Getting on Taylor nice and early makes up for us doing this kinda late, right?
[Video][Website]
[5.67]
Jonathan Bogart: Trey Songz may well be merely a more ponderous version of Chris Brown, but there are two things wrong with that dismissal: first, Chris Brown can really sing. And second, part of what’s wrong with Chris Brown is that he’s not ponderous enough: glibness is, in the right circumstances, criminal. You never doubt that Trey feels every hit of “Heart Attack” — it’s just too bad it’s not a better song.
[7]
Anthony Easton: Forget everything that he is saying — just imagine him humming, the lush vocals riding over the surf of percussive beats. It works, and works much better than the whining of the vocals.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: Trey Songz’ voice sounds great as usual, but on “Heart Attack” his attention-demanding pipes are put to the task of saying nothing of real interest for just over four minutes. All that really gets established lyrically here is that sometimes love isn’t so great, a lesson most people learn in high school but is here dragged on for several minutes. Extra points, though, for the Game-Boy bloops popping up in the mix, the most interesting element of this whole song.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Although I don’t believe for a nanosecond Trey’s tears-of-a-clown bit, he is committed to making the fantasy signify sonically: sirens, car crashes, EKG beeps.
[5]
Alex Ostroff: The production is a touch too busy, and Trey’s vocals aren’t allowed to be as smooth as they could be. And, yes, the song is a budget version of “Climax” and the spoken word interlude is a budget version of every classic Usher song circa 8701 (and also “Burn”). But in 2012, it’s a genuine pleasure (and surprise!) to see an R&B song on the Hot 100 that more or less sounds like an R&B song instead of Eurohouse that I’m not going to bother nitpicking.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Trey’s great work on the chorus — swiping Usher’s “oh” from “Lovers & Friends,” for one — replaces self-pity with wistfulness. Midway through, an organ sends the video-game melody to the bench: the true wheelhouse of this cumbrous song.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Of course Benny Blanco produced this. It’s exactly what you’d get if you Benny-proofed “Climax”: more obvious, less subtle. They gave their best; it wasn’t enough.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: Sounds lovely, but nothing about it — production, singing, lyrics, anything — evokes pain of the heart. Try as Trey might, he’s not convincing me here. His facial expressions in the video constitute more successful acting than his admittedly impressive attempt to feel this utterly blank song. The points are because while it misses its target completely, it at least hits some pleasure centres with the beat.
[6]
Will Adams: Something tells me that Trey has no idea what a heart attack actually feels like. Wasting that lovely 8-bit intro for a tepid plate of histrionics gave me angina, though.
[4]