The Singles Jukebox

OK, but how many other jukeboxes did you send that to?

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[5.29]

Crystal Leww: Stealing someone else’s girlfriend in country music never sounded so innocuously poppy! Jordan Davis makes a nice debut into the space, which sometimes can feel crowded without having the quality to back it up. I like that this just chugs right along and bows out before it overstays its welcome.
[7]

Alfred Soto: What the hell is “singles you up”? A ghastly neologism that, to my surprise, Jordan Davis almost sells with light hip-hop cadences, or maybe they’re Third Eye Blind cadences. Graded on a curve for pep.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Telling someone you’re waiting for their relationship to break up is probably a bit on the “please don’t” side of the line in real life, but you can make it work in a song if you avoid sounding like an entitled creep. Ideally you should sound as if you’re going to be fine either way. So there’s a continuum between “Treat You Better” and “Take a Chance on Me” and this sits on the right side of the line. It’s helped by the chorus, which from the melody to the cheesy blarting drums sounds like something Gregg Alexander might have written for Ronan Keating back in the day. It’s hindered by the strained construction of “single [someone] up” for dumping someone. But that’s a few seconds out of an otherwise fun radio jam.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: This is pop-country that works for me, country guitars paired with a pneumatic chorus and an amiable vocal that gets across the sentiment. 
[6]

Iain Mew: “You Belong With Me” from the perspective of a man who believes that addressing the other man in the situation is the obvious way to go — as the title line demonstrates, mangling language comes before the possibility of the woman being the one to do the breaking up. Then “sorry if I’m overstepping boundaries” comes along and he’s textually addressing this plea all about her boyfriend to her, taking it out of the leeway otherwise given by the ambiguous world of songs to “you.” Outside of all that, the crunch and whoop of “Singles You Up” doesn’t sound at all bad in itself. It just crumbles into the Magic!al gap between the story it wants to be telling and the other ones it is. 
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Signifiers are weird. Whiskey, to me, codes overwhelmingly “city,” where the Cool Girls roam, where white wine is more a suburban mom drink. To Jordan Davis, this is country music; to me, this is “MMMBop.”
[5]

John Seroff: Funny that it never occurs to The Love Song of J. Davis Betamale that she might very well prefer white wine, city living and non-beardos over performative passive aggressive acts of sycophancy.
[3]