The mopping-up we promised you yesterday will now start a wee bit later on today…
[Website]
[6.33]
Pete Baran: Taylor’s Rubber Band Steel Guitar marks this out as being something a bit different for the first twelve seconds. Then it’s US Pop by numbers, but at least she accurately describes the procedure for parachuting.
[5]
Anthony Easton: I fear after two years of hearing the same songs, they are blending together. This is a fairly generic use of her talent and is not as much of a pop crossover as, for example, the Carrie Underwood/Max Martin track.
[5]
Jonathan Bradley: It’s her most pop — that is, her least country — song to date, and if it weren’t for Swift’s playful girlishness, it could almost be classed as Adult Contemporary. If you wore those shoes, she’d probably wear that dress, I daresay. But in my continued and increasingly unnecessary quest to prove just how astonishing a songwriting talent this woman is, admire how thoroughly she inhabits what is, on the face of it, a rather slight stopgap appended to the bonus edition of her wildly successful Fearless album. It doesn’t matter that she re-uses the leaping/falling metaphor she already deployed in “Fifteen” (“Don’t forget to look before you fall”) or that the song covers the same well-trod ground of being giddily astonished at much how happiness another person can induce. Not when Swift can sing a line like “without a warning/I realize your laugh is the best sound I have ever heard” and make it sound actually true, or is willing to blushingly admit, “I like the way I can’t keep my focus”; wholeheartedly welcoming the most throughly silly aspects of infatuation. It’s cleverly constructed as well, a light, skipping song with a chorus that flutters so expertly it barely sounds like a disruption from the verse.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: An appealing melody, a lyrical trope I’ve always loved and her trademark novelish, colourful descriptions, this is… Taylor Swift marking time, more or less. A good pop song, but Taylor Swift at her best is an astonishing thing, at ease with conventions while soaring over them, sharp as a tack with her words and generous with her hooks. This, on the other hand, is just a good pop song.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Crying “uncle” loudly, Swift records the almost-anonymous pop song that “You Belong With Me” never quite was; I can hear this playing over the trailer of a Mandy Moore comedy. She still finds time to notice the freckles on his chin. Also: what “people” say still holds a lot of currency. Maybe “people” told her to write an airbrushed pop single. But Swift is smart enough to sound an awful lot like Harriet Wheeler of The Sundays. Mandy Moore can’t boast that.
[6]
Ian Mathers: Swift continues to be a winning presence, and she’s done perfectly fine with cliches before (coughYouBelongWithMecough), but the problem with the pleasant enough “Jump Than Fall” is that there’s little in the way of detail or interest to the narrative, and the chorus isn’t world-beatingly huge enough to make up for it (as far as the music goes, those digitized guitar (banjo?) gurgles at the beginning are just annoying).
[6]
Anthony Miccio: “Every time you smile, I smile” — yeah, but you’re always smiling. Based on bubbly pleasantries like “honey, I like the way you’re everything I ever wanted,” it doesn’t sound like Taylor wants to be your mirror so much as your cheer captain. She was more affecting on the bleachers.
[6]
John Seroff: I think much of what scares off an otherwise receptive Taylor Swift listener is the counter-intuitive degree of patience that her music requires. First listens of Swift’s work hardly suggest potential complexity; they’re more easily scanned as almost cloying, twangy tweenpop. It’s the “almost” that’s pivotal there; Taylor has a craftsman’s balance and tact with the accents of emotion and drama. Over time, her initial sweetness cedes to depth and considerable narrative nuances and vocal heights are revealed. By those standards, “Jump Then Fall” is a slight misstep; there’s a touch too much sugar in the bowl for my taste, though even at her least appealing and most beamingly Gloriana-ish, the pleasures of Swift’s clear, honeyed voice are not to be denied. It’s simply in comparison to most of Fearless that “Jump” disappoints; divorced from my heightened expectations, it’s a pleasant enough bit of fluff.
[6]
Alex Ostroff: From “shine for you” to “hair in your face”, this is a collection of Taylor tropes — no more, no less. Except for the melody. “Jump Then Fall” lopes along until Taylor realizes your laugh is the best sound she. Has. EVER. HEARD. Which is emphatically stated as she descends down the scale. The fragile melodic leap upwards on the word “jump” might be overly literal, but it’s evocative, too. By Taylor’s standards this is slight, but it’s compulsively hummable nonetheless.
[7]
Matt Cibula: A low-key outing but pleasant withal. I was going to give it a 7 but was afraid that Rodney would be mad at me so knocked it down to a more reasonable score.
[6]
Additional Scores
Chuck Eddy: [6]
Martin Skidmore: [8]