The Singles Jukebox

Pop, to two decimal places.

Rag’n’Bone Man – All You Ever Wanted

Narrator: It was, indeed, one of those songs where everybody thinks it sounds like something else…


[Video]
[6.71]

Katie Gill: What the fuck, who let Rag’n’Bone Man have FUN? I’m more used to his drearier fare, so this took me by total surprise. Granted, it’s nothing new. I got big Kings of Leon vibes, but this is going to be one of those songs where everybody thinks it sounds like something else. And unfortunately, our main man hasn’t yet developed enough of an identity that people will think it sounds like Rag’n’Bone Man. But it’s a quite upbeat, quite bright little song that is inevitably going to soundtrack an iPhone commercial at some point.
[7]

Al Varela: This was a really pleasant surprise! This kind of rowdy arena rock works a lot better with Rag’n’Bone Man’s howling voice, and this is by far the best hook he’s ever had. His cries for revolution and breaking out of the monotony of his old hometown, over the dusty percussion and driving electric guitars, come together to make one of the most anthemic and powerful songs of the year thus far.
[10]

Thomas Inskeep: Well, when you launch with something akin to the drum tattoo of Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker,” you’re off to a good start. The horn accents are a little odd (are they meant to reference music halls or ska?), and the guitar solo sounds like it’s something out of a 20-year-old Foo Fighters track. But the energy is refreshing, even if Rory Graham’s vocal is a wee bit too earnest and keening. This would probably sound great coming out of a car on a windows-down, brilliantly sunny day.
[6]

John Seroff: Rory Graham’s pronouncedly beefy baritone is a jarring non-fit in this new wave-lite track. Not that I might be more lenient in judgment even if it came accompanied by Kylie Minogue in leg warmers; “Wanted” is too much seamlessly unremarkable radio filler to be fully redeemed by any one decision.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Not in recent memory has a song wanted so hard to be Bruce Springsteen, circa “Dancing in the Dark.” It actually gets pretty close, too, albeit close to a sound that’s never done much for me.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: What this lacks in lyrical clarity, it more than makes up for in sentiment. There’s something about the unfocused grumbling that only enhances the profound melancholy. It’s as if Rag’n’Bone Man can’t quite put a finger on one single source of pain — gentrification, loss of youth, consuming Weltschmerz — and nothing rings truer than that. What’s more, you can take it as you wish, and should you take it as a rebuke to centrism entailing a lament for the hope it quells, it would without doubt be twenty points ahead. Or at least:
[8]

Frank Falisi: Trades the alt-angst lurch-woo of “Human” for dream-running Petty-style. I have just tried to explain Rag’n’Bone Man by using Tom Petty! No things are other things! And unlike the figurative language of poetry– which takes time and suggests crunch– equivalence in (music) criticism turns a little too avidly to modes of digestion, and maybe too quickly. But there’s something about the locomotion of “All You Ever Wanted” that’s Heartbreakery; there’s shimmer in the guitar and the call uP of the chorus that sounds like Southern Accents-era Tom. There’s also an easy observance of a specific place, a noting that something has maybe changed but that something else has definitely left. Living is full of vibrations and fades as we’re looking. There are souls (???) in people and places. I think that was part of Tom’s songwriting project. I think that’s here too.
[7]

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