The Singles Jukebox

There would have been a proper subhead here but the editor is all punned out…

[Video][Website]
[4.62]

Alfred Soto: A Lisa Lisa title over house keyboards — that’s it.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: A man singing of heartbreak clearly inflicted by another man, in the top 10. Ridiculously, that might not have happened for a while, so congratulations, “the record industry.” Someone better versed could probably make a point about the heterocentric homogenisation of house, but it doesn’t take any expertise to feel that “All Cried Out” doesn’t have many ideas. The one it does have is the chorus, and while that’s catchy, it doesn’t stand by itself.
[6]

Iain Mew: I like the idea of pushing through heartbreak into euphoria, but the repetitive song is short enough on ideas to end up replicating the hard slog more than the breakthrough. The smash-cut at the end even seems to admit as much.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: Now, this is what I want my retro-’90s pop-house to sound like, emphasis on the house. Like Ultra Naté produced by Disclosure at their poppiest, this trumps pretty much all of the competition, with Alex Newell giving a great Byron Stingly-esque vocal and Blonde providing a finely-constructed song with production like something out of a 1992 Kym Sims fever dream.
[8]

Will Adams: The drums are practically shoved out of the mix — you’ll rarely hear a kick in a dance song this un-punchy — while Alex Newell’s vocals get their formants warped for what should be their climax. I’m not sure if it’d be worse if this were an actual rush job or something that Blonde put a lot of time into that still sounded like a rush job.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: It’s a fine line between a big diva vocal being welcoming and stirring and being “a bit much,” and I don’t know which side this is on. House pianos forgive a lot of sins, and the warping of the word “you” from an object of anguish into bliss through processing is an awfully clever trick, but it’s still only a trick.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: I like that the response to Newell’s botched “YOO-Ooo-UuUuUUu” is to send it into the spin cycle, and try to give it both more irritating and more possible charm. That’s about all you can offer this song.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The jungle-gym piano is the best part of this; it deserves an equally intricate setting, not formulaic build-and-release house. All played out.
[4]