Maybe just happy?
[Video][Website]
[4.14]
Alfred Soto: Generic perk whose singer boasts an accent that I will resist exoticizing.
[3]
Anthony Easton: The is profoundly bland, the beat is anemic, the lyrics do not provide any details — it is not even so skillfully generic to be ignored, but that lack of proficiency just makes it amateurism. It might be evidence against the idea that the amatuer is the authentic is the interesting, but that idea has been played out. More interestingly, it might be evidence against the idea that professional slickness is the inauthentic is the interesting. But those fights have lost anything new to say for a decade. This does not even have the historical in mind when it tries to play them.
[2]
Brad Shoup: She explodes into that chorus. Bubblepop at its finest: lacerating lyrics hammered into the front of your skull. This may be a minority opinion, but I would’ve loved for those strings to poke up further in the mix during the verses. I could see JoJo doing this circa her debut, which is high praise, believe me.
[7]
Iain Mew: This is the first chorus I’ve heard since “I Knew You Were Trouble” to use its drop-skip manoeuvre, which is something with appeal that could last a few iterations yet. The best thing to say about the rest of “Dumb” is that Tich doesn’t go into full on Jessie J roaring even when she threatens it a few times.
[5]
Will Adams: What’s dumb is calling yourself dumb because you didn’t want to go as far as he wanted on the 24th day. What’s dumb is not revealing who broke it off, because if it was him, he’s a total asshole and you don’t want him anyway (and if it was you: commit, dammit!). What’s dumb is repeating that solo “a lot” like you’re trying to out-twee Kate Nash. But perhaps the dumbest of all is ripping off “Want U Back” and sucking out all of the fun.
[2]
Tara Hillegeist: Calling it “universal” may actually damn it with faint praise. What I keep coming back to is the confessional spoken-word insert of “you make me smile — a lot“, about thirty-five seconds in; suddenly, I feel it too. It’s giddy, it’s young, it’s good. Probably the hardest thing for me to accept about this is Lily Allen’s been done for so long that people could be lifting her tricks wholesale for much more mainstreamed efforts like this one, but, well, maybe I’m just getting old.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: There’s very little room for out-and-out popstars in the UK these days. Specifically, if you’re not regularly in the top 10, don’t expect to be anywhere. Positions 11 to 40 on the chart are mainly filled by songs that seem to have been there since before continental drift — The Lumineers have been in the top 40 for eight months consecutively. So basically there’s no middle ground; no place for middle-ranking popstars. “Dumb”, the at-best-pleasant dregs of Alesha Dixon’s watering-down (and improvement) of Jessie J’s “Price Tag,”, performed by a Pixie Lott–Eliza Doolittle vocal hybrid, went in at number 23 a fortnight ago and then vanished from the top 100 the following week. The hyper-streamlining of the chart has been caused by a multitude of factors that would be best explained by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, but the question it poses is that in a time where someone like Pixie Lott can only gamely attempt to cling to some kind of media attention, what hope is there for Tich?
[5]