The Singles Jukebox

Two days later, it’s another remix…

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Thomas Inskeep: From what I can tell online, Filatov & Karas are Russian producers who make lazy “tropical house” remixes, which are huge hits in Russia, Poland, and Italy. They’ve remixed French singer Imany more than once, but always to the same effect. Her voice, meanwhile, is pretty thin, and the lyrics to “Don’t Be So Shy” sound like they were run through Google Translate before she sang them: really clumsily “sexy”, plus very oddly-placed mentions of “bless me Father”.
[2]

Iain Mew: It’s amazing the things you can find from spurious international charts with reference to more robust national ones — this has been top of Russia’s (airplay-based) chart for a while. Of the three tracks intended for our ill-fated remake day, it makes more radical changes than Jonas Blue or Deepend, and yet somehow feels most in line with its original song. Filatov and Karas go for an entertainingly obvious set of musical cues for not being shy, and the best description I can think of for what they do to Imany’s vocal is “weaponised”. Sonically it now verges on obnoxious, but with that there’s an extra elemental force. And listening to her own version afterwards, how restless she sounds despite the calmer music, and the way that gaps between lines slip away, the distance to turn the song into one of relentless, desperate command doesn’t seem so far.
[7]

Cassy Gress: Apologies that I’m not more familiar with the genre, but is this a normal thing in dance remixes of slower songs?  To just speed up the vocal and not process it in any way to help reduce the now-shudderiness of the vibrato?  It makes her sound like she’s either intensely shivering or is some sort of non-pitch-shifted chipmunk, and it’s very distracting.
[4]

Brad Shoup: That took a turn. I hadn’t heard the chamber-pop original but I prefer this: the intimacy of her brushes-and-electric piano arrangement are gone, replaced with shitty cymbal hits, a lewd synthbass and a melodic hook that conjures someone’s impression of a desert highway. I mean, if you’re going to be sacrilegious, why be sanctimonious about it?
[7]

Will Adams: The original  hit it much better, providing Imany’s icy performance the patience it  needs. Filatov and Karas, despite their unchallenging remix and  questionable choices — that’s the cheesiest guitar synth this side of ATB — will probably get more shine from this. Which sucks, but hey, she’s credited as the lead.
[4]

Anthony Easton: There is a sweet spot where disco and soul intersect, and there is a sweeter spot where the production extends so far that it causes you to wait. A kind of diva movement — why would a singer of such accomplishment come on time, when she can have you swelter in anticipation? This does that, and gains from being so explicitly sexual, not as a command or even as a game of sublimation and control, but as the most reasonable course of action. 
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