Guess she got unstuck, then…
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[4.83]
John Seroff: Long on technical skill and short on originality, “Impossible” is music in search of marketing; bland despite bombast and emotionally flat. Don’t let the R&B melismas and consonant-poor diction fool you: this isn’t soul, it’s sappy pop more of the Ryan Tedder/Chrisette Michele/American Idol/Sara Bareilles school. I suppose there’s still an outside chance this has legs to make it to the MLB playoffs or a late summer chickflick, but I hold out hope it sinks like a stone and Shontelle (who has a nice enough voice) comes back up to bat with something of more substance.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: A record exec somewhere listened to early Rihanna and thought “Y’know, this would be so much better if it were more anonymous!” So we get generic breakup griping, bottom-of-the-bin synths, and spit-shined Auto-Tune chugging along soullessly like a player piano. Barbados doesn’t deserve this.
[1]
Jonathan Bogart: I don’t know about your market, but in mine this is already a minor classic, sweeping up the pieces of ballads scattered by Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, and Rihanna and gluing them together in stately disarray.
[7]
Martin Skidmore: She still sounds slightly routine, technically strong rather than expressive enough, but this is a pretty strong song, with a nice synth line under the chorus. It sounds a little sub-Beyonce, but that’s hardly a damning insult.
[7]
Mallory O’Donnell: The opening here is suitably moody and effective, seducing with a spare piano sample, lovely atmospherics and the hope that the song will be based on the premise of the opening lines – “…someone told me I should take/caution when it comes to love/I did.” Well, apparently not, because the rest of the song consists of Shontelle calling you a big meanie to a backing track resembling nothing so much as the multimedia portion of someone’s Julliard application. Shontelle is fine, the hook is “fine,” but neither are quite fine enough to excuse such cliche-ridden lyrics or such mediocre deployment of a synthesizer in perfect working order.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: Post-Tedder angst that avoids the worst excesses of Tedder angst by not actually being by Ryan Tedder. Beyoncé’s “Halo” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Already Gone” stripped the vulnerability from the “Bleeding Love” formula, but Shontelle recognizes that something needs to be at stake in an emotional tsunami, otherwise it all ends up sounding a bit soggy. Her gush is merely amiable now, but don’t be surprised if it gains some resonance once the days start to turn cold.
[5]