Legal all over the US, but does he understand the consequences of his actions?
[Video][Website]
[3.25]
Katherine St Asaph: I don’t know what you’ve done, but I’m feeling 21. Maybe it would be alright if that sounded any fun.
[1]
Edward Okulicz: I do not need lifeless dispatches from the twenties of a younger and somehow less good Luke Bryan trying to make like Gloriana’s “Wild at Heart.” Nobody needs that.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: Yeah, 21 has been a false monument for decades now. The reality is that you and your friends fucked long before it, drank long before it, and smoked long before it. The legal statutes declared by civilizations are figurative at best; a year lower or higher is wasted authority in the eyes of the beholder. So the same way Hunter Hayes is White Milk Chocolate Easter Bunny hollow and tastes ugly as hell, so is his message. 21 never ‘matters’ in the way of freedom, or success. Its really just an admission that people will stop trying to ward you away from the willful negative. 21 is the year you don’t get help, you have to stop learning and just be. 21 is the year you give up on people, the same way Hunter here gave up on having something good to say.
[2]
Anthony Easton: At 21, you should most likely be doing stuff, especially if you are partying like you just turned 21. Plus, if you are as young and white and attractive as Hayes, you most likely own the town, and you don’t have to steal the town. The production on this is so fat and slick that the insidious stupidity of the lyrics don’t really matter. The vat-grown science fiction of his voice hasn’t grown or matured in the last half a decade.
[4]
Thomas Inskeep: Yes, let’s stay “up all night,” “drive this car like we stole it,” “go big or … go back home,” and “party like we just turned 21,” yawn. Hunter, the cliché factory called, and you’re fired. This is the laziest “party” country-pop possible.
[1]
Patrick St. Michel: Ignoring that Country Biebs is a 23-year-old lamenting the onset of old age, “21” makes the argument that Hunter Hayes doesn’t really know how to throw a birthday party. The ideal night out for him appears to be vague promises of doing it “big” and seeing the sun come up. Might as well just give her a Best Buy gift card. As silly as it gets, “21” deserves a little credit for being the catchiest thing Hayes has come up with yet, even if that isn’t a particularly big achievement.
[4]
Ramzi Awn: Pretty basic 21-22 fare. We all turn 21 once but fortunately not all of us eulogize the occasion with song.
[3]
Alfred Soto: Oh. For a second I thought, because Ryan Tedder was beyond his paygrade, that Rob Thomas circa “Lonely No More” was the model.
[3]
Brad Shoup: As a text, it’s just a couple of proper nouns away from being that Keith Urban abomination. (How long until an aging star performs a song called “Go Big Then Go Home”?) But a committed performance from a 23-year-old, singing to his peers, makes the nonsense go down that much smoother. The na-na line is a nice side bit, the ascending acoustic riff gets a little Led out. And we’re out in three fifteen. Not that hard.
[7]
Mo Kim: Songs about going crazy, dancing all night, chasing the sunlight, and partaking in the ill-defined category of activities known as “doing it” work best when they navigate the underlying web of insecurities and fears that comes with losing hold of one’s youth. On “21,” Hunter Hayes sings like his greatest fear is growing up to become Chad Kroeger.
[3]
Cédric Le Merrer: During the solo, there are a few seconds in the lyric video that are just a green screen over which the word “guitar” is written between asterisks, which really makes me wonder why the rest of the video isn’t all just *singing*, *chorus* and so forth. Maybe it is, and my mind just persuaded me that I heard a song. Is Hunter Hayes even real, or a hypnotic trick? Is this project MKultra?
[3]
Iain Mew: 21: An age that no one really cares about that much, do they? 18 didn’t even mean that much to me, and that was after having to miss out on half of A-Level results celebrations because they came a week earlier. 21: The multiplier to express how many times better the lyrics still are than those of “Invisible”. 21: The approximate number of iterations this went round with the instruction “make it sound bigger”. 21: The number of attempts it will take Hunter to break 5.00 at this rate.
[4]