Is it so horrible of me to say that I really like “OMG” quite a lot now?…
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[6.00]
Al Shipley: Two years ago, Usher sang earnestly about marriage and fatherhood. Just two years later, he’s divorced and trying to recapture his heartthrob status with ill-advised loverman song titles like “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)” and “There Goes My Baby.” And worst of all, it’s working: the latter is his the fifth R&B top 10 hit from this album, and it’s one of the best simply by dint of not being terrible.
[5]
Maura Johnston: If Raymond Vs. Raymond had been a) 2/3 its length and b) 3/4 filled with more songs like this, in which Usher’s voice is let out of the hard drive long enough for him to actually sing, I probably would have liked it a lot more.
[8]
Chuck Eddy: Not nearly as good as “There Goes My Baby” by Charlie Wilson, or the Drifters for that matter. But much better than the idiotic Usher song that goes “honey got a booty like pow pow pow/honey got some boobies like wow oh wow” (the lowest radio has sunk this year, as far as I can tell.)
[5]
Alfred Soto: The chorus is catchy in the wrong way, but it’s a minor complaint about Usher’s best song in years. Stretching vowels over snapping programmed rhythms, he sounds lovestoned, and I think that she knows.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: Usher, more than a lot of his smooth-r&b peers, really lives or dies by his production, and this is just too anonymous and cloying to tolerate.
[5]
Martin Skidmore: This one’s a slow ballad, and his high notes on this mostly sound far less forced and awkward. The song seems rather weak, and I’ve never thought he was a great singer, and the production isn’t terribly interesting, but it’s all pleasant enough.
[6]
Mallory O’Donnell: There’s a lot of good ideas and a lot of good execution here, but I have grave concerns about Usher’s taste level. Still, his synths and his voice both reassure me that he actually wants girls to feel good, and it’s enough to get a bit of enjoyment out of this fairly middle-of-the-road sex-makin’ jam which gets one bonus point because it is basically an Erasure song.
[6]