Life is a dancefloor…

[Video]
[2.70]

Dorian Sinclair: If your song is featured in a Disney/Make-A-Wish Christmas ad, it’s inevitably going to be saccharine, and it would be unfair of me to ding it too harshly for that. What I’ll say is that while “Love is a Compass” succeeds at what it’s trying to do, what it’s trying to do isn’t particularly interesting. Griff manages to imbue the lines with some measure of real feeling though, despite the hoary messaging.
[5]

Rachel Saywitz: Is it bad that before I even listened to this song, I saw that it was used in a “Disney Christmas Advert” and immediately made my mind up? It probably shouldn’t matter, because my first impressions proved me right: “Love is a Compass” is a snooze fest, dragged down by a repetitive piano line and cheesy lyrics like, “I can’t help but smile at the wonders of the world.” Maybe I’m cynical and have no care for songs about love guiding us in the right direction, and Griff does have a lovely, deep and strong voice. But when it’s a major corporation manufacturing the compass, I have no choice but to be skeptical of the message.
[3]

Thomas Inskeep: As bad as you might expect a song titled “Love Is a Compass” to be, this is immeasurably worse. Like, C-list-animated-Disney-film worse. Griff sounds like an “inspirational” contestant on The Voice or some shit.
[0]

Iain Mew: Manages to combine all of the worst excesses of ’00s British arena indie ballads with all of the worst excesses of X Factor winner songs. It’s stylistically like Leona Lewis’s “Run,” but benefits from none of the same strength of singer or material. 
[2]

Alfred Soto: The songwriters no doubt intended the precision — boringness? — with which the song lands on its central conceit, and Griff adds showbiz tremulousness to material that I hear no one transcending.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: As always with this kind of thing, consult the musical theater rubric, not the pop one. But even on Disney pathos “Love is a Compass” doesn’t outscore the Ratatouille musical, which is a bunch of adolescents making TikToks about a cartoon rat.
[2]

Nortey Dowuona: Loping piano runs around in a circle, as Griff’s sifting, lilting voice rises as she sings amongst her echoes, who buffer her from the now defensive running piano, and the echoes create a bubble of synths and that the piano pinpricks. Griff continues while the piano keeps trying to get through, but the bubble anchored by the heavy kicks block it. Finally, a simple piano tendril pierces the bubble, but Griff incinerates it.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Plods ahead in predictable manners, which consequently makes the vocal treatments both distractingly annoying and the only memorable thing here.
[3]

John Seroff: Much like the ad it soundtracks, “Love Is a Compass” suffers from overbearing product placement, shades of uncanny valley and brute force emotional manipulation. I’m sure it’s all for a good cause, but I’m hard pressed to imagine a setting in which this lyric-overstuffed etude would be much more than waved tearily on to the next round or simply endured.
[3]

Will Adams: Ten years ago this inspiro-drivel would have been paired with a pounding, “Firework”-style arrangement. The fact that that sounds more appealing than what we got says enough.
[3]