If there’s been a worse song title in Jukebox 2.0, I can’t remember it…
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[5.71]
Edward Okulicz: Every time it happens, I swear I won’t get fooled again. I’m taken back to my short-lived love affairs like Baxendale and, latterly, Hurts, who couldn’t keep the quality up for even an album and ended up aggravating me. But no, I have fallen once again for a nauseatingly fey piece of electro-fluff. I know it’s probably terrible and insufferable to everyone else. But just as much as that, it’s also gorgeous. And he can outsing Theo Hurts comfortably, as if that is either high praise or important (it’s neither). But mostly, the music is so romantically sumptuous and fulsome and the lyrics so endearingly earnest that I am once again powerless. The chorus might be weighed down with twee – “How do you make a heart light up?” – but it doesn’t sink, it flies, it soars. The album had better be incredible.
[10]
Martin Skidmore: The electropop backing indeed sparkles brightly here, but while the high and smooth singing is sort of pleasant it’s nowhere near strong enough to rise to the big repetitive chorus, meaning this falls a bit flat. Another talented producer and writer who needs better singers to work with.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Shimmers like a lucky star over, of all things, Owl City. There really isn’t anything blatant Madonna allusions can’t make all right.
[7]
Alfred Soto: I kept expecting this to explode into a thud-tastic breakdown, so I was puzzled when it insisted on remaining earthbound. Must be something to do with the stiff-collared vocals.
[4]
Josh Love: I’m not exactly sure how to make a heart light up up up until everything is fireworks, but singing like an earnest douche definitely ain’t the ticket.
[2]
Josh Langhoff: Shouldn’t he save the “up up UUUP up up” bit for the end, when he’s so overcome with emotion he can’t keep his “up”s bottled up anymore? As it is, that repeated “up” sequence sounds like a stiff attempt at embellishing a perfectly nice melody, which makes me think he’s not confident of his singing ability, which makes me picture him in the studio with eyes closed and hands over his ears.
[6]
Jer Fairall: 80’s-evocative right down to what I take to be a Gremlins-referencing band name, but for all that this shimmers and broods with New Romantic grace, there just isn’t any there there.
[5]