Perhaps the most cumbersome song title in a while…

[Video][Website]
[5.60]

Edward Okulicz: I don’t really know why something so imperfect and stunted by its performer’s obvious limitations sounds so perfect in my ears. The lyrics resort to awkwardness if not quite cliche. The verses do nothing that I couldn’t get from Girls Aloud’s “Something Kinda Ooooh” or a synth-pop box set. It aspires to an epic feel it can’t possibly achieve. And yet, something about the way Example speak-sings the chorus magnifies the bleakness to poignancy even if his voice is not usually a compelling instrument. Inarticulate but genuine. An hour (maybe two) on loop later and I’m none the wiser. Even if I can’t say why this has touched enough people to make it a UK #1, I can say that it’s hit me close to home and it won’t let go.
[10]

Iain Mew: So this is a song about a relationship which is falling apart, and it hasn’t been right for a while but no one has actually said anything. Example knows though, from the change in the kiss. General concept works well enough, and although the bleeps and beats are not exactly anything which stands out in UK chartland right now, they’re deployed in an enjoyably dramatic fashion. The problem is that clumsy ‘cos’ sitting there stubbornly in the chorus, saying that she’ll miss him because she’s changed the way she kisses him. Not that she’ll miss him when he goes, which he’s going to do because he knows things are wrong, which he can tell because she changed. Just ‘cos.’ There’s several steps missing in constructing something which makes sense, it gets more annoying every time it comes up, and for someone whose voice is pretty much all he has going for him, it’s not good enough.
[4]

Matthew Harris: Dudes are soooo funny.
[2]

Pete Baran: Why do I hope Calvin Harris has nothing to do with this? I am pretty sure he doesn’t, because if I was Calvin Harris and I had a hand in a track this fun, I would expect a featuring somewhere in the creidts. Indeed, surely this UK pop grime (this is NOT grime) is featuring someone somewhere, this can’t all be just Example. But since I have no evidence to the contrary, I will credit Mr Example to all of the song which would have sat perfectly on the Best of the Human League (remix disc) with nary a batted eye. Except Phil Oakey rapping a bit. I get the feeling Phil can’t rap as well as Example.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: Was gonna say something flip like “can we start having nostalgia for the 90s now?”, but then realized that this isn’t necessarily 80s nostalgia; it could just as easily be nostalgia for 2005 and the Killers. Either way it’s more lead-footed and dopey than the original.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Gloomy synthpop is best served chilly, without these lukewarm dance or rap breaks. But oh, how quickly the ice reforms.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: A pleasant diversion. The component parts will be excellent remixed, but Example’s Scott Stapp-ish tone and not-chavvy-enough enunciation on the verses — but oddly, not the chorus — make my skin crawl. Usually, I’d blow off a track with issues like that, but the hook is so madly infectious that I was (begrudgingly) won over by the end.
[5]

Britt Julious: Everything about this shouldn’t work (the excessive synths, the off-kilter melody), and yet it does, at least to some extent. As an eternal fan of delicious eighties synth pop, I can’t help but also like this for digging up sounds and vocals that were already dug up in the underground scene last decade.
[7]

Zach Lyon: If you ever find yourself kissing this dude, for heaven’s sake, KEEP IT CONSISTENT. Don’t, and he WILL read way too much into it and write an offensively generic song about it. Not kidding. You’re better off dumping Taylor Swift.
[3]

Alfred Soto: I’m baffled by how changing the way “you” kiss means enough to keep a stale British post-millenial backbeat.
[4]