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[7.67]
Martin Skidmore: I’d have really liked to see this in that BBC list for 2011 rather than most of what was there. Her voice is a little weak on the higher notes, but otherwise there is a soulful force, backing with music that seems somewhere between Massive Attack working with Shara Nelson and modern R&B, with a dash of drum & bass energy in the beats (it’s produced by Shy FX) and some strong horns on the chorus. I found it captivating and very danceable, and I like it enormously.
[9]
Jer Fairall: Not unlike that Yuck song that only I liked, this amuses me as much for its canny evocation of a specific dawn-of-the-90s sound than anything particularly notable about the song itself. But when that sound is a snap-together pastiche of the Pet Shop Boys’ austere hum (maybe a bit more “West End Girls” than Behaviour, but still), the gaudy pan-ethnicism of a Wild Orchid soundtrack and the tactile clicks and loops of the era’s hip hop (complete with “Jump Around” squeal), — well, that just leaves me too giddily nostalgic to even notice how colourless the vocals are until about the fifth time through.
[7]
Michaelangelo Matos: Shy FX is producing chart R&B now, eh? The track certainly bears the marks of an old junglist: bish-bosh snare and cymbal, the latter ringing out throughout to create a kind of washing backdrop. As for Yasmin, she’s got a decent-enough voice and a less-decent-than-that song.
[6]
Josh Love: The “You’re gonna make it after all!” sentiment of this one could’ve easily been pure treacle, but the matter-of-fact, unromantic, downright mature way Yasmin chronicles the aspirations and doubts of a young striver ends up being genuinely affecting. “No one’s gonna pay my way…no one’s gonna do it for me,” she sings with knowing resolve, and you want her to make it after all, even if making it means “getting your exceptionally pretty face in a gauzy music video that seems wildly incongruous to the fairly dank bass and drums in your song.” Pity about sharing your name with a dodgy contraceptive too.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: You can get lost for hours in singles like this: a noisy beat and punchy brass samples to get your attention, and a melancholy backdrop to catch your senses. I’m swept away so completely I don’t notice the weaknesses, which are many; the melody, especially in the chorus, hits the exact points where Yasmin’s voice thins out, and the “make it on my own” conceit has borne too many songs already to support the last line. But then there’s a faraway murmur or an unexpected mood shift, and just like that I’m taken again.
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: NOW THIS IS HOW YOU BONGO.
[8]