Your secret’s safe with him. Your pitch settings, less so.
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[5.36]
Scott Mildenhall: He’s a blue-eyed, British soul singer striking out on his own after providing preeminent producers with the vocals for two of the best singles of the past year or so, and he’s not John Newman. No, he is Sam Smith, as should be clear already; arrestingly invasive on “Latch” and precisely overwrought on “La La La”. Once again, his performance is nigh-on unimpeachable, but the song is lacking – unlike the two aforementioned, not an all-weather occasion; the sleepy, sparse production maybe requiring a certain state of mind to fully appreciate.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: It takes more than pitch-shifting to sound deep, more than tricks lifted from Timbaland to sound futuristic.
[5]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The Disclosure brothers turned Smith into an oddly identifiable creep and Naughty Boy made him a squeal that grounded a juddering sample. Left to his own devices, he shuffles about the beat’s bells and whistles, trying to find a foothold. He flounders. Familiarity can only get you so far before you realise there’s not much to know about someone.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Sam Smith has a great voice – he’s demonstrated that before and it sounds pretty solid on “Safe With Me.” But I get the impression he’s trying to be a little too hip with the times, a little too tight with Disclosure and AlunaGeorge and whoever else you want to group into the “future pop” tag. The production on “Safe With Me” is nifty but it also detracts from Smith’s voice, primarily when his vocals get pitch-shifted. Disclosure were smart enough to barely touch Smith’s singing on “Latch,” instead making the music around it able to enhance the impact of his delivery. “Safe With Me” goes a little too overboard, when it should have played it, errr, safe.
[6]
Anthony Easton: The place where the child’s voice rises from the mix, like Damien in The Omen, makes the songm but the track is filled with a kind of instability as an attempt to deconstruct the usual R&B tropes.
[8]
Will Adams: His greatest asset is his voice, and it gets some time to shine, but the occasional modulation detracts from it. It’s cheeky how the verses melodically reference those of “Latch,” but the euphoria on that track gets traded for something a bit sleepier.
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: I don’t know why I’m so resistant when the smooth-voiced, caressing singer over glitchy-pearlescent electronics is a guy. If this was Jessie Ware, I might swoon. As it is, I keep listening for latent violence.
[5]
Brad Shoup: It’s 2013, so our singers can’t make their kneeling-by-the-bed pleas without that alienating pitchdropping. Or maybe it’s Sam’s way of letting the air out of such a gaseous display.
[4]
Iain Mew: He doesn’t control his voice enough for it to work so bare and centre stage, even before the pitchshifting adds another elaboration too many. I would sit through a lot for the incredible menacing organ drone in the first half, though.
[5]
Crystal Leww: The production is incredibly simple focusing mostly on the percussive elements. Sam Smith’s performance, both lyrics and vocals, flit between the robotic and the incredibly warm. On the robotic side, he’s “built for you / yes, I was built to carry all your feelings” as though he’s a construct, and his voice gets pitched and twisted in the chorus by the production. Yet Sam seemingly can’t help it that his voice is so rich and warm. It inevitably comes across as sincere in whatever mode he’s in; it sounds painfully urgent in Disclosure’s “Latch,” and here it sounds so humanly willing. The end result is so incredibly lovely.
[7]
Alfred Soto: “I was built for you” permutated a half dozen ways suits a cybersoul reminiscent of Terence Trent D’arby. Cool click track too. But dependent on texture instead of groove it flails. Terence Trent D’Arby fronting TV on the Radio is not my idea of cybersoul.
[4]