Let there be no further mention of that name, Jonathan…
[Video][Website]
[5.22]
Katherine St Asaph: You’re a British singer taking your deciding career tiptoe into something. Down the chillier path await Jessie Ware and Delilah. Down the safer path, Leona Lewis and Emeli Sande. This decision should have been easy.
[6]
Will Adams: Self-sabotage to spite someone else is among the most childish maneuvers, but in the flood of emotion after a breakup, it’s just such a natural response. “I’m hurting myself so no one’s a winner,” Jess moans. It’s why she’s hidden underneath the strings, rolling drums, and multi-tracked vocals. It’s why she doesn’t let herself fully attack the chorus’ lovely melody, despite her attempts to reclaim it by dredging it up at the end of each verse. Melodrama done right.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Underselling the melodrama and self-flagellation was the right approach, so why then do the producers overdo the aural clutter? The only bit that’s a triumph are the outro ooh-oohs.
[5]
Pete Baran: I know this is supposed to be ethereal rather than irritating, but the opening and the chorus is just sung too high for me.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Like Florence + the Machine, but if the machine were a dentist’s sound system.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: I get the feeling this song is meant to showcase Jess Mills’ vocal chops. At times it works, but the noise that clutters this song takes away from her singing.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: Mills can sing well. She can’t sing quite well enough to survive the utter pancaking the vocal production and arrangement both inflict on her in the chorus. When she’s not million-tracked into oblivion she sings with intimacy and feeling, but when she’s trying to deliver the killer lines she sounds lifeless.
[4]
Anthony Easton: I don’t believe that she is sinning. I don’t even believe that she is using the language of sin as an ironic reversal in favour of pleasure. I do believe she chose this so “sinner” would rhyme with “winner.”
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: I’m reluctant to contribute to what I think is becoming a Ware v. Mills partisan divide (there can be only one softly soulful British Jess[ie]!), so although I’m very much on the Ware side of that minor skirmish, I can appreciate the lushly solitary beauty on offer here, even if I think it’s a touch underwritten. But hey, at least neither of them are Jessie J.
[7]