The Singles Jukebox

We choose the highway…

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[4.86]

William John: Look, it might just be the indelible sight of him in Emporio Armani undergarments, but somehow I’ve always had a weakness for Calvin Harris’s sterile, hollow singles, most of which function best when using a treadmill. Yet even I cannot muster much enthusiasm for “My Way,” which is written like a nursery rhyme and sung in a soporific, joyless croak. The drops are not only predictable but predictably limp, and I can’t help but wonder what it might have sounded like had Nils Sjöberg been around to spruce it up. Extremely petty, tedious, ripe for omnipresence, and no doubt something on which I’ll come to rely when sprinting up an incline sometime soon because I am pathetic and thirsty.
[2]

Katie Gill: I wonder how Taylor Swift feels now that she’s on the receiving end of “wow this song is BLATANTLY ABOUT Celebrity X.” And yes, I know that Calvin Harris has gone on record to say the song’s actually about a grocery store, but please, I call shenanigans, it’s obviously about Taytay. And oh yeah, there’s an actual song in here to review that’s not just weekly tabloid gossip. It’s… actually halfway decent? Vocally, Calvin Harris is no Frank Sinatra. But I think he knows that. With this and his other actually-Calvin-Harris-singing song “Summer,” he keeps the vocals to a minimum, letting the beatwork be the star of the show to great effect. And this chorus is light and beautifully understated, almost effortless and damn catchy.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Calvin Harris sat down one day and wondered, “When do I get to bleat ‘My Way’?” If this had been more of a hazy recollection of an unfortunate memory like “Summer” (which his voice is a good fit for) and less an empty thought bubble mumble like “Feel So Close” (which it probably is too, but not in a good way), it would have added to the vague sense of goodwill I have for him for handing the breakup with Taylor Swift like a normal human being. Alas, this song makes me feel nothing, and convinces me that Harris feels nothing. The points are because uninspiring genre exercises aren’t worth getting angry at.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: “If there was a way i could do this without singing,” wrote Calvin Harris in a 2009 tweet, “believe me i would do it that way.” Perhaps things change — see the next day’s “about to put the oven on in order to heat flat” for proof of that — but it’s the kind of thing he’s said again and again for years. Maybe the continued retreat to his own voice is down to tightfistedness (“Mary Pearce… I wanted someone I could bung £250 to and never hear from again“); more likely yet it’s to do with his well-attested preference for doing things his way. Control defines “My Way”: Harris’s voice visits only the places it can thrive, while delivering a bittersweet message of inhibition. It’s very easy to believe this is about a time he spent picking at cake in the back of Safeway.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: “You were the one thing in my way,” repeated ad nauseum, is a nasty little lyric, right up there near Bieber’s “Love Yourself” in the “these guys are assholes” pop pantheon. The fact that said lyric is paired with mind-numbingly repetitive tropical house just adds insult to injury. 
[1]

Alfred Soto: He’s right about his being “the only thing in [my] way.” I mean — that guitar!
[5]

Will Adams: Calvin Harris’s croaky voice has always been a great conduit for the kind of thoughts you say aloud when you wake up early after a long night of drinking and have a sore throat. “My Way” showcases that voice well, but the music combined with the totally-not-about-what-you-think-it’s-about lyrics make it a bit more of a bummer than a banger.
[6]