NB: George’s idea of paradise may not be yours.

[Video][Website]
[4.44]

Iain Mew: It’s 2018 and indie guys are still trying to tag their own “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” onto the end of anything and everything.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: If you want it to, the belief on George Ezra’s part — or whoever else’s — that the Bobby McFerrin photocopy “Don’t Matter Now” was a good idea could be quite revealing. This time however, the superficially stupid positivity is thankfully far less self-satisfied, or at least more inclusively so. There are things it’s easy to imagine people recoiling at — at times he’s indistinguishable from a travelling community musician, nobly leading an assembly at a local infants school (except for cash). But that’s the joy. He is the music man, he comes from down your way, and he is going to do things like surprise you with enjambment.
[8]

Alfred Soto: I haven’t heard a bullfrog this convincing since Kevin Gates stepped in front of a mike (I won’t count the dude from Crash Test Dummies). The spirited strumming calls to mind the early 2010s obsession with the enthusiasm of massed choirs. On closer inspection the song isn’t m-m-m-memorable beyond George Ezra’s own enthusiasm, but in this Drake and Post Maloned landscape I’ll take it.
[6]

Crystal Leww: I did not like “Budapest,” but I have to give it to George Ezra for basically making a Two Door Cinema Club track with that somber ass, sleepy sounding voice. This gallops and rollicks and fights and feels just like frenetic energy of the early days of falling in love and falling fast. 
[7]

Stephen Eisermann: A little too Disney Channel Original Movie sounding for me, but I do think the song serves as a good showcase for Ezra’s lower register. I just wish it was even slightly more interesting… it’s just not.
[3]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Maybe it’s the title that’s all wrong — when Ezra names it “paradise,” it’s bound to arrive overhyped. Nothing of the sublime here, just a nice little ditty that gets repetitive quickly. A nice place to drive past, but wouldn’t want to visit.
[5]

William John: There are few things I find more conceited and unrelatable than the idea that something I feel has more grounding in reality than the feelings of anyone else, especially when that idea comes to me amidst a deluge of earnest sturm und twang.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Ezra bounces and jerks around as if to animate his song into a fun and jaunty state through force of will, but the song’s mired in quicksand and he might as well be. It goes plunka plunka plunka through a forced smile and goes nowhere as it sinks.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: George Ezra wails in a horrible baritone, stuttering and punctuating his manic cheer with onomatopoeiac cutesiness (“my BOOM-BOOM heart”) while a lobotomized chorus cheers him on with panto-grade call-and-response exhortations. The Proclaimers without the fun, The Lumineers without the sensitivity, the most banal incarnation of Arcade Fire robbed of any sense of wonder. “Paradise” gives optimism, unity, inclusion, enthusiasm, and even paradise itself a bad name. 
[1]