The Singles Jukebox

This bird has flown, alas.

[Video]
[4.43]

Ramzi Awn: The privilege of sadness never sounded so sweet. 
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Q: Who’s the most deserving recipient of the Sheerandot Effect? A. Laura Sheeran. Or Amy Wadge. But in the meantime, there’s “Bird.” Like most early work by artists Marten’s age, it’s a second-rate example of form — like Charlotte Martin before she discovered synthesizers and Tori, or Laura Marling if she weren’t possessed of a glorious omnidirectional cynicism at the same age. The title ensures everyone will get her mixed up with Birdy and dooms her to bad British puns until she releases her next single. But this is so far off from anything hyped anymore, so representative of a lineage of female singer-songwriters that’s been near-eradicated in music canon, and so surprisingly ornamented as it goes on, that I can’t help but be glad it exists. The phrase “early work” was optimism.
[6]

Iain Mew: Lovely but insubstantial, “Bird” didn’t do too much for me until I realised that Marten’s softly sung chorus starts “Nobody’s watching/Drowning in words so sweet/Mild is the water.” The bitter edge lent to the song’s own sweetness is just what it needed.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Production is rather miserably generic save for those brief moments of slide guitar cries on the chorus. There’s, I guess, a metaphor here, but it’s thrown around rather lackadaisically for the sake of being serious and poignant about…well, what exactly?
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Pretty voice, dull song and duller arrangement. Of course Ed Sheeran likes it.
[3]

Alfred Soto: “Where does a star go from here?” Marten sings as layers of dust and volcanic ash bury her and the piano.
[3]

Brad Shoup: A serene walk into the sea, with the expected string quartet unexpectedly staying on a slight edge. It was rough going at the top, with the fussy, crammed “somebody’s daughter and friend” line. But the takeaway is Marten leaping to first-person, finding a way to voice “I don’t mind” without any resignation or defiance: she’s as mild as this water.
[6]