After this, you know, My December sounds really good.
[Video]
[4.86]
Jer Fairall: Future generations may wonder many things about our current one, but certainly all the hubbub over Kelly Clarkson, an utterly average talent who managed one fluke bit of awesomeness with “Since U Been Gone,” should raise more than a few eyebrows. “Mr Know It All” returns to her old practice of being moulded to fit whichever middle-of-the-road twitch the charts currently favor. In 2011, that means mildly soulful mid-tempo sass, though the results are curiously subdued where the expectation might be a move in the direction of an Adele-style powerhouse. Like about 98% of any Idol product, though, it is all so blatantly inauthentic that any pop savvy person should instantly recognize it as the bland simulacrum of the work of any number of legitimate pop craftspeople: the watered-down Orange Drink of pop music.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: Not that Kelly was ever one to give away her album’s best song as the first single, but this sounds so much as if it could have been written by Jessie J for Pink to do that it’s not just unexciting, it’s damned near unworthy.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: This is “Just The Way You Are.” Same key, same tempo, same arrangement of syllables in the same places, same percussion breakdown leading into the verse and same drop-off before the chorus. But the (eerily, Tedderly substantial) similarities end there. Bruno’s track was a plush sheet for his pillowy nothings, made plain so it wouldn’t clash. On a Kelly Clarkson song, it’s plain for no reason and, like “Already Gone,” drags her voice down. Or put another way: “Mr. Know It All” is the kind of Ester Dean-penned nothing you’d give to Pia Toscano or a similar non-entity, a gesture toward the charts to pave the way, with sales, toward better music. Kelly Clarkson is past that, but between this and All I Ever Wanted, it’s as if nobody cares.
[4]
Brad Shoup: When one has a chorus this wrenching, unattended verses may be somewhat excused. Once Clarkson gets past the R&B machinework and sloppy repetition of said verses, she leans hard into a refrain stuffed with hard-won freedom. She sounds remarkable – at the risk of diluting the word, she displays much soul – all rasp and impeccable phrasing. The framework of drum pistons and time-release Edge-style guitar gives the whole thing a gently-glowing quality, enhanced with her heartbreaking presentation of the phrase “you don’t know a thing about me”. Remove the half-baked honorific conceit and we’d have a full stunner.
[7]
Jonathan Bogart: Divorced from the the need to have every Kelly Clarkson song be the best possible Kelly Clarkson song — record-label haters who gleefully tear down artistic breakthroughs will do that — this is a great P!nk album track ca. 2002. Which may not sound like much of a recommendation to you, but it was my entrée into post-80s pop.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Hoarse and authoritative, Clarkson aims for the survivor ethos worn so well by Tina Turner. The tension builds – metronome beat, a guitar figure faintly alluding to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” – but is neither resolved nor released. If she’s bored with the definitive “Since U Been Gone” template, so am I. If she moved to Nashville she could a definitive nü-Reba record.
[5]
Jonathan Bradley: Guitar downstrokes and a drum machine: Kelly Clarkson, I missed you until you rhymed “thing at all,” with an awkward “ain’t it something, y’all?” One question about this steady train of guys who she constantly suddenly realizes aren’t treating her right: Why does she hook up with them in the first place?
[4]