The comeback starts here, I guess…

[Website]
[1.88]

Kat Stevens: Some people do deserve a second chance. But just because now they are now counting to ten under their breath and punching the kitchen wall instead doesn’t mean I have to listen to their whining excuse for an apology.
[0]

Edward Okulicz: An apology is necessary when wrong is done that cannot be amended, but that doesn’t make it sufficient. This is a hollow gesture as an apology and a complete misstep as a song that doesn’t even work if you try to work a more universal meaning into it. But even if it were possible to redeem yourself just by singing a song (it’s not), singing it in the same lobotomised and vocally-treated haze he used on “Forever” would ensure it falls a long way short. And the lyrics: “They can never understand”. Dude, you assaulted your girlfriend. There’s nothing to understand, you’re a fuckwit, and this is a neon sign on your back reminding us.
[1]

Alex Ostroff: This is nauseating on the conceptual level alone, so I’m oddly pleased that “Changed Man” is criminally boring. If it had been even an eighth as good as “Forever”, I might have felt the need to listen to the song more than twice.
[1]

Erika Villani: People in movies and music are always doing things that would make them seem creepy and abusive in real life — he stands outside your window playing Peter Gabriel on a boom box, she flies to Seattle because she heard your sad story on the radio, he begs you to take him back because he’s changed, he’s better, he’s gonna make it up to you. And because it’s a script, because it’s a song, you think, well, gosh, isn’t it romantic? Except this time you’ve seen pictures of the bruises on his girlfriend’s face, and you know the thing he’s apologizing for might be hitting her so hard her mouth filled with blood, and that kind of breaks the spell. The problem with this song isn’t that the lyrics are creepy, or that the relationship it describes is questionable. The problem with this song is that it’s plodding and ordinary, when, if I’m ever going to give a shit about Chris Brown again, it needs to be anything but.
[0]

Anthony Easton: I still listen to Ike Turner, though he beat the shit out of Tina. But Ike Turner is a genius, and he did not seek forgiveness and redemption via middling pop ballads, with self pity and no self loathing.
[0]

Chuck Eddy: What a smarmy fuck. This is a half-assed apology if one ever existed, not remotely credible, and his falsetto’s nothing to write home about, either. But on my shelves I have albums I love by Spade Cooley and Noir Desir and Phil Spector — none of whom, as far as I know, ever made an asinine record like this where they begged us to feel sorry for the way they abused women, but I still want to be objective here. So I have to admit, the Everybody Hates Chris line is a decent hook. And it caught me off guard the first time, seeing how we’ve been Netflixing Season Two this month. Some episodes are better than others. But they’re all better than this.
[4]

Anthony Miccio: As a somewhat ironic fan of “Heaven, I Need A Hug” and Chris Brown’s incoherent lyrical froth (highlight: earnestly wedging a Doublemint ad into the contradiction “we’ve only got one night to dance forever”), I couldn’t give this an instant zero on principle. But compared to Kelly’s sniveling epic this is thin and grooveless. Auto-tuned saccharine and Chrisisms like “my patience is driving me crazy” don’t keep “I don’t wanna be done” from sounding like “I don’t wanna beat down,” and “it ain’t over” comes off like a threat.
[6]

Hillary Brown: Ugh. The thing is, it’s a very, very effective song, full of exactly the kind of sweet nothings and pretty up and downs with which Chris Brown won your heart in the first place. You want to believe it, with its pretty vocals, stuttering and breathy thumps, and its background guitar plucks. If only it were in Swedish, and we didn’t have all this messy context. How can you condone the “I’m sorry I hit you song” that will soundtrack thousands of misguided reconciliations? I’m pretending I just emerged from a Rip van Winkle-esque sleep, in which case I see this as a fiction and acknowledge its supreme prettiness.
[7]

John Seroff: I’ll admit it; I’m rooting for Chris Brown. Not as a human being of course; by all accounts he appears to be something of a bust in that department thus far. No, I’m hoping Chris pulls out of his current public relation death spiral to recover his POP SENSATION status as the crowned jester of R&B; seems it wasn’t that long ago that Brown’s goofy physical and vocal mugging had him pegged as an nonthreatening and affable doofus. His fair-to-middling voice somehow consistently and perfectly alloys with contemporary overproduction in a way that better singers would envy, yielding odd, tremulous timbre and nonsensically beautiful playground raps like “Gimme That”, “Kiss Kiss”, “Freeze”, “Shawty Get Loose” and “Get Like Me”. That was then, this is now. Chris Brown’s decision to release a song that might as well have been court appointed is offensive on a lot of levels; one that will be less debated is the foolish missed opportunity of releasing this slightly warmed over Bad Boy Gone Good whinefest instead of a legitimate and sorely needed Summer dance hit. Instead, we get Brown without a solid hook and at his least appetizing: wounded, apologetic, but still snotty enough to break out “Everybody Hates Chris” lines less than a year after photos of his brutally beaten girlfriend appeared on the front page of every major tabloid in the country. There’s still a few bits of panache on Brown’s part; some well-placed falsetto, some nice delivery. None of it adds up to make this more than moderately listenable. In cultural context, “Changed Man” is appalling; out of it, it’s somewhat better than mediocre. My score reflects the latter perspective; factor in the former and it’s more like a 1.
[5]

Michaelangelo Matos: “My patience is driving me crazy” is almost too easy an opening, “And everybody hates Chris” an acknowledgment that’s neither welcome nor gratuitous, “Saying sorry doesn’t make it right” a home truth, “It ain’t over” repeated on end not remotely convincing. Graded harshly because he deserves it.
[0]

Dave Moore: No, fuck you, sympathy denied. “My patience is driving me crazy”? “I’m gonna make it up to you and show the world I’m a changed man”? Really, you’re gonna make it up to her? Well, you’ve already decided not to stay away from her before you hurt her again (“this ain’t over; it ain’t over”). So what, you’re going to go into therapy and go on television and do prominent spots on domestic abuse for the rest of your life to set an example for all those kids in your fanbase trying to figure out “what she did” to make you lose that “patience” of yours? Dude either has the biggest stones of all time or zero sense of self-awareness, not that the two are mutually exclusive — and not that it makes a difference either way. FUCK YOU, CHRIS BROWN. If it were physically possible, I would deduct an extra point for the “Everybody Hates Chris” joke.
[0]

Martin Kavka: Is this genuine Chris, or is he doing this against his will? One hint comes in the lyric “I believe we can make it if we try.” If WE try? For fuck’s sake, what does she need to try to do?
[1]

Andrew Brennan: I suppose if he hadn’t released an apology song I’d still be angry, but the man violently beat his girlfriend. There shouldn’t be any more singles.
[1]

Chris Boeckmann: Ryan Tedder’s only beat should file a restraining order against Chris Brown. And, perhaps even more disturbing, the melody of “Boyfriend #2” should, too.
[1]

Alfred Soto: He’s so changed that he hides his sincerity really well behind the Auto-Tune.
[3]

Al Shipley: My score is more symbolic than a reflection of the music, but don’t get me wrong: the song does suck.
[0]