Today’s theme, by the way, is TV actors-turned-singers.
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[4.78]
Alfred Soto: With Luke Laird as a songwriter, it’s as pretty as a melody, whatever that means, but the insistence of the production — drums front and center, a clap-along right out of Lumineers, not any country I or Hale knows — is so insistent on its mercenary ambitions that it leaves me breathless. I can understand the pace: slow it down and Hale’s margarine-light voice has a chance to appall. Two years ago ABC Family would have paid for the David Guetta production.
[4]
Anthony Easton: I could be petty about being careerist, even pettier about how terrible the writing of this was, and there is always the problem of Nashville and carpetbaggers, but I would be more of an asshole than that Americana country purity crowd — so I will retract my claws and just suggest that the hand-claps almost make up for any other deficiency.
[7]
Iain Mew: I love song-based metaphors on principle, but the details still have to add up. “You sound good to me… like a melody” is dumb (any melody?) and the implied comparison of a person to “an old song on the radio that you grew up to and everybody knows” is jarring, unless she’s dating an ageing celeb. The slapped on country flourishes don’t sound any better thought through.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Melodies aren’t inherently good, Hale. Some of them are sung by Eazy-E. And this one is drowning in butter substitute. It’s so chipper and cornpone, and it does that country thing where the cadence picks up in the chorus and the singer goes simile-crazy. Her gloss on lovesickness is pretty damn irritating, made worse by the fact that the actual phrase “you sound so good to me” is mad catchy.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Just sounds meh to me.
[4]
Crystal Leww: Songs where good music is a metaphor for cute boys will never not be appealing to me, but Lucy Hale is particularly good at it. In her debut single, she channels her inner Memphis-girl and appropriates every single well worn country music trope without sounding anything but fresh. Her little lyrical references to the country night sky, an infatuation with sweet accents, little references to Christianity tie together with the production quirks that utilize a guitar breakdown before the bridge, stomping, and a prominent jangle of instruments that scream country. And yet, the easy attitude of that “mmmm mmmm” at the end of the bridge is enough to fill many songs by some well established pop types.
[7]
Will Adams: It’s so saturated and peppy that I’m still not convinced that it isn’t a cartoon lion cub singing. Hale performs fine, exerting just enough to stand in front of the bustling track. The songwriting, however, hiccups at the worst possible moment: the chorus. The melody-as-love metaphor is tired, yes, but the particular melody chosen here — “Mm mm mm!” like he’s a can of Campbell’s or some shit — clamps down the emotion where any other vowel sound would have sufficed.
[5]
Andy Hutchins: I believe that people cutting Leighton Meester’s place in the line of TV actresses who want to be singers are committing crimes against my ears, but, that bias disclosed, there’s almost nothing remarkable about this. I guess Hale has a sweet enough twang? I guess the conceit is okay, though another TV actress absolutely killed it with her take on the same conceit? I guess the production is properly sunny? Life is too short to listen to music this contentedly average.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Will songwriters ever run out of ways to write “musical metaphor as stand-in for love and also for tween stars’ nascent profitability?” No, of course not. Luke Laird produced half the Kacey Musgraves album, and I bet that’s where the ukelele fondant comes from. This sounds just fine.
[5]