Feels so close to acceptable, we guess.

[Video]
[4.12]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Amazingly, “By Your Side” finds a halfway point between the early 2010s rote EDM Calvin Harris and the late 2010s funk-influenced Calvin Harris. It’s massive without feeling pontificating, commercial without feeling too generic, and warm without feeling too cheesy — an innocuous summer bop I won’t be bothered to hear overplayed. 
[6]

Will Adams: I feel so… middle distant to you right now.
[5]

Samson Savill de Jong: I really struggle to listen to this all the way through. It’s so .. empty, there’s nothing to this. EDM is capable of conveying emotion, creating a feeling rather than telling a story. But if Calvin Harris ever could do that, he certainly hasn’t here. I feel like I hate this more than is truly warranted, because this is pretty much what you’d expect from a Calvin Harris song, but I find it so aggravatingly devoid of anything that I could latch on to and enjoy. The drop is shit as well, individual notes being played up and down a scale, so it doesn’t even sound fun or catchy. This is why we left the music of 2011 behind.
[0]

Jeffrey Brister: “We Found Love,” photocopied until the details have been nearly lost, giving only the barest impression of what the original might have looked like.
[1]

Oliver Maier: Crisp and perfectly saturated, but “By Your Side” would improve if the verses or bridge felt developed. As is, they’re not much more than serviceable, “Wake Me Up”-flavoured links between Harris’ delirious drops.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Far be it from me to despoil a review by preferring the guitars over the electronics on this theoretical dance track, but facts are facts. 
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: Does this track date back to 2014 or 2009? Either way, it is rote to an exceptional degree; as transparent as a Movementarian in full flight, and autopiloting its way to errors. Calvin Harris may not be new to an ill-suited vocal, but rarely has it been someone else’s. If you want sunshine and lollipops, why stock up on gravel? And if you’ve got gravel, why not cook up something sturdier? Co-writer John Newman would have made a better fist of this agreeable demo, but only after spending more time on it first.
[6]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Where’s Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 2?
[4]