a-dang” ad lib, which just makes me sad all over. Mi naa waan. Following tradition, The Saturdays are completely anonymous and toothless, still unable to inhabit the words they sing after four albums (four albums!) worth of material. A pretend-sneered “freakin’” is nowhere as bad as hearing them try their hand at “gangsta” but the failed attempts at “attitude” cannot register as intriguing niggles in performance, simply lack of personalities. You almost feel bad for them.
[2]

Crystal Leww: Sean Paul tags the track throughout, and he seems rudely inserted, as though the producers painstakingly carved out space so that he could say a line or ad-lib here and there. It’s a shame because the song is really fun, and the Saturdays put on a hell of a show, especially in that chorus. The way “whassup, baby” is sung is so damn casual and flirty and fun, and the “na, na, na”‘s show the benefit of having a girl group with members that harmonize well together. There are two things that particularly stand out in a negative way from the Saturdays’ performance: 1) I have no idea why they flit in and out of the Sean Paul matching dialect (“suffocehtang”, etc.), but it’s a distracting gimmick. 2) The pre-Sean Paul verse intro stutters and pitch bends the vocals to match the wubs as though the producer is just showing off. The track without Sean Paul is A LOT better, but unfortunately we’re reviewing this one. 
[6]

Sabina Tang: Sean Paul sounds like one of those canned DJ interjections meant to prevent listeners from recording radio exclusives to mp3 for online distribution. 
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