Someone’s going to buy this, we’re just not sure who.
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[3.30]
Iain Mew: The riff — the RIFF, the one that football crowds sing — is largely neutered by the arrangement, yet its declamatory force is such that even a merely competent singer sounds completely badass singing it.
[6]
Anthony Easton: The original is so close to soul, or at least the original is thinking about historical precedents enough, that one can trace the narrative through its appropriative tendencies. That is one of the reasons why it sounds so skilled, and so to make a historical copy of a track that is so historicised, one wonders exactly what the purpose is. Not that everything on earth must have a purpose, but I am getting tired of this kind of work; it has lost its energy to surprise or ingratiate.
[2]
Brad Shoup: Charles Bradley’s incomprehensible soul-funk take on Nirvana’s “Stay Away” is still messing my shit up, so I don’t have much goodwill to spare here. These kinds of covers have overestimation built in: you get the chill of suggestive unfamiliarity, the charge of a “respectable” musical style (soul-funk here, but also a tad of ska). And generally, they settle for the melodic transplant, instead of mining that attitudinal nugget that charged the original. The Stripes’ original had a spit-on-your-grave quality; Collins’ borrowed arrangement trades that in for a Country Bears take on second-line soul.
[2]
Rebecca Toennessen: I’ve heard crappier versions of this song – one being the officially sanctioned remix (b-side of the 12-inch, I think I listened to it once) and hey, the Oak Ridge Boys had a bish, why not an X-Factor dude? This is supposed to be an angry, defiant song, but Marcus hams it up almost ragtime style, and the daftness barfs all over any power the riff might have had. I think I even prefer a vuvuzela version over these tinky blips that replace Jack’s mighty guitar. In short, this song makes me sad.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The compressed, pinched guitar figure and organ evoke Them for a couple of fleeting seconds — before the mariachi horns. The rest sounds like Semisonic covering Maroon 5.
[3]
John Seroff: There should be a sort of extended Hippocratic oath when it comes to cover songs: First, Do No Harm (But Don’t Forget to Do Something). Collins doesn’t leave much of a mark either way on this weakly skanking version of the far superior “po po po po song”. I suppose something this tepid might cut it if your goal is to get on Team Shelton or Team Aguilera but it ain’t gonna turn my head.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: Tasteful but inessential. The record company could have slapped out the Ben L’Oncle Soul version this is based on and nobody would have bought it but the difference to the world and its playlists would have been zilch. “Seven Nation Army” is a good song no matter how performed, but stripped of its rough edges it’s no longer an interesting one. Given that the arrangement brings nothing new to the table, it bears noting that the song choice doesn’t even work as a vocal showcase. Maybe one of those dodgy dance covers might have been a better starting point.
[5]
Sally O’Rourke: In The White Stripes’ version, Jack White sounds like he’s being stalked by sinister shadows bent on enacting a multinational government conspiracy that he can only foil through MASSIVE GUITAR RIFFAGE. In Marcus Collins’ version, Marcus sounds like he’s having the shadows over to borrow his Mark Ronson records and watch an episode of The Voice. (He’s #TeamAdam, of course.)
[3]
Alex Ostroff: Marcus Collins is apparently him from The X Factor? One thought: Didn’t Paul Anka already do an entire album of this with ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit‘ and so forth?
[3]
Jer Fairall: A cautionary tale: keep letting TV singing contests run rampant and eventually everything will sound like Maroon 5 performing in a Vegas revue.
[2]