So in about 6 months, Wikipedia will quote Edward as praising Jessie J’s lead single…
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[3.54]
Edward Okulicz: Jessie J just gets better with each successive single. Of course, the base she’s building on is pretty low, so even something that sounds like the bits of “Beat of My Drum” that sound like the bits from “Run the World (Girls)” and features Big Sean is going to be an improvement. Dizzee’s on it too, confirming that Jessie J is a pop star with everything except anything worth saying.
[3]
Scott Mildenhall: It’s good to hear something approaching the Jessie J of “Do It Like a Dude” back, and sans dubiousness! But also, in fact, flanked by two actual dudes, somewhat detracting from her big (not really that big) return (not really a return.) The mood is right, and it’s both interesting and pleasing that it refuses to — technical parlance — “go off”, but in lieu of that happening there’s nothing else.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: “Wild” is a great track, an all-fours run through song clutter. Imagine Rihanna singing it, or Robyn, or hell, Rita Ora, or even singers who don’t start with R; but alas, who we’ve got is Jessie J. (Producer Ammo’s other big credit is “E.T.” Maybe he should give up on vocalists.) The critical thrashings of Jessie are becoming rather kneejerk, but “Wild” justifies them all. There’s almost no line delivery she doesn’t botch somehow, in a way she probably thinks is elan: uncertain pitch (“w-w-work it”), leaden plosives (“POURin'”), ill-advised attempts at personality (“get WWWWROUGH!,” “let ’em all talk-talk”), overexertion (basically everything.) The chorus anonymizes and saves her, but only to free up your annoyance for everything else. (Right now it’s that Dizzee and Sean were chosen because Jessie’s criteria were literally just “someone really British and someone really American.” I await her next crossover plea featuring Gotye, Bieber, Thomas Bangalter and the dude out of Rammstein.)
[3]
Iain Mew: Co-writer Claude Kelly’s UK writing credits prior to this include “Price Tag” and most of Olly Murs’s discography, and finding out the latter doesn’t come as a great surprise based on “Wild” and its total lack of edge. However, while generic dullness and Big Sean guest verses are not normally what I’m after in pop, in this case it means less Jessie J, so it’s good all round. She gets in a mere two excruciating moments!
[4]
Jer Fairall: In the annals of annoying sounds made by Jessie, the way she barks “rough” might actually be my favourite, but the generic, Guettaized chorus fails to live up to it with any such chutzpah. Big Sean has the right idea, though; his “if I swim with the piranhas, guarantee that I’mma probably have a fish dinner” is brazenly stupid in exactly the way that the song needs.
[5]
Anthony Easton: Such different performers, and no real effort to integrate them — with the possible exception of Jessie J interrupting Dizzee Rascal’s verse, which was the only thing I was kind of enjoying.
[4]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Even after last week’s Robbie Williams collaboration sent me sobbing into a corner, Dizzee owns his moment on a similarly goofy pop hybrid; one listen to how he spits “gnarly/’Rari/barmy/WOT” reminds you why he’s a national treasure. As for the host, she may have turned a corner in crafting something approaching a bearable on-record persona, albeit by exchanging being a bother for being boring. Medium Sean happily shoulders the weight of the smugness with some off-beat Def Poetry Jam jabbering. You can almost see him listening to the “Diced Pineapples” intro on repeat and finding it “pretty xantastic!”
[5]
Will Adams: Turns out I haven’t missed Jessie J’s howling one bit.
[3]
Alfred Soto: “I turn up the heat cuz the drama ain’t important,” she assures us, whereupon she nods towards two rappers past their respective peaks. A grace note: she (and Dizzee!) could have gone all Calvin Harris on us.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Lot of questions after listening to this. Why does it sound like Jessie J is coming up for air in a swimming pool when she sings on some of the verses? Why is the chorus so limp? Why does Big Sean continue to grab “featuring” spots when he’s so bad? Why hasn’t Dizzee Rascal rapped with these two more? Compared to them he sounds like he’s back on his Boy In Da Corner game.
[3]
Brad Shoup: That chorus could’ve killed 20 years ago. Jessie’s actually stronger in tuff mode, but it’s a great big club-existential melody. Astoundingly, this song is available on Spotify in an extended version with just Big Sean, who is a sinkhole.
[5]
David Lee: If you’re going to give less than half a shitsworth of effort when working with Jessie J’s headache-inducing vocals, then why should I bother writing more than a sentence about this song?
[1]
Crystal Leww: This song is a perfect distillation of Jessie J’s “thing”: all the parts are cobbled together to pander, and yet all of them sound like watered-down versions of what they’re trying to imitate. Jessie J’s long suffered from this lack of personality; from “Do It Like a Dude” to “Price Tag”, Jessie ends up sounding like everyone else (Rihanna? Katy Perry?) and yet no one at all. “Wild” does not break from Jessie J tradition; I do not even know what this song is trying to be. Is this a “fingers up to the haters” anthem? Or is this a love song? About self-empowerment? The guests are worse versions of themselves. They are meant to provide fun interludes and bring in their distinctive personalities and voices, but they end up sounding bland. Big Sean’s ad-libs are copied from his better hits; his “Jessie Jaaaaay” sounds bored rather than playful. The shift in the beat during Dizzee’s verse is meant to make his voice sound alive, but it just sounds like an out-of-place interlude. Out of all the wonderful British pop ladies that the record labels could be trying to shove down our throats, we get her? I swear, Jessie J is turning me into a rockist.
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