Akon has agreed to take the blame for this being the umpteenth Calvin Harris single we’ve covered…
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Anthony Easton: Harris’ style has ossified into formal repetition, but he does it so well, I find it easy to forgive.
[4]
Crystal Leww: The Calvin Harris spectrum is as follows: the quadfecta is “We Found Love,” “Sweet Nothing,” “I Need Your Love,” and “Thinking About You,” all perfect [10]s and I will hear no argument to the contrary. The tail end of the spectrum are “Awooga” and the terrible Tinie Tempah-featuring track “Drinking From the Bottle.” “Blame” is somewhere around his Ting Tings remix and “Bounce,” but I like Newman a lot less as a vocalist than Katie White or Kelis. Still, Calvin Harris has been consistently churning out absolute bangers for almost three years now, and that doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.
[7]
Abby Waysdorf: I like the idea that pop can support John Newman and Sam Smith, but that Newman sounds like “generic male voice” here doesn’t bode well for him. He could be any of the vaguely long-haired singers that do the “boy” version of the EDM vocal. To be fair, though, there’s probably no vocalist that could make this anything else than absolutely terrible. Never has the Calvin Harris formula felt the most like a formula, a few familiar sounds pulled from his box of noises and thrown haphazardly across the mixing board. It’s bland enough that I’m easily distracted by the refrain and forced to think about how bad the lyrics are: “blame it on the night, don’t blame it on me” is so damn smarmy and awful, mealy-mouthed bro-speak. The gospel-ish bridge almost reminds me what Newman has to offer, but it comes far too late and is much too little. “Stay With Me” did it better anyway.
[3]
Alfred Soto: An asshole’s lament with an EDM preset: “don’t blame it on me, blame the night,” after all, is closer to “It wasn’t me — it was the alcohol.”
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: With Calvin Harris still peddling the same sounds he has since “Bounce” three and a half years ago, it’s immensely impressive that he’s still in his imperial phase. “Blame” is very clearly a Calvin Harris song, its most thumping parts even a slowed down simulacrum of “Sweet Nothing”‘s disco shotgun. One great thing about that song was how it sounded just as much one of Florence’s as his, and this has the same seamless fusing of hallmarks – Newman generously bringing his Big Piano, “oh, no no no I’m so TORtured BAby!” stuff and invisible doleful, soulful background singers. He’s told more compelling stories on his own, but in a different setting compromises deftly.
[7]
Hazel Robinson: I’ve been waiting for John Newman to do something nearly as good as “Feel the Love” for two years. I believe in him, the little squashy-faced lad and this is… well, this is nowhere near as good as “Feel the Love” but it does try to do the same tricks, with ten thousand times more cynicism and none of the sheer joy whatsoever. And yet, because I spent a great deal of time over the past two decades listening to ’90s euphoric house, it is absolutely working on me and I only slightly hate myself.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Maybe John Newman’s only as good as the show he’s stopping. He does wonderful things with his melody line — skips and gulps and the like — but Harris’s sloppy pings just hang and dissolve like snowflakes. Not that gaggle of Johns, though; they could be singing in Elvish for all I know, but it’s a pleasant confusion.
[5]
Megan Harrington: You ever start on a bag of Flamin’ Hots and after the third or fourth your mouth is ecstatically sensitive but also you can’t taste anything anymore? You should stop there because it’s not going to get any better or worse, but instead you motor through the whole bag? It’s because Cheeto dust is chemically addictive and “Blame” is covered in a fine film.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: There is a great breakdown into sino-electro madness here, and it needs to be liberated from this Neon Trees cover band frontman and Calvin Harris’ wallowing in generic cash-outs. This template is killing me, and no amount of nasal yowls is improving it, but the weird riff of that “big hook” is enough, just enough, to justify the creation of such a strange mutant. Still, with its shitty pageant parents of creators, one can’t let oneself get too attached.
[2]
Will Adams: Don’t blame Harris — it’s dance music that calls for the formula, from the similar tempos to the common lyrical themes to the build-drop dynamic. Harris works so well with it anyway, alternating his tendencies to keep interest — here, he’s pushed his electric guitar licks to the foreground as in “Feel So Close” or “I Will Never Let You Down” — while always prioritizing solid pop songwriting. “Blame” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it surfs the EDM wave with considerable technique.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Don’t worry, no one is in danger of blaming you. You’re not that distinctive.
[3]