The Singles Jukebox

Borrowed [5]…

[Video]
[5.38]

Thomas Inskeep: God, Sam Smith is going to ruin British pop, isn’t he?
[3]

Will Adams: It doesn’t bode well for “Borrowed Time” that its opening is a bait-and-switch: glimmering keys with lots of high-end make way for an organ pulse that’s been smothered in cotton. Docked another point for the awful synth solo.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I did not anticipate the puffing organ becoming the main attraction. But Frances does her best work when she’s darting around the meter; there’s nothing on the chorus as good as how she attacks the word ask.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: I’m not sure if its the slow chugging feeling to the synth-line’s quiver, or the notion of “salt in the sand” being such a foreign symbol of the unease that Frances here is trying to project. But the song’s capability of maintaining a pulse, not a lunge or a thrash, to exist simply by hitting a point of climax of insistent significance, is a remarkable measure of confidence in the vocalist and production.
[7]

David Sheffieck: The vocal’s there, but the production deflates the song: the rush to the chorus, distorted voice swooshing to the heavens, fades into nothing more than the solid chug that characterized the verses. The cartoonish synth squelch of the bridge helps make up for it, but a song cannot live on instrumental bridge alone.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Pumping and clinking, this is about as mechanical as something like “People Are People”, and with the distorted synths and vocals, about as robotic as any song you can care to mention with a metaphor regarding robots. The difference is the reduction in intensity of those elements. It’s almost as if Frances is playing sentiment Kerplunk, carefully removing any possible heavy-handedness and instead foregrounding fluidity. It’s aloof, but not dependent on being so.
[7]

Alfred Soto: I like songs that sound like 12-inch remixes of themselves. After an R&B start anchored by an electric piano, it ups the tempo with stuttering keyboards, probably played by Frances herself. If it also sounds a bit musty, blame Disclosure’s Howard Lawrence.
[6]

Megan Harrington: Passable in this incarnation, but essentially dysfunctional without a remix. 
[5]