The Singles Jukebox

Today’s theme at the Jukebox is “sweet love.” This looks like a fitting song to kick us off…

[Video][Website]
[4.82]

Scott Mildenhall: Bryn Christopher! Still as het up as he was almost a decade ago on “The Quest,” and only now in the top 10. His end-of-tether performing style worked on something so life-or-death, but here it’s supposed to be ebullience, and it does not sound like it. As much as they’re essentially the same song, it’s for that reason that “Sweet Lovin'” isn’t as good as “Easy Love.” There, unlike here, the joy seemed effortless, in more ways than one.
[7]

Cassy Gress: The first 15 seconds or so of this sounds pretty much like what I would expect heaven to sound like. I don’t mean literal angels and fanfares and stuff, but it’s so floaty and twinkly. Then the entire rest of it seems to be devoted to looping the same three house variations endlessly, while somebody shouts over it. I mean, I like house generally, but this needs a little bit more variety. Otherwise I’ve heard everything the song has to offer in the first minute, and unless that’s really good, I will get bored. And it does sound more like a shout than a proper belt, complete with gasps of air after phrases. Yes, I get it! MY SWEET SWEET LOVING! Please stop shouting!
[4]

Will Adams: Bryn Christopher’s overexertion provides a necessary contrast to the professional, competent house beneath, making “Sweet Lovin'” one of the more propulsive dance singles coming through the assembly line. An extra point for the seventh chords in the piano.
[7]

Iain Mew: The opening “SWEEEET” cuts through music channels as background noise, maybe even enough to make up for the Sigma confusion factor. Aside from that, about all it’s got going for it is that it’s not, quite, “Easy Love.”
[3]

Brad Shoup: The charm that comes naturally from sampling a classic is supplied in industrial quantities here. Christopher is frighteningly actualized. The xylophone line is pretty great, though: let’s develop that.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: One extra point for the xylophone-run thing, which is so goofy when paired with those woodblock sounds it grants what is already just a straight forward cliché-run just the slightest hint of charm. Sigala didn’t want to do anything here, and quite frankly he didn’t have to, but at least he put in the teensiest bit of personal stamp. Whatever that’s worth.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: It takes years of dedicated effort and ruthless aesthetic drive to make house music this awful.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: “Sweet Lovin'” does not do what house music is supposed to do in that it’s entirely not cathartic, not ecstatic, and not liberating. It follows the house blueprint — pounding chords, tropical burbles, “diva” vox — too closely and too sloppily to genuinely wrench a dancefloor sweatily beyond the strictures of now. But being big and dumb and obvious — that thick riff standing in for the traditional piano stabs! — can stomp over subtlety, and even if it’s not pretty, this gets the job done.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The “Party Rock Anthem” of nu-house: loud, neon, any subtlety crushed in a leopard-print Speedo thrust, and annoyingly hard to hate.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Juicy and sweet, but more like an opal fruit than a mango, maybe how house is supposed to be. 
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: This could be a Martha Wash record from 1993, only Bryn Christopher is no Martha Wash. 
[5]