The Singles Jukebox

From Mis-Teeq to Strictly Come Dancing to – this…

[Video][Website]
[4.85]

Rodney J. Greene: She only sounds excited in the sense of “nervous”. Assuming that’s not what she was going for, the song rings incredibly false.
[4]

Alex Macpherson: The word “excited” just isn’t very, well, exciting, is it? Certainly not worth basing an entire chorus around. Elsewhere, the song’s irony factor is upped further by its timidity in refusing to commit to any sort of style; it’s incredibly frustrating to see the effervescent Alesha Dixon taking such a safety-first approach to her career, as though she’s terrified of alienating a single one of those precious Strictly Come Dancing viewers.
[4]

Doug Robertson: Well, someone has to fill in the gaps on the tween targeted Pop Party albums, haven’t they? It’s a shame really, as there’s a good song struggling to get out here, but any vague possibility that this might become interesting is instantly stepped on by the knowledge that its main job is providing a respite between Ant and/or Dec ritually humiliating an audience member as if Noel‘s House Party was never cancelled.
[5]

Iain Mew: Alesha Dixon’s career revival has brought with it a certain strain of British pop that we’ve been missing a few years – unpolished, faintly shonky but thriving on its obvious enthusiasm, paired with just enough hooks and ability to get away with it. So “I’m a detective/I’m all over you” doesn’t quite work, but by that point you give her the benefit of the doubt.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: Hyperactive dance-pop with a genuinely exciteable and exciting chorus. It’s all done at top pace, with some delightful lyrics, Madonna references, great “hey”s and a happy feel that matches the content. Absolutely wonderful, and I hope it’s her biggest hit yet.
[9]

Ian Mathers: This is commendably energetic, and Dixon has more vocal personality than a lot of her peers. Unfortunately, what that means is that while I find her charming most of the time, in the wrong mood her inflections become increasingly irksome. But there’s something great about the more-than-usual-concreteness of “let’s get excited, I’m so excited / I know exactly what I want to do” (she leaves it unsaid to tantalize, of course, but so many of these pop singers sound as they’d be clueless should they actually seduce your pants off), and today I’m not in the wrong mood.
[7]

Hillary Brown: This could climb yet higher to be a serious Friday fist-pumper on the way out the door from the office, but even as-is, it’s very well-produced, with all these great little details, like the strummy guitars, and its speed, which races so fast ahead it’s always about to trip over itself, recommends it yet further. Kind of ace?
[7]

Dave Moore: So much effort exerted here that I can actually smell the sweat and see the caked-on make-up starting to crumble and drip. Like a prolonged and painful look at a group of dancers gasping for breath while holding a final pose with a smile. A cautionary tale: Miley, this is what you will sound like if you don’t escape to country radio balladry now and leave Hannah Montana in the dust forever.
[3]

Michaelangelo Matos: She sounds like Fergie’s excitable baby sister — nothing I’d ever want to play again, but I know which of the two I’d rather spend a day at the funfair with.
[4]

David Raposa: A tune that’s incessantly chirpy in a rinky-dink way, with Dixon trying to front on a Brit tip (as in Spears) when she has neither the charisma nor the ingenue-ity to pull the shtick off. She’s only 30 (yes 30 is young stfu), but comes off like a 40-year-old trying like hell to act half her age in clothes that stopped fitting her 15 years ago.
[2]

Tom Ewing: The brand of canned excitement being shilled here – all busy feet and fixed grins – is, shall we say, not unfamiliar. There comes a point in every British starlet’s life when she has to take a good hard look at herself and ask, “Does my chosen career course place me in imminent danger of making a record as poor as ‘Bag It Up’ by Geri Halliwell?”. For Alesha Dixon, that moment has now arrived.
[3]

Additional Scores

Erick Bieritz: [5]
Edward Okulicz: [4]