We’d rather you just turn them off.
[Video][Website]
[2.83]
Alfred Soto: Like dandruff and sexual harassment at the work place, sensitive dudes with acoustic guitars singing to angels (wearing halos!) will be always among us.
[1]
Nortey Dowuona: Flat, empty guitar, flat, 2D drums, terrible singing… stop. Just stop.
[0]
Tim de Reuse: Makes a successful, striking transition from intimate and cute to overwhelmed and explosive, without sounding like an overcompressed mess — well done! It’s unfortunate, though, that it’s trying so hard to be capital-C Cinematic, riding on movie-trailer drums, cavernous reverb, and vague romantic quips. The message on display is endearing, but in both musical style and lyrical content its presentation is aggressively un-specific and seems laser-targeted towards cultural neutrality. There’s something to be said for a universally applicable love song, I guess, but that shouldn’t preclude personality; this is just as sweet and boring as a packet of table sugar for dessert.
[5]
Ryo Miyauchi: Max seems to have had second thoughts about him removing the barbs from Bieber’s “Love Yourself” to get one of the most vanilla songs about turning down the lights. He should’ve just committed to the inoffensiveness of it all. Tasteless as it is, acoustic-guitar pleasantness hurt nobody. But he had to overshoot it in an effort to spice things up: Gnash’s crummy rap verse is written and delivered like a person who has never gave the format a shot, and it leaves everyone cringing.
[4]
Will Adams: The unappealing nexus of sensitive lad guitar noodles and the disingenuous loverboy schtick of early Bruno Mars. The latter actually improves the song if only for the sweeping crescendo toward the end, but even that can’t salvage the Sheeran/Arthur-esque plod and useless Gnash verse that precede it.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: The problem is that Ed Sheeran’s made it all sound like it’s so easy, but it’s really not. The whomp of the beat when it comes in the first time is, admittedly, devastatingly effective, but Max’s emotion sounds like it’s been pinched out of him. I guess he’s halfway to proficiency, but Gnash’s verse is nothing short of atrocious. Nothing about any of this makes me want to think about, let alone have, sex.
[3]