Gies a kiss…
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Martin Skidmore: The reaction of many to Bieber is so unpleasantly macho and homophobic that I kind of want to like him, but I haven’t succeeded yet. This number from the Karate Kid soundtrack, featuring weak guest rapping from its star, doesn’t change that. It’s a half-decent song, but Bieber’s smooth-yet-weak vocals still do nothing for me, and it ends up pretty limp.
[4]
Jer Fairall: Broad enough in its Inspirational sentiment that it functioned as the theme song to both of its participants’ individual cinematic vanity projects, amusing for how it finds Biebs already cast in the Ludacris/Sean Kingston elder role (and for Jaden’s “No pun intended, I was raised by the power of Will”) and surprising for how less terrible it is than it reasonably should be.
[5]
Kat Stevens: Justin (17) is saved from yet another I’ve-Come-So-Far-Following-My-Dream-For-This-Fleeting-Moment motivational reality-show winner’s song by a sprightly verse from Willow’s older brother. Jaden (12) raps charmingly about his experience with an unnamed authority figure (perhaps the school bully?): “He’s older than me /Stronger than me/And his arms a little bit longer than me“. But as Jaden rightly points out, this hitherto insurmountable Goliath is not featuring on a Justin Bieber song! Yah boo sucks to him! Wax on wax off!
[6]
Josh Langhoff: Bieber walks through fire and climbs towers and runs across the sea! I must have missed something — did he turn into some kind of cross between Jesus and KITT? That’d make for a bitchin’ 3-D movie. However inspiring his meteoric rise to overworked child laborer, this song is so obviously about said rise that it has absolutely no pretensions of speaking to regular kids’ regular powers and frustrations. Whatever; kids are scrappy, they’ll figure out how to use it. And anyway, I will never change the radio on this song until I hear Jaden say “push comes to shove” over nothing but a big old handclap beat.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: Indescribably creepy but no worse than workmanlike. Just because I don’t understand the hugeness of Bieber doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate that he delivers to an acceptable standard and the song’s OK. Jaden Smith needs to stop, though.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Despite or because of the thousands of photos in which he’s appeared, the Bieb has always struck me as a frighteningly self-possessed kid, so I’m confused why he pronounces “never” like your obnoxious rockist friend imitating Avril Lavigne. Then he follows his own advice to “pick it up, pick it up” and lets Jaden Smith run away with the song. Somebody write these two an “Iesha.”
[5]
Anthony Easton: Someone has hired a vocal coach so that Beiber can safely go from childhood to adulthood. He won’t have a career in the next year or so if he doesn’t choose better material.
[5]
Michaelangelo Matos: This is just competent enough to call attention to its own shortcomings. Bieber has basically nothing to convey except his own irresistibility, which wears thin fast; here’s an instance where the Auto-tune really does work against things (though I’ll probably end up loving the Auto-tune in six months; never say never!). The song is a Backstreet knockoff that has almost none of the star power of “Larger than Life”, its most apparent model. It’s so well made, though, that the part of me that gets pleasure from that kind of music wanted to let it take me further. Too young, too young.
[4]
Mark Sinker: When Jackie Chan was 17, he was still only an extra in A Touch of Zen and a minor blink-and-you-miss stuntman for Bruce Lee: the climb to greatest physical screen comedian of all time started nearly nowhere, for a long hard time. Jaden S is no Willow; Justin B has it too easy, too soon. They both need a few years training for the Peking Opera.
[6]