America, remember those halcyon days of late spring when a [5.00] still topped the Hot 100?
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[4.12]
Thomas Inskeep: Akin to a certain Mr. Thicke, now that he’s had his freak number one pop crossover, John Legend is now free to return to his niche audience of Adult R&B fans. Not akin to Mr. Thicke, Legend’s pop smash was completely in keeping with his catalog. “You & I” is of a piece with “All of Me,” except that it’s got a bit more production and instrumentation — including some lovely, subtle muted horns. While I still wish he’d make more uptempo records along the lines of 2012’s “Best You Ever Had” (he’s quite capable of being sexy when he wants to be), this does its job tidily and I can’t dislike it.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I have always been seduced by John Legend, his earnestness and how he sells this kind of pap. There is the usual spending too much effort to convince his lover to be effortless, but that’s kind of expected at this point.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: It’s probably true that the only way John Legend could chart in 2014’s biz ecosystem is to go full acoustic glurge, aiming songs that’d otherwise parse as classic soul at coffeeshops and videos to Jezebel and Upworthy, so I can’t exactly fault him. As glurge, though, “You and I” fails totally. Telling a woman that she doesn’t know precisely, to the HotOrNot decimal point, where she stands on the world’s beauty scoreboard is like telling a marooned, drowning scuba diver she doesn’t know what water is. If Legend believed this crap he’d be married to someone other than a swimsuit model, or at least write songs where his paramour doesn’t send every hetero man who sees her into a horny fritz. It’s not a John Legend issue so much as a widespread songwriting issue — see “all the other boys try to chase me” — but it does make “You and I” ring false for a listener who’s not a walking electromagnetic pulse. That’s problem one. Problem two is that as non-glurge, “You and I” is superseded entirely by Miguel’s “Beautiful.” Imagine that: the song with the hashtag is the one that relies less on gimmick.
[2]
Megan Harrington: I’m not impressed with the “Girl, did you know you’re beautiful?” through-line of “You & I,” but, aside from John Legend’s parasitic need to externally define his paramour’s attractiveness, the song manages a rare feat. It’s slinky, sexy, even sometimes unpredictable while still adhering to the structure of a pop song. “All of Me” has dominated this year’s charts, but “You & I” is a better showcase of Legend’s talents.
[6]
Brad Shoup: About two seconds of the intro and 20 seconds of the outro: the dread thrill of imagining you’re the only two people in the world. Everything else: textbook yousplaining, complete with muffled toms and underwater organ and junior-high trumpet giving her the cartoon bug-eyes.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: The beat in the chorus is a nice little development, as are the subtle little glitters. Everything else is just recycled ideas that are rarely interesting.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Who says global pop no longer exists? Indie echo and Coldplay sincerity infecting R&B — what will they think of next. This is the kind of inoffensiveness that should be resisted with barricades and bayonets.
[3]
Scott Mildenhall: Someone get Tiësto on the phone pronto.
[3]