We look forward to Little Mix’s next single, “Next Single.”

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[4.78]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Between “Sweet Melody,” “Not A Pop Song,” “The National Manthem,” “Break Up Song,” “Secret Love Song,” “No More Sad Songs,” and now this, Little Mix really know how to brand their songs literally don’t they? “Heartbreak Anthem” doesn’t break the Little Mix formula and that’s fine: it’s bombastic and loud, less an anthem about overcoming lost love than a vehicle for collective catharsis with friends. 
[6]

Katie Gill: The reason why all these big Galantis, David Guetta, Marshmallo, Chainsmokers-pre-“Closer” etc. songs tend to pick artists like Daya, Bebe Rexha, or Anne-Marie for their EDM song main vocals is because those artists are B-list and interchangeable enough that they can easily slot into the generic female vocalist slot that all of those songs use. When you have an artist with an established sound, like Little Mix, 9 times out of 10 they end up getting flattened down to fit that generic mold, as what happens here. You kind of get the feeling that these artists are only here for name value and that if Galantis and David Guetta had to use a female session vocalist for budget reasons, absolutely nothing of value would be lost.
[4]

Samson Savill de Jong: Whenever a song tries to pass off “sometimes it works out but sometimes it don’t” as a deep profundity, I know I’m in for some serious beige. This is pretty inoffensively mediocre, it’s not bad exactly, but there’s nothing that I could point to and call unique/interesting/well executed/good either.
[3]

Tim de Reuse: A soppy violin-and-piano intro that promptly inverts into upbeat house, sticking a “This ain’t” in front of the song’s title: yeah, fine, that’s kinda clever as a bait-and-switch, actually. I admit to having smiled. I’m only surprised because I didn’t expect anything this engaging from a track that credits the reliably-lifeless David Guetta, but it looks like his influence has been minimized. Really, Little Mix are the ones giving this tune a heartbeat (listen to that lovely bend on “hollow” and “shadow”) and the moments when they aren’t singing (listen to that horrible, dry crowd chant of “Hey, hey, no heartbreak”) are thankfully brief, so we don’t have too much time to focus on how stiff their EDM surroundings are.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Credit to mostly Little Mix, I think, for the fact that this sounds like a cruddy Guetta remix of a much better song (and that the chorus still has a little oomph), but no credit to anyone that this is actually the base version and that it mostly sounds and feels so generic.
[4]

Kayla Beardslee: Little Mix gives the performance their all, but the vocals are too buried to let much of their personality shine through, and the sterile drop feels like the work of half a producer, not two. Somehow, I didn’t pick up on the glaringly obvious “moving on from a member departure” subtext until my second listen. “Don’t want to throw a tantrum, you did what you had to, but I ain’t got no time to dwell on it”… yeah, this is not really about an ex, is it?
[5]

Alfred Soto: Kinda hard to protest when generic entertainment is the point.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: Little Mix almost seem to be breaking pop’s cosmic law by having yet to head for hiatus, but in fighting against that tide they do sound like they’re treading water. In just over a year, they’ve already sung another break-up song, refused another pop song about falling in love, and been played (but not fooled by) sweet melodies. Has music caught them in a thematic bind? The motions are gone through with commitment — string-laden, “Change Your Life” empowerment blends well with Galantis’ augmented anagram of Sigala — but it increasingly feels contractual.
[6]

Tobi Tella: More Party Rock than National, attempting to wring actual pathos out of these lyrics is a lost cause, but the production keeps it feeling like that one song you liked in 2015 and never thought about again.
[5]