You knew it was a ballad from the moment you knew it existed.

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[6.62]

Anthony Easton: I believe that sex can be a bower, a protective circle, and a force for radical change, therefore her message of unity against the chaos and hate of the world is something I appreciate. But she’s not restraining her diva/belting instincts well at all, and the unintended tension between private and public discourse kind of scuppers the whole enterprise.
[5]

Alfred Soto: She may not know much about algebra, but she knows “Wonderful World” and the value of strong guitars. She should stop belting though. Apparently Love is only a wonderful thing when it happens to Beyonce.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: She don’t know much about Sam Cooke, either, I bet. And her yelped “youuuuuu”s and “tooooooo”s are as painful, pretentious, and preposterous as anything on the radio this year. The life-during-wartime theme comes off as pandering to boot (since she clearly has nothing to say about said war), but it’s the closest thing to a saving grace this record has — well okay, maybe that and the hack power-ballad guitar solo. So, right: 1 + 1 =
[2]

Alex Ostroff: In the past, B’s ballads have been her biggest weakness. While her uptempo songs varied from dissonant horns to martial drumbeats, to swagged-out freestyles, slower numbers tend towards Tedder, and often feel more like excuses to show off her vocal range than songs. No longer. ‘1+1’ is stately and slow, giving Beyoncé space to stretch out her vocals, gradually dialing up dynamics, passion and grit with each verse. The track ends not with a display of vocal pyrotechnics, but with Beyoncé ceding her ground to a guitar solo. She still sings the hell out of this – it’s an incredible vocal performance, especially live – but the vocals are in service of the song, not vice-versa.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Listening to this is like peering up at a locked skyscraper from flat on the sidewalk. Somewhere separate from you is an edifice, built to specifications so advanced they eclipse your puny ninth-grade algebra. From the outside, all you see are stone encroachments that from this angle might as well be caryatids. It’ll always be larger than you and your pebbles and glass, and it’s all the loftier for not being wanted inside.
[10]

Edward Okulicz: Beyoncé’s vocal gifts, astonishingly, seem to be revealing new shades and nuances with every record. She can coo, she can scold, she can seduce, but I didn’t know she growl like this. If the backing is all too polite and textbook soulful to have the same surprises, it doesn’t matter. No matter how big she gets, she gets intimacy. The song isn’t quite an afterthought, but nearly so – her writers and producers aren’t as inventive with the material as she is with her instrument.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Big, pompous ballads that land just this side (or just the other side, it hardly matters) of ridiculous are one of the best things about pop. We haven’t had nearly enough of them since the early 1990s. By the sound of the power-ballad guitar at the end, Beyoncé agrees.
[9]

Matthew Harris: I keep listening to this and wondering where the actual song is: it feels more like melting spaghetti. I’m not really a ballad person, so maybe that’s the deal. The “whoo”s are great, as are the subtle growls and the unspooling notes wandering in and out of focus. But no one was ever going to argue with the way Beyoncé’s voice drops us to our knees. It’s just, like, why would I listen to this when I could listen to “Countdown” instead?
[5]

Pete Baran: I guess my problem with “1+1” (which I do like a lot), is that I don’t really believe that Beyoncé has a sense of humour. I can go with the history of pop balladry pastiche of the backing, and her own stab at Sam Cooke, but she doesn’t sell the silliness of that high note at the end of each line. And it is very silly, and thus very funny. And someone she trusts has probably told her to sing it that way, and she will make a serious singer face and still not realized it’s SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY. George Michael used to say one of the best things about singing a ballad was watching the odd lighter snap out in the crowd as the waver accidentally burnt their thumb. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Beyoncé would see what was funny about that.
[6]

Zach Lyon: For a Beyoncé ballad, this is timely and, maybe, crucial. The lyrical conceit wouldn’t be so out of place in the 60s or 70s, or maybe that’s just a result of our collective musical memory holding onto good lyrics while the vague cliche shit, the stuff we’re used to, fades away. A good sign, either way, and not unexpected with a Terius Nash co-writing credit. And then there’s the vocals and the production, each weird enough to fit snugly into a chronology of singles that often rely on well-employed weirdness: the vocals remind me of Whitney, if only because they’re so self-assured and brave and memorable, while Nash’s production is an absolute mess of sounds crossing genres and eras with little care. Sort of the minimalist alternative to Born This Way‘s messy maximalism. That first guitar sounds lifted from a Soundgarden song, different from the solo that ends it, which could’ve been played by Slash. There’s a gospel organ. Whitney-chimes. And some pretty prevalent synths! All of which you’re likely to miss if you don’t listen for them, so overshadowed they are by B’s voice. Pity it isn’t a proper single.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Like she can’t decide if she’s shooting for classic heart-on-sleeve R&B or Dreamgirls-style showpiece balladry, and then lands somewhere closer to the yuppie Soul of Anita Baker and Toni Braxton anyway. Not necessarily a terrible place to be in its own right, even if it leaves the song’s admirable attempts at grit sounding far less authentic than they’d like. I’m not completely sold on whatever it is she’s trying to do here in any case, but that slow burn of an electric guitar outro is like a warm blanket I’m only all too happy to wrap myself in.
[6]

David Katz: Gorgeously produced, with every sound a perfectly wrought modern update on the Prince imperial-phase sound. Think a hybrid of the sultry effortlessness of Slow Love and the shamelessly anthemic Purple Rain (check the rare and incredibly well-deployed guitar solo!). The-Dream mainlines that 80s feeling with 2011 technology and the sheen is ear-candy. I can’t really connect with the vocal though; Beyoncé’s pipes aren’t raw enough to truly sell this soul barnburner as someone like Erykah Badu or Jazmine Sullivan might.
[7]

Britt Julious: I can’t deny Beyoncé’s firm yet sole hold on the diva title. This is the sort of song that a woman who wants people to know that she can sing releases. It’s the complete antithesis of earlier singles and it’s showstopping because of it’s simplicity. Even with the power ballad guitars that hit a little more than half-way through the song, the song still comes across as a minimalist breathtaking gem in a sea of cultural musical excess.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: I’m almost certain I would like this song better if it didn’t bear a passing resemblance to the misguided nostalgia of Bon Iver’s “Beth/Rest”. Like, say for instance, if we were instead treated to some Funk Brothers-flavored soul to match B’s intensity, instead of an outro that ends up sounding not unlike a karaoke version of “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)”. But perhaps that’s more Solange’s bag?
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: B dons Prince paisley for summer pop’s costume party, and she wears it well. We should expect no less, though the ease with which Ms. Knowles adapts to purple wailing and stormy organ fills makes her proficiency at the same no less impressive. It does make it unexciting, however. Beyoncé’s entire career has been shaped by her ability to slip in and out of new roles — feminist commandant on “Run the World (Girls),” immovable executioner on “Irreplaceable,” panicked harridan on “Ring the Alarm” — filling them entirely before jettisoning them for the next performance. As a pop actress, she’s superb, but “1+1” has little beneath its very fine accoutrements. She sounds like she’s singing for tips, not a lover.
[7]

Josh Love: The sheer incongruity of this song makes it wonderful. B’s slightly hysterical diva reading is the kind of thing that’s usually accompanied by gigantic orchestras, but the fact that she’s lightly backed here by The-Dream’s slavish Prince vamps lends her performance a stark pathos that elicits shivers, particularly when she lands with an exaggerated whoomp on the end syllable of her verses.
[9]