Can we hear the other options?
[Video][Website]
[3.67]
Scott Mildenhall:
[5]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: The anonymity of a Macy’s commercial, mixed with the perfunctoriness of a McDonald’s commercial, mixed with the veneer of a Folgers commercial.
[2]
Alex Clifton: This is cute enough — I’m a sucker for light piano like this — but I was more interested in playing around with the speed controls on YouTube to figure out how it sounded best, rather than making it to the end. (For reference, it feels a bit less repetitive on 1.25x speed; wish he had just upped the tempo a wee bit to make it jauntier.) Ezra can create singalong magic when he wants to but this is one of his weaker tracks.
[4]
Thomas Inskeep: Sheeran without the Weeknd-esque slickness, and with a voice akin to a bleating goat, which is to say: worse than Sheeran in every way, and that’s a tough road to hoe. So, kudos?
[1]
Nortey Dowuona: The loping pianos feel like they’re rooted in a certain place and time, and since Ezra has spent the first part of his career being a proud, bass crooner with a bright wanderlust, that feels like a specific choice. No matter where his voice goes — at first bouncy, then slinking, then hollering — the piano continuously shines and chimes in the back, the drums around him chaining him to them, and he remains in this solid core, allowing for him to float over to Tiger Lily and lift her up with him, his joy swelled by the charming choir behind. When the song thrashes about in the jaws of his guitar, he lets it go and it’s rebuilt, the pianos allowing him to indulge in the usual wanderlust while rooting it in the very community he comes from, that he’s happy to introduce to Tiger Lily.
[7]
Andrew Karpan: Can a plea for anonymity itself sound so anonymous? This feels like the joke that hangs around the latest George Ezra single, which finds the “Budapest” singer keeping a remarkably straight face while promising listeners “I could be anyone, anyone, anyone.” Needless to say, one does believe him.
[3]