The midpoint of “I Choose You” and “Dare You to Move,” and not just verbally…
[Video]
[4.14]
David Moore: A fun conceit for a single, wherein Kelly Clarkson releases an EP’s worth of alternate-language versions with uniformly strong guest vocalists offering varied interpretations. Lucky for us, the song is solid (ah, a Natalie Hemby co-writing credit; go listen to Puxico!) — a driving, if understated, wind-at-the-back empowerment anthem, mercifully free of EDM-adjacent squiggles and wordless post-chorus diddling.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: I suspect a lot of Clarkson’s remaining audience views this as a contaminant, but it’s amazing how even the lightest of donks and the most heavy-handed of reverb can turn a stodgy inspiro ballad, one with slow dull piano and Sweetgreen whoa-ohs and all, into something with a semblance of pulse and mystique. Or maybe a little bit of the alchemy’s because — not that you’d know this from the mixing — Kelly is actually singing.
[6]
Will Adams: It’s not that inspiro-pop is a fundamentally flawed medium — nor is it that bad a fit for Clarkson — it’s that the arrangement is so flat and leaden it makes 124 BPM feel like a chore.
[3]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The lyric video is an uncomfortably apt metaphor for the song: a montage of families, handholding, and hearts, so generic and lifeless you might imagine they were selected by an intern who was given a Shutterstock account and told to be “woke” in the most inoffensive way possible. (Even the choice of fonts is upsetting.) This aims to be inspiring, but sounds as cynical as one of those commercials from large corporations praising their essential workers as heroes, while simultaneously failing to provide them with PPE and surreptitiously undermining their right to unionize.
[1]
Katie Gill: Maybe this can replace “Fight Song” as the go-to “can be reinterpreted to be about Jesus if you squint” inspirational song to play in trailers for movies like God’s Not Dead or I Still Believe.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: Kelly Clarkson sounds very settled into this secular psalm. The conviction she has always performed with is perfectly suited to its quasi-evangelism, but though she can sell her passion for just about anything, she can’t necessarily elevate leaden material. Where “I Dare You” should soar, it often fizzles out, with some flat transitions out of the chorus in particular. The multilingualism is admirable, does not feel like an empty gesture and would make RedOne blush, but it wouldn’t be bad if he came aboard for a remix.
[5]
Alfred Soto: I don’t care that her career’s been inching toward this lazy, hazy speechifying: it still smarts.
[3]