Not one Karmin mention, so congratulations to our memory…
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[5.50]
Scott Mildenhall: Icona Pop Watch: this week’s UK chart features two covers of “I Love It”; one from everybody’s favourite interplanetary Italian Venus Palermo (number 71), and Glee Cast’s (number 90. Poor, persevering Glee Cast.) There’s another in the iTunes top 20 by Remix Junkies, and until the original is actually released there are only going to be more. So if Megan and Liz really wanted to go down the “vaguely resembles that Icona Pop song” route, they should have gone the whole hog and credited this to “You’re From The 70s” and titled it “I Don’t Care I Love It”.
[5]
Iain Mew: The beginning promises to have learned some shouty duo tricks from Icona Pop, but that dries up fast. The charm probably couldn’t have saved a song so dull anyway.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Aino and Caroline? More like Daphne and Celeste, or Aly & AJ, or M2M or — look, this tween-harmony sugar-shout stuff has more than a year’s history, OK? If the incarnation with YouTube cover kids and 2013 Max Martin cobbles is slightly less enthusing, blame the times.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley: These one-note Max Martin/Shellback productions require a deceptive level of talent that, thus far, eludes Megan and Liz, even it they do try to make up for it with personality. (The puzzlement in the “your what?” interjection is a cute meta-commentary on self-censorship that grows less cute when it’s recycled a verse later.) But the energetic call-and-response vocal isn’t powerful enough to resist the watery instrumental.
[4]
Will Adams: Take the irreverence of “I Love It,” then sand it down until all those rough synths are gone. The kiss-off sounds as nice as possible, and the song’s as flimsy as Styrofoam. It’ll be radio-friendly, but you’ll find it impossible to give a shhhhhhh.
[4]
Brad Shoup: Firstly, that’s a great chorus. The stepping on “release” gets doubled on synth and sprinkled throughout the song, like an action constantly recalled. The verses are a bit of a step down, with Swift-y goofing off that sits uneasily with the ambiguous declarations of moving on. But dang, what a chorus.
[7]
Anthony Easton: The ooh-oohs are textbook, the quiet bit in the middle is delightful relief, and the coda is just unrelenting then ends on a cliff hanger. This might be perfect summer dumbness.
[8]
Alfred Soto: The timing of the high notes and the woo-woos suggests the Taylor Swift before she thought collaborating with Max Martin would stretch her craft in ways she couldn’t do herself already. Swift evinced smarts, tunecraft, and a voice; I hear little beyond wannabes’ effort. On the other hand, I’ve disliked every recent Swift single. This proxy will do.
[6]