But what you don’t know is behind that expression is breaking glass…
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[4.17]
Alfred Soto: Based on the title and her conception of the performance it deserves, I expected a Pat Benatar number, not more diminishing returns from the Kelly Clarkson template.
[2]
Brad Shoup: Funny that she sings about feeling like an actress, as she hits every mark in this nice-girls-have-feelings anthem. The Edge-y guitar bit morphs into an ambulance siren midway through, a wonderful production touch. But those string-section slashes show the only flash of anger. They yearn to break the ballad form, but Armiger is ultimately about order.
[3]
Iain Mew: Do “actresses on the stage” have to “push those tears back inside” and hide them? Generally they do the opposite, surely? Which is a bit of a problem when that’s one of so few lines in this song apart from the big chorus, and that’s a lot of noise with not much behind it.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: This is a song written probably by and definitely for high schoolers, because after you leave your parents’ house and before you can afford your own place, you can never scream or make any loud sound again without pissing off your roommates or neighbors or becoming a New York Observer anecdote. Yes, kids, it gets worse — you already knew you had to hide your feelings in public, but when you grow up, owning any private space is a luxury. If it’s any comfort, realizing that doesn’t keep songs like this from being OK substitutes. It helps that Katie hasn’t yet trained the speaking out of her singing; it’s neutral that the chorus rips “Unexpected Song.”
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: Those big bombastic strings arrive too late and shudder too conventionally to save the epic of triteness delivered here.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: I know this is probably dreadful, but it pushes my buttons in ways that please me. Maybe it’s the unpleasant breakup “You Made it Rain” inevitably leads to. The chorus also seems to want to be, at least in places, “Cowboy Take Me Away,” which it can’t really hope to hold a candle to (the bit where she sings “to cover up the sound it makes” = “fly this girl as high as you can.”) But the little string patches that pop up towards the end of the chorus are a nice touch, and if her chops as a performer and vocalist don’t allow her to convey the pain, they’re good enough to carry the narrative of the verses, trite as they are. Trite, that’s what this song is — but that’s not always a wholly bad thing.
[7]