The Singles Jukebox

More like “heartbreak”

[Video][Website]
[5.58]

Scott Mildenhall: But how did you play the song before you’d recorded it, Kelly? Such lyrical prescience isn’t uncommon, and it’s the basis of so much brilliant songwriting, but “Heartbeat Song” doesn’t even seem to recognize the paradox. It’s lyrically weak, but the music’s the thing yet it still lacks a big moment. With a damp squib of a chorus, this is not Kelly Clarkson at full force.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Kelly Clarkson has released crap singles and great ones, and the separating factor is usually piercing detail; the angsty songs wring hyper-specific emotions (I’m still not emotionally ready to deal with “You Love Me“), the love songs sound hard-won. Kelly didn’t write “Heartbeat Song” — that’d be the now-underused Kara DioGuardi and Judy Garland’s great-great-niece (aka Audra Mae, former folkie/current uncredited Avicii vocalist) — but you can see how it resonated. Where “Miss Independent” was about crushing despite internal and perhaps feminist resistance, “Heartbeat Song” is about crushing well after you’d convinced yourself every bodily receptor was long sooted over, that really you didn’t enjoy kissing, let alone the duller or sparkier stuff. The crushstuff is standard (though accurate), but even more so are lines like “I wasn’t even gonna go out” or “I’m so used to feeling numb” (note the run — if she was really in any state resembling “numb” she’d let it trail off on the sixth, but as it stands she can’t even pretend) Anything generic is reserved for the track itself, but it works out because “The Middle” is both a great fucking song and not all that singular in its chords, guys.
[8]

Crystal Leww: “Heartbeat Song” is “The Middle” with dubstep-lite whooshes in the background, but there’s nothing wrong with that because “The Middle” is a jam, and Kelly Clarkson’s always been good with guitars. Clarkson’s played the reluctant party-goer who finds herself finding herself falling hard before, and it works out well for her here, too. I love the way that she breathlessly finishes off the lines “Your hands on my hips / And my kiss on your lips.” He takes her breath away quite literally, heh.
[7]

Josh Langhoff: More like songs: the verse from “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” meets the chorus from “The Middle” and that song Jason Mraz sang on Sesame Street, embossed in a thick coat of Kurstinite. I’d rather hear Clarkson sing any of those. But I most wanna hear the new mom on Sesame Street, singing “Since U Been Gone” while Mraz hunts around for his ukulele, anarchic baseball games go un-umpired, and the whole umbrellaless gang gets soaked in the rain.
[3]

Luisa Lopez: Won’t match the shriek or success of “Since U Been Gone,” but what will? Never rises to the manic grandeur of heartbreak, but then again, what does?
[4]

Alfred Soto: Damn straight she’s forgotten how to turn it up. 
[5]

Kat Stevens: Of course I still <3 Kelly 4eva, but I got sick of “The Middle” while running an indie disco in 2001.
[3]

Will Adams: The cut-time chorus really ruins everything here; the verses set up a “Since U Been Gone” tempo, but with a more forceful Clarkson, and then Greg Kurstin barges in with his booming drums and sluggish pace. What a disappointment.
[5]

Mo Kim: The sound is updated for a post-1989 era: Kelly stu-stu-stutters her way through a slick, cavernous chorus that could have fit just about any starlet’s voice. Even the heartbeat-sample trick feels like something cribbed from “Wildest Dreams.” Like cotton candy, it melts on the tongue delightfully but leaves little of substance.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Clarkson’s strength is such that EDM sounds like it’s trying to keep up with her. She toys with the meter like an indolent dictator; the people have always loved her, so she does what she do. The doing, though, is translating her vocal power into narrative mastery. When she sings “up-up-up,” it sounds like a caution. I don’t care if RCA opened the box and stale EDM flew out; she’s formidable.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: A cursory Google search informs me that everyone else has already made the obvious Jimmy Eat World comments. The comparison is instructive, though, if only to highlight what doesn’t quite work. The verses are great — Kelly sells the rush, and the lyrics evocatively zero in on a specific emotional headspace. But after the pre-chorus jumps up and down Kelly’s range and builds up emotional and musical tension, the guitar is swapped out for half-time dubstep. This could gesture at “anthemic” but in practice the energy simply collapses. Clarkson’s best choruses are moments of release that let her voice soar, and if the guitars kept driving forward à la ‘The Middle,” ‘Heartbeat Song’ might have done so. Instead, the most powerful moments are Kelly’s belted  “looooooooong tiiiiiiiime” and “one more tiiiiiiiiiime” in the pre-chorus and the bridge, both of which lead into a chorus that never even takes off.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Delightful. Kelly Clarkson’s ebullient celebration of her own voice might as well be part of a teen special, and when it is about things worth celebrating, it boils over. A kind of tempering occurs when she sings in service of getting through the negative–a kind of process-oriented narrative, and adds tone and skill.
[7]