The Singles Jukebox

And we came here for Ella’s big voice!

[Video]
[5.44]Julian Axelrod: This doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Far from it: This is the exact prototype of a wheel, with the same spokes and circumference as every wheel since 2012. If you asked a four year old to draw a wheel, they would draw an exact replica of this. But holy shit, what a good wheel. The hook feels bigger and more infectious every time I hear it. Sigala shows unusual restraint for a trop-house producer, stripping the beat down to its essential parts and making each one hit like a ton of bricks. And Ella Eyre has the kind of million-dollar voice that was made for songs like this. I feel like the critic in me should be picking this apart, but it’s been far too long since we got a summer banger that felt like ice cream and water parks and made my head feel like that giant glowing brain meme. So I’m just going to sit back and enjoy this while we still have some summer left.
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: Love on the dance floor has sounded a bit too passive this year, thanks to this balmy, almost numbing electronic chill casted over pop. So I welcome the maximal burst of this pairing. Sigala’s sounds are rather familiar kits from the pop chart’s toolbox, though the sheer exuberance he inspires out of these sunny sounds is something to be missed. Equally familiar is the weighty R&B diva vocals of Ella Eyre, but rather than recede into the warmth, her voice packs so much into the huge chorus that her producers crack open through those glistening classic-house pianos.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Ella Eyre’s lustrous range, reminiscent of Taylor Dayne and early Christina Aguilera, animates this basic house thumper with one too many trop house motifs getting tangled around the knees.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Honest-to-goodness uplifting, largely non-trop house, with big- (and slightly weird-, and I mean that as a strong compliment) voiced Ella Eyre on the leads, giving the “Came Here for Love” lyric just the punch it needs against Sigala’s musical setting. This is a light ‘n lovely summer jam.
[8]

Stephen Eisermann: Ella Eyre is too talented to be singing on a track that is destined to only hit #1 on the most requested lists of gay clubs. Her soulful voice is drowned out by the loudness of the production and I’m just severely disappointed by this. Please excuse me as I play Feline another hundred times, putting “Even If” on constant repeat.
[4]

Iain Mew: It’s behind only Tom Odell’s “Another Love” as the song on British radio most enhanced by deliberately mishearing “love” as “lol(s)” when the singer swallows the end of the word! It’s also the fourth Sigala single we’ve covered and the fourth with a variation on said word in its title, an adherence to formula in keeping with everything else about it.
[3]

Will Adams: Bland uplift with enough thwack and fervor to subvert my better judgement.
[6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: It’s pretty darn easy to be cynical about a song like this, both for its familiarity and incessant peppiness. And the first time I heard “Came Here For Love,” I was that dude at a party with his arms crossed, on a mission to dance as little as possible. But all of a sudden, that V/vi appeared and it was like I was thrust into the air and forced to make a decision: when I come back down, will I surrender to this admittedly generic post-Clean Bandit house number? In the chorus, that chord is shortly followed by Ella Eyre screaming “I want you to reach out!” and it’s the exact moment I knew I had to extend my arm out and yield. I’m dancing now, and I couldn’t be happier.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: Clean Bandit have a lot to answer for, huh? Essentially this is fine and functional, but the problem with this brand of UK pop house is that they’ve long since mistaken routine as function, and feel overcommitted to doing what’s expected of them. Sigala has given you a perfect example of what people think they’re going to hear, but has no clue how to give someone what they didn’t know they need to hear.
[3]