It’s probably going to #1. In the UK, anyway…
[Video][Website]
[4.87]
Chuck Eddy: I hope he plans to eat lots of cheeseburgers on the weekend, because his voice is so anorexic I’m afraid he otherwise won’t make it to Sunday.
[4]
Anthony Miccio: Thanks, Scotland, but I think we’ll stick with T-Pain.
[5]
Briony Edwards: Without Dizzee, he’s nothing.
[3]
Martin Kavka: This doesn’t even come close to “I’m Not Alone.” Harris’s voice doesn’t carry the verses; it’s too thin, and the lyrics are too sophomoric. What’s left is a pretty glorious chorus sung by Mary Pearce. But once this ends, I’m just left with the desire to listen to her voice on Up Yer Ronson’s “Are You Gonna Be There?”
[4]
Michaelangelo Matos: Harris’s I Created Disco is one of the several hundred CDs I was sent but never got around to actually playing that I ripped to my EHD for reference before either selling or giving it away, so a lot of the Brits’ weariness toward him here has more or less gone over my head. This song makes me understand. It’s skilful but also a little empty: chipper-cheerio piano plink, condensed-diva tremulous chorus, like an ad man’s idea of “new wave” once upon a different era (an analogy, not a direct comparison). And it does not improve with extra listens.
[5]
Alex Macpherson: I’ve called this talent-free wasteman a pound-shop James Murphy before, and it seems that he’s been discounted even further. From the Fisher-Price piano stuck endlessly on its default demo tune to the puny, enervated attempts at rave synth stabs which end up more like papercuts to the beat, there is nothing of worth in what he does whatsoever. It’s better than his vocals, though: Harris alternates between a morose moan which makes you feel like stabbing him and a truly horrific falsetto which makes you feel like you’re being stabbed, in the brain, with a plastic knife. At no point does he convey a remotely sympathetic or likable character. That this man has any semblance of popularity is truly baffling; the arrogance in considering this crap worthy of public consumption at all is staggering.
[0]
Peter Parrish: The rhythmic equivalent of a series of involuntary eyelid spasms.
[5]
Alex Ostroff: Harris’ production is as subtle as being hit in the head by a brick, and thus seems a better fit for stacatto piano-disco and hollering divas than Dizzee’s flow, even when lobotomized a la Holiday. The sheer relief felt upon reaching the chorus, by dint of it NOT being sung by Calvin Harris, has incited the most positive reaction I’ve ever had to the usually reviled ‘shouting house diva’.
[7]
Hillary Brown: Whenever it lies back and relaxes, as opposed to wigging out up in your face, it’s quite a bit more like my weekends and, thus, preferable. What’s the percentage of songs on which the verse beats the chorus, anyway? Tiny, but this numbers among them.
[5]
Iain Mew: If “I’m Not Alone” was a song about growing tired of going out clubbing, this is a reminiscence of when it was still a thrill. Correspondingly it’s as cozily nostalgic in sound as it is in sentiment, and a touch too safe even by Calvin Harris standards, but the belted chorus still raises a smile.
[6]
Talia Kraines: While it might not have the trancey stadium chorus of “I’m Not Alone”, “Ready for the Weekend” is a slice of pop that either makes me woop excitedly or, if I hear it on a Sunday night, feel a bit dejected.
[8]
Alfred Soto: The chorus is glorious enough to make me wonder why Harris didn’t just let Mary Pearce sing the rest of the tune; who wants a parched Brit singing over those bass and piano lines? Imagine Martha Wash guesting on a Dave Wakeling solo track.
[6]
John Seroff: Equal parts Billy Joel, Alcazar and ’80’s AM radio, “Ready for the Weekend” is an oddly over-calculated track. For what’s ostensibly meant as a “girl we goin’ OUT tonight” anthem, it has all the spontaneity of a color guard review. There’s an appealing enough heartbeat here; it just never gets around to getting down. Maybe those shoes are too tight?
[5]
Additional Scores
Martin Skidmore: [3]
Keane Tzong: [7]