He’s from Croydon!…

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[5.67]

Alex Macpherson: To the UK’s self-proclaimed pro-pop community: Stop fetishising the most irredeemably naff bits of the ’80s, and stop foisting worthless hacks like Calvin Harris and Frankmusik on us. To Frankmusik: Never, ever wear your shirt like that again.
[2]

Ian Mathers: “Better Off As Two” may be the throwbackiest throwback that’s ever, uhh, thrown back, but it’s also irresistible. It sounds like it ought to be from Daft Punk’s Discovery, or one of the 80s albums the French duo was listening to obsessively when they made Discovery, and while the song’s slight air of mawkishness (and “surely-I’ve-heard-this-before”) should count against it, it all gels perfectly into an energetic little kiss-off. Brief, sweet, and perfectly pitched.
[8]

David Raposa: Is Croydon some mystical fairy land accessible via Stonehenge, and is that why Frankmusik sounds like he’s Babelfished his lyrics to hell and back? I mean, the tune itself is all fine and good, though a little too Pikachuky for my taste; my cavities ache every time I put this on. But this cross-eyed rumination on what the fuck, when I can get past the motivational-speaking lien of the lyrics, makes no damn sense at all. I think it’s supposed to boil down to “I love you, you love me, stop fronting & let’s make lots of whoopee,” except he’s going on about he & she being better off as two, which doesn’t really synch up with what I think he’s trying to say, unless he’s on some nouveau Mars / Venus relationship tip. Or maybe it makes more sense in the original Wingdings.
[4]

Martin Kavka: Because I have been working up a sweat dancing around my computer for the last three minutes, this would be a 10 except for two things: 1) two points off for the stupid stupid hair, and 2) one point off for a middle eight (“being on our own just won’t work so why not be mine”) that contradicts the chorus (“it’s time you understood we’re better off as two”). I’m tempted to assess a greater penalty for the latter — pop has to *say* something, dammit, something more than “I’m confused” — but the sweat gets in the way.
[7]

Keane Tzong: A silly, and annoyingly simple, conceit powers this song: happy music, breakup lyrics. Ho-hum. But, craftily, “Better Off as Two” is frontloaded with a chorus so unfairly brilliant that it almost entirely prevents the relative (and, let’s be honest here, objective) mundanity of the verses from mattering at all. So the song flits by, seemingly disappearing between choruses, and ends long before it’s worn out its charms.
[7]

Martin Skidmore: He scores over many of the new indie-electro types of late in a couple of ways: one is that he can sing pretty well, with life and feeling; the other is that this has a very catchy tune. Oddly for someone who has previously been a remixer, it’s the production that I am least impressed with – it sounds thin and rather basic, almost crude in parts.
[7]

Iain Mew:This got me all excited for the length of time between the fizzy electropop kicking in, sounding just like Perfume, and Frank’s mannered and dreary voice turning up and drowning the whole thing. So, about 1.8 seconds.
[4]

Frank Kogan: I just don’t get this. The dance beat is too fast and choppy for actual dancing; blips and fuzz harass the singer; they’re like mosquitoes; I want to bat them away. I perceive in all this a likable, offhand melody, am baffled by the arrangement.
[4]

Hillary Brown: If you managed to fuse needy disco with one of those children’s keyboards that produce a sound from a little plastic head’s mouth opening with each key struck, you might get this, and the abrupt ending and lack of a bridge seem similarly childlike despite the song’s expression of clinginess. Good stuff, though.
[7]

Additional Scores

Rodney J. Greene: [6]
Edward Okulicz: [8]
Doug Robertson: [4]