There’s probably a zillion-and-one other singles we could have reviewed. But, well, we’re here now…
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[4.44]
Matt Cibula: I dunno, genius; maybe your problem is that no one wants to be in love with someone who sounds so over everything. Or maybe that pose has been overstruck.
[3]
Pete Baran: Like a knocked-off Victoria Beckham album track, Meester seems bored, though at least Thicke seems to care about having a hit. Remarkably dull.
[2]
Kat Stevens: Lethargic and mushy, like hungover porridge.
[2]
Alex Ostroff: Leighton’s barely present, intoning dead-eyed tales of world travel over a shimmering beat. That’s exactly what the track needs. Bored with the wonders of the globe and pessimistic about the prospect of love, her character should be as blase as humanly possible. At least until she turns on a dime, her voice breaking on “but can a girl believe.” At any rate, the spoken word bits are really just a time-filler until the marvelous warmth of the chorus, hopeful and searching, lamenting solitude but unwilling to throw in the towel. Robin Thicke sleazily calls Leighton “babygirl” and “putty-cat”, trying to pick her up in a club with offers of shopping sprees and shoes, which makes him the most embarrassing thing here. Or at least he would be, if it weren’t for the cringe-inducing “Je t’adore” bridge. The first 60 seconds are PERFECT, though.
[5]
Anthony Miccio: “Looking at me like a puttycat,” says a sexed up Kirk Cameron, pointing out a big reason Leighton Meester is less attractive than Blair Waldorf, who’d have no time for this submissive disco dolly.
[5]
Ian Mathers: I continue to be underwhelmed by Robin Thicke (yep, he continues to sound pretty much as suave and interesting as I’d expect from Alan Thicke’s son), but I’d much rather this be his song than Meester’s. She adds nothing to proceedings but bad French, and Thicke’s verse is a model of charisma and wit by comparison. The chorus isn’t horrible in a smoothed-out-by-the-studio way, but is that worth giving another actress a tepid pop career for?
[3]
Martin Skidmore: There are too many things in this: medium-pace modern electropop with flourishes not unlike ancient Blondie, Meester’s voice lazily rapping more than singing, Robin Thicke guesting on a song he was not involved in writing, some autotuning around the chorus, a verse in French… Actually, it comes together well enough into a quite smooth and seductive number, but I’d have dropped one or two parts.
[7]
Chuck Eddy: In “Good Girls Go Bad” her rapping reminded me of L’Trimm for a few seconds, and here her rapping half makes me think Debbie Harry auditioning for Ze Records (or Tom Tom Club? The Waitresses? Somebody ’80s-new wavey). Too bad both parties’ sung parts are so expendable (and I say that as somebody who counts Robin Thicke’s “Sidestep” as one of the very best r&b singles of 2009).
[7]
John Seroff: Among the current crop of moonlighting would-be pop starlets, Leighton Meester shows the least natural talent and the most savvy in picking her collaborators. Her conversational purr sloppily apes Debbie Harry and Madonna, but she forgets that their casual delivery was generally earned. Sans AutoTune, she’s scant unmusical placeholder for Robin Thicke, who’s clearly on the wrong end of the “featuring” tag. Thicke’s sinewy, carefully metered soul shines on ‘Somebody’ if only in comparison to his songmate; his deft patter and velvet growl take this disco boilerplate a step past mediocre.
[6]