We’ll teach y’all something about dance music.
[Video][Website]
[3.45]
Mallory O’Donnell: Distressing dreck-house more intro than not. That the naff ESL lyrics are written and sung by a greasy rockabilly reject from Brooklyn is enough to make one suspect some sort of irony is at work here. Or that public schooling is just as awful as we’ve been led to believe.
[2]
Megan Harrington: What is Earth if not a needle floating in the sky? What are dreams if not a jailbreak from the laws of lesser evil? What is this Hardwell song if not a Motorola jingle with Muse lyrics?
[3]
Anthony Easton: This would be so much better without the vocals. At best in this kind of music, the vocals work as an abstracted texture, a kind of abrasive addition, but here they sit aside and don’t do much damage.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Here it is, folks, the distillation of every sonic trend of the last eight years: Coldplay strums, EDM sequencers, OneRepublic I’ve-been-counting-stars sincerity. Which means Hardwell’s got a Volkswagen commercial in sights.
[2]
Abby Waysdorf: This is in a commercial here I’ve seen regularly, but I can’t for the life of me remember what the commercial is actually for. Another generic uplifting EDM-tinged mainstream pop song. I’m weirdly fascinated by this genre, though– they’re so obviously cynical, such blatant cash-grabs that it seems clear that Hardwell and Avicii and Armin van Buuren and whoever else know that this is a limited fad, uplifting and poppy, pitched to the broadest audience possible. Hardwell’s already got a commercial, after all.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Double dog dare you not to be such a predictable EDM producer.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: That’s nice, but I picked Truth.
[1]
Scott Mildenhall: That opening verse is so inauspicious it’s enough to conjure the response, in awe, “‘s pish, yes?” And that it is, but fear not, because this is less about pseudo-profundity than Sudafed – or a lack of it in any case, assuming that’s the cause for Koma’s congested tones – but don’t like them? Well fear not, because aside from a hint of the same wonkiness he added ably to Zedd’s “Spectrum”, it’s even more about Hardwell keeping the chorus to himself in light of the parts where he dared him to write, showcasing that double-time thing going on in the background. It’s not particularly special, but then he’s number one, so why try harder?
[6]
Brad Shoup: The bar’s pretty high for Hardwell now that True is a thing. I imagine this is the feeling people get when they read Upworthy: a whippet’s worth of feeling that a new you is a smidgen of resolve away. But no: close the tab and you’re still Hardwell, and you’ve made a Martin Solveig song with a shakier sense of structure. I don’t know what CCEDM sounds like, but it can’t be thinner than this.
[4]
Will Adams: When I was eleven, the music video for Switchfoot’s “Dare You to Move” meant everything to me. In the climax, the protagonist — shown in various stages of life — finally “moves”: he gets up off the ground where bullies pushed him; he wakes up from a near death experience; he brushes the hand of a friend lying next to him. The last scene in particular made my heart flutter. Switchfoot dared me to take that breath and eliminate the mental obstacles I had constructed. “Dare You” evokes that same breath. It sits on the edge of the unexpected; that flat-seventh chord at the end of the phrase comes out of nowhere, and then the drop happens. It feels so familiar, working within the well-worn house formula we’ve heard on radio for the past four years, but it challenges the listener to take that leap of faith, because it might lead to uncharted territory.
[7]
Jer Fairall: A dance track as inexplicably bereft of energy as it is of depth or nuance, accompanied by a vocalist who sounds like whatever the male equivalent of Jem and the Holograms might be.
[3]