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[5.33]
Scott Mildenhall: Loreen and Kleerup are a perfect match, and they’ve come together to a logical conclusion. Kleerup’s previous singles have all had a marked elegiac quality, and Loreen has more than a penchant for doompop herself — even the most (and maybe only) uplifting track on her album, the Eurovision-conquering “Euphoria,” had something of a darkness to it — so it makes complete sense for them to make a song actually about death, and suicide at that. Channeling grief through synths and strings, Loreen’s solution hinges on the belief that the departed live on through nature, in autumn leaves falling to the ground every year. Pretty beautiful.
[8]
Iain Mew: Kleerup keeps everything so soft and genteel that the hush of church is appropriately conjured, but no feeling of anything beyond that. You’d expect the Loreen who bellowed “Euphoria” to compensate, but for the most part she passes through leaving no impression apart from the weird double-tracking. I would call the effect ghostly, but it’s never quite that interesting.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Kleerup’s known for his big blippy electro, and Loreen for her massive Europop choruses, but he has also thrown in slightly more subtle tracks, and she has to put some verses in between the vocal bombs. For their collaboration, the two have made a single out of all their own personal filler. Not that this couldn’t have been great — listen to his “Longing for Lullabies” and hear all the details missing here filled out and given emotional heft by a better singer/songwriter, or listen to the fantastic performance on her “My Heart is Refusing Me” — but as it is, this is pleasant, polite and unexceptional.
[6]
Will Adams: Sounds like its own demo version; Kleerup employs the thinnest drums possible, a pinch of warbling synths and some syrupy strings. Loreen never raises her voice above a whisper. The slow build takes too long, and nothing gets fleshed out. This is why we rarely turn in our first drafts.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Loreen’s bleak nothings might work over a violin requiem, or possibly chillier synths; but the combined effect of both, plus a limpid piano line, all sounding like they’re underwater, leaves her sounding pretty but impressionless.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Pretty in a vacuous way.
[5]
Anthony Easton: It’s so smooth and so rich, but completely artificial — sort of like crème brulée ice cream, when the point of crème brulée is the tension between the textures.
[5]
Ian Mathers: If I acknowledge that American Idol and the rest are sometimes good TV and culturally often very important/interesting, can I say that this sounds like an audition song from them in a bad way?
[4]
Brad Shoup: Our Jammin’ Oldies station is experiencing a temporary hostile takeover. I Heart Radio’s now oozing their booster-club populism to the attendees of SXSW. The signal quality is kind of shitty, which is probably a branding feature. Anyway, this sounds like a prime I Heart Radio electronic song: ponderous and full of feels, with lots of non-programmed instrumentation. I find myself yearning for Loreen to be still, so that I can savor the echoes of “With Every Heartbeat” in the sequencing-and-strings stretches. Utterly and dishearteningly professional.
[5]