The Singles Jukebox

This picture: much more interesting than this song…

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[4.50]

Juana Giaimo: If I was at a club and “Piece of Me” started playing, I wouldn’t stop dancing — but part of it would be because of inertia. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: Well, someone’s dancing to it someplace.
[1]

Patrick St. Michel: Has it been like, what, half a decade of these pleasant but unremarkable dance throwbacks now? 
[4]

A.J. Cohn: While this track is essentially an overly sped up ballad, Hill’s strong delivery of surprisingly affecting lyrics nearly makes up for the pressured feeling.
[5]

Crystal Leww: Becky Hill’s “Overdrive” with Oliver Heldens was one of my favorite tracks of 2014, and it’s largely due to Hill’s powerful vocals. She is enormously talented, and what she’s doing fits a different mold than folks like Aluna Francis who are going for the soft and the subtle. What Hill is going for is obvious; this wants to sound like the house diva vocalists of the past. Unlike the fresh-faced Heldens, MK is one of the old guys now, and he’s created something timeless for Hill to lay down a vocal on. While “Piece of Me” isn’t doing much differently from the pop-house formula that the young guns have adapted and popularized in the last couple of years, I’m still reminded that there is nothing I want more in the summer than watermelon and hard liquor, sparkly shorts, and the thump of a house beat. 
[8]

Tim de Reuse: Imagine that moment when you get out of your car and step onto the concrete and it’s a cloudless late July afternoon and your eyes can’t adjust to the light even through a pair of sunglasses because everything has this awful sticky heat oozing off of it and you’re swimming in that sensory overload and it’s exceedingly unpleasant and impossible to get used to and you can feel the sweat on your back start to stick to your shirt and, ugh, what I would give for some air conditioning, right? This tune frustrates me in the same way. It’s too fast, it’s too bright and scratchy, its sampled vocal hook sounds like an awkward afterthought that the producers forgot to mute for the final export, and the vocalist’s best efforts are ruined by overcompressed production that turns her overdubbed harmonies into unlistenable traffic jams. Slap a little formant shifting on the vocals and it’d pass for nightcore. Maybe that’s the most frustrating part — there’s a decent, feel-good summer jam hidden twenty beats per minute slower and five or six whole notes down.
[3]

Brad Shoup: Hill’s defiance rises to a heated gargle in the chorus. Kinchen helps make this more of a moment than a triumph with ponderous, whole-note piano. There’s a darkness here, lit with torches.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Mrs. most likely to get on the TV for singing plaintively to second-tier Duffy, now for real, are you kidding me, no wonder there’s panic in the industry, I mean please.
[3]