The Singles Jukebox

The collaboration you’ve all been waiting for…

[Video][Website]
[4.62]

Katherine St Asaph: Met Bastille on Monday, mistook them for Phantogram on Tuesday. We were making drum loops on Wednesday, then on Thursday, Friday and Saturday we made some Coldplay.
[4]

Stephen Eisermann: A bad Bastille track made worse by Craig’s completely uncomfortable and unconvincing delivery. What should be a fun, chill track about enjoying each other’s company comes across cold and awkward.
[3]

Danilo Bortoli: This is weird. Bastille’s grandiloquence isn’t a good companion to Craig David’s (good) pastiche, which is to say “I Know You” would have been a more decent song if it wasn’t for Dan Smith’s penchant for boring and epic hooks or David’s fear of unplanned obsolescence.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: You only have to see the quintessential Craig David moment of the time he sang the whole first verse of “Rise & Fall” on Jonathan Ross to explain his pre-comeback disillusionment to know that this is a very Craig David song. One thing he can never be questioned on is his sincerity, but better yet, here he and The Artist Mononymously Known As Bastille say something without seeming to want to Say Something. This isn’t a grand statement, and it presents the positive and the negative with no judgment; just a lingering tension between fun and its opposites. Both sides are emotions, both are valuable, palpable, and so — all helped by smart production and melody — quietly attention-grabbing.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: The relative unlikelihood of the collaboration between these two names add to the “alone, together” mood set forth in the chorus: two similar scenes from two separate worlds, shown at the same time. But rather than writing home a chilly void within the sparse house&B, this skeleton of loneliness simply lacks substance to hold on to.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: I don’t think there’s a more hilarious clash of approaches than Craig’s breathy effervescence alongside the pomp and self-seriousness of Bastille’s Dan Smith. They try for poignancy in their dramatic builds, yet the drop and the general sentiment feel eerily hollow, with no euphoria or even resolution. Instead it spirals off into nothingness.
[2]

Iain Mew: As the close-ups in the video make clear, the defining moment of “I Know You” is the “stumbling!” interjection. It’s Bastille’s sound of confidently bluffing through the adventure that is a baffling world, distilled down to its purest form. Craig David’s repetition in response is similarly emblematic of the fact he’s along for that ride but still keeping his own cool intact.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The sweetness of the melody, distortions, finger snaps, gospel elements, and build-up would have sounded au courant in 2011, and as attractive as these features are, I wonder who they’re for.
[5]