The Ciara single not featuring 2 Chainz..
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[6.62]
Jonathan Bogart: Every year that goes by without Ciara making a triumphant comeback leaves the world in a worse place. If this soppy-but-unbowed ballad is what it takes, fine, but only if it doesn’t mean she’s doing middle-aged stuff from here on out.
[6]
Anthony Easton: Ciara’s voice, looping around itself, with icy self-control working overtime to appear placid — with the idea that placidity will work against the hysteria destroying the core of the song. The melting shards of glass and ice at the end are so fucking plastic — plastic like the cash money potential of a credit card. The song puts her in a royal lineage of people who could pull off the same trick: Dionne Warwick, Whitney, early Madonna. Fucking iconic.
[10]
Alex Ostroff: It might not be fair to grade this on a curve against “Promise,” given that “Promise” is possibly the best song of last decade. “Sorry” reunites Ciara with the team responsible for that career peak, though, so I was hoping that this would be the track to revive her career. (The songs have been great. The radio response has been less so.) It won’t be. But that was a seduction, and this is a lament. If it isn’t perfect, it’s certainly the most emotional she’s sounded since 2007, and those Linn drums are still custom-made for the sort of dancing that only Ci (and Janet) can pull off, to which I can only aspire.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Love the double-time chorus; it anchors a track so gentle it threatens to go airborne. There’s a sort of bridge here… there’s a section of unintelligible vocoded male response. It’s buried under that Troutman pixie dust (as is the entire track). There’s no way that part survives on the radio, so kudos.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: I don’t know what the significance of having the narrator’s significant other be represented by a glitchy robo-voice, but I really like how it sounds. “Sorry” is a glossier take on the moody production Drake has built his name on, Ciara using the whirring noises as a backdrop for her singing, which sounds quite strong. The sections where she picks up the pace and sounds on the verge of collapsing are especially nice against the futuristic sounds backing her up.
[8]
Will Adams: The man’s apology arrives, but only in the form of a garbled vocoder line, which leads me to believe that Ciara is merely playing out the scenario in her head: more wishful thinking to ease the pain. This vulnerability is further developed through the syrupy production and the wonderful pre-chorus — her voice cracking on “hurt” is one of the better examples of text-painting I’ve heard in pop recently. Ciara is pouring herself out for the listener as much as she is for this man. She’s done more than enough to earn a higher rank; the least we can do is support her.
[7]
Alfred Soto: When Ciara exerts herself on a track it’s a shock; her control, which looks like diffidence to skeptics, remains her most striking virtue. Thanks to erratic (to be kind) major label promotion and second-rate superstar collaborations designed for crossover, her U.S. profile has evaporated. This retro move (imagine Brandy or Mary J singing it in 1997) is her best track in years, in part because the producers push her to an emotional hysteria to which neither she nor we are accustomed.
[6]
Iain Mew: The best explanation I can come up with for this song is that it is the product of Ciara and the producer submitting their work mostly blind and each assuming that the other was going to put in such a shining performance that it was best they kept things understated.
[3]