So basically, fuck these guys, again.
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[1.89]
Alfred Soto: Ed Sheeran, you’ve got Danish admirers, complete with dads giving lousy advise.
[2]
Iain Mew: I am grateful that this is more “Happy Home” than “Strip No More,” but it’s like “Happy Home” meets Nizlopi. Giving the smallscale triteness of the sentiment such an overblown treatment is practically cruel.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: If America allows this to happen then “Strip No More” will be next. It helps its dismissal that “7 Years” reprocesses some Five For Fighting glurge so Graham can retell “This Be the Verse” with an unreliable narrator.
[2]
Will Adams: Once I was fifteen years old, caught in between ten and twenty, and Five For Fighting’s “100 Years” was the best song to learn how to play on piano to convince my high school crush that I was both talented and sensitive. Now I’m twenty-three years old, and I’m stuck listening to the same lyrical concept, done much worse and without a shred of subtlety on “7 Years.” Soon I’ll be twenty-four years old, slapping my forehead for allowing “Well, it’s not ‘Strip No More'” to count as a point in its favor.
[1]
Megan Harrington: There’s an interesting idea in here, playing soul dynamics off modern lyrics, but it’s not one I’m particularly interested in hearing four Danes explore. Further, the glimmer dissipates once the conceit clarifies. Concerns about aging and the meaning of life are as old as time itself, Lukas Graham have no new tale to tell. This band is a clown car filled with tasteless gimmicks.
[1]
Edward Okulicz: Having proved, in “Strip No More,” that whoever is inflicting this on us doesn’t ‘get’ strip clubs, the next Lukas Graham megahit shows that they don’t get feelings in general.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: The epitome of bathetic, adult contemporary treacle. Destined to be a huge worldwide hit, and we’ll all be the worse for it. I loathed Jim Croce, and I loathe this, too.
[1]
Brad Shoup: OK I know the similar-title thing is played out but I haven’t reviewed anything so close to the greatest breakup song of all time. This… is like if Cat Stevens got into hip-hop. It’s got a nice melody and some thoughtful string backing but that’s how they get you.
[3]
Scott Mildenhall: A pithy response might be to suggest that this song is one that thought “Being Boring”‘s title was its advice, but that would be inaccurate. In fact, “7 Years” is hilarious. It wouldn’t be right to ridicule Lukas Graham for the comparable outpouring committed to Hedegaard’s “Happy Home”, but the bulk of the lyrics here hit the egregious midpoint of generic statements, misplaced self-seriousness and a dearth of emotional resonance. On one level of garbled platitudes it seems intended for everyone, and on another it contains the brilliantly po-faced self-aggrandisement of a sample from the band’s name being announced at an award ceremony. Who is it even for? Clearly a lot of people do find something in it, but from here it is very hard to take seriously.
[3]