The Singles Jukebox

I once got told to never trust a man with two first names…

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Olivia Rafferty: My head hurts as I’m trying to identify the 20-odd pop songs amputated and re-arranged within this track.
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Iain Mew: From James Arthur’s new album Back from the Edge, the edge in this case being the one that an X Factor winner can get to by rapping homophobic slurs and then claiming victimhood in a track with a line about blowing people up “like a terrorist.” It says something for Syco’s management of X Factor graduates when exiting in such a manner looks a better option than staying, especially when apparently all a return to success takes is lazy imitation of Ed Sheeran. Matt Cardle may be secretly seething anew.
[3]

Alfred Soto: He’ll kiss her hand, take the kids to school, plays a bad guitar — anything to turn her on, including sing in this abject manner. Domesticity inspires complacency. Also smugness. Someone grab this young man by the shoulders and shake him.
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Juana Giaimo: Putting a life-long relationship in a three minute song is hard: you need to include the moment you meet each other, the present state of the relationship, and the future too. Each stage involves different emotions, but it’s puzzling that James Arthur chose a rather nostalgic tone to join them all together. A lonely guitar, quiet violins and a sad falsetto repeating “say you won’t let go” which implies that his partner might. His fear could have been genuine if the lyrics weren’t so generic. But I have to admit that I never before heard someone say they’ve fallen in love with someone else after seeing them throw up! 
[3]

Lilly Gray: Hold the goddamn phone, did he help her throw up, and then when she glanced over her shoulder — I’m assuming still hunched at the toilet bowl, mouth damp with vomit — he decided at that very moment they were going to spend the night, and possibly the rest of their lives together? Points for that, then. 
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: There aren’t many songs that start off with a romantic recollection of vomiting, so fair play to James Arthur for pushing that boundary, it being the only one he bothers to push. It has been bizarre to see him reemerge from nowhere to reach number one with this, but as it’s the precise midpoint of The Script and James Morrison, its success makes perfect sense. As it gets going it swells quite nicely, but it’s not something that should be troubling the Mellow Magic playlist for too long.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Love and devotion have never sounded more like a grim march to the electric chair. Gets one point because the intro reminded me a bit of Extreme’s “More Than Words.”
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Thomas Inskeep: RIYL Ed Fucking Sheeran, whose legacy is apparently going to be to ruin British (male) pop music for many, many years. 
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