The Singles Jukebox

An all-star cast, and yet we resist…

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[3.86]

Claire Biddles: Nile Rodgers! The greatest rhythm guitarist of all time! “Let’s Dance”! NILE RODGERS! Sharing featured billing with a poundshop Sam Smith! On a lowest-common-denominator house track! 2016 is relentless.
[1]

William John: Nile Rodgers has precisely one trick, and all these years later, magicians are still failing to eclipse it. This makes an admirable aim to replicate the atmosphere of the forest featured in Looking s02e01, and with a little more target practice it might’ve got there. Normally Sigala’s fondness for chipmunkifying vocals grates; here, surrounded by a cloud of loud house piano and undercut with Rodgers’ guitar, it works a little better. John Newman doesn’t do much other than barrack, but when the maestro of chickenscratching is in the room, sometimes the best thing to do is just get out of the way.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: This is just a bit much. Buying in a lithe bassline is a little pointless when you hide it so well under John Newman barely even trying to sing. There’s a hint of his trademark organ-backed and vaguely delicate “oh I’m so tortured baby!” routine, but far too much of him shouting. Even the bits of this song that aren’t vocal are essentially shouting. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it is when they’re all so far from cohesion.
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: John Newman is responsible for some great songs, whether with Rudimental or on his own. This renders him unrecognizable, which is a crime – despite the generic nature of his name, he’s shown himself to be far more capable than a generic EDM vocalist. At the very least, more than Calvin Harris, who he inexplicably sounds like here. So even the chorus sounds tired, and as crowded as something like “Love Me Again” got, it rarely sound this boring. I can see this growing on me, especially when the bridge, despite that “they won’t treat you like I do” theme that Jukeboxers loathe so much, brings back some of the soul that Newman naturally has. But then that chorus comes in, and the whole thing goes back to sounding dated and dull.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: There was a period of at least a decade where Nile Rodgers couldn’t get anywhere near a chart. I think it’s nice that such a straight-up legend is getting regular lucrative work, but I’m not going to pretend that this is much of a song. His trademark, great as it is, is pretty much swamped by a distorted voice in one part, by John Newman in another, and the house piano along with the chant of “give me your love” is more exhausting and oppressive than it is uplifting. Previous Sigala singles have suggested that they can’t quite make pleasurable sounds into a coherent, enjoyable song. This one makes me want to go back and listen to “Lady (Hear Me Tonight)” instead.
[3]

Cassy Gress: Last time we saw Sigala, I complained the vocalist was too shouty. John Newman is less shouty than Bryn Christopher was, but only slightly, and he’s much more aggressive: “blah blah I’ll be a good boyfriend etc GIVE ME YOUR LOVE GIVE IT NOW GIVE IT RIGHT FUCKING NOW.” Meanwhile, Nile Rodgers continues to get paid for playing pretty much the exact same guitar riff in songs that don’t particularly need it, especially here when the piano figure is doing nearly the same thing he is.
[3]

Will Adams: Like so many of his recent features, Nile Rodgers’ presence feels like an afterthought. It’s not until the chorus plows through with a large dynamic shift that it begins to make sense, the way his guitars sync to the choppy rhyhtm. The lingering fear, though, is that I’d hate to have to shout along to this on the dancefloor; I’d lose my voice immediately trying to match Newman’s blood vessel-bursting theatrics.
[5]