Why can’t you see-ee-ee…
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[4.45]
Alex Ostroff: Back in the day, Michelle Branch was a guitar-wielding proto-Ashlee, under the guidance of John Shanks. And I loved her for it. How times have changed. For all of its pop-sheen, The Spirit Room clicked: Branch smouldered and ached and raged and… felt. I avoided The Wreckers, wary of Branch’s move to country; her strengths have never been lyrical or narrative. Worst fears confirmed: “Sooner or Later” is expressive and competent, but emotionally flat. It’s a poor man’s “You Belong With Me“, a superior song from a generation of Taylors and Ashlees who took the legacy of Michelle and Vanessa and Avril’s 2001 confessionalism and perfected it.
[5]
Michaelangelo Matos: I’ve got it: let’s start calling all these nu-Taylors “Swift Boaters.” As in a tugboat, towing to its shores older vessels such as decade-or-so power-pouter Branch, who needs a vehicle as badly as anyone in the biz.
[3]
Martin Kavka: Tales of women pining after guys, convinced that they are the answer to their men’s problem, deserve to be compared with each other. “You Belong With Me” comes from a position of polite strength; she concludes by putting the burden on the guy to come up with reasons why he shouldn’t break up with his girlfriend. Michelle Branch’s “Sooner Or Later” is schizophrenic: at one moment, she says that she’s not going to help the guy with his girl problems, but at the next she’s contemplating prettying herself up so that he’ll notice her as a potential girlfriend. Maybe that hot-and-cold act is why Michelle’s guy will never come around and wish he had her.
[4]
Ian Mathers: This song apes “You Belong to Me” so hard that at first it’s hard to get past it – and also hard to want to listen to it, since Branch doesn’t have anything in her arsenal nearly as stirring as Swift’s chorus (or songcraft generally). The way that she sings that he’s going to be sorry in the future, that he’s going to wish he chose the other way is more like the Nerves’ great “When You Find Out,” one of the most purely vicious pop songs not written by Elvis Costello. That edge, the notion that “Sooner or Later” is taking place right at the edge of where love curdles into hate, lends some interest to the song, but Branch still needs to work harder at staking out her own territory (or at least having better timing/single selection).
[6]
Hillary Brown: It’s missing the unpredictability of Taylor Swift’s work, but this is a well-written and -paced little song, heavy on melody and prettiness (and cliche), light on melodrama and excess.
[6]
Anthony Miccio: Yo, Michelle. I’m really happy for you. Imma let you finish but Taylor Swift had one of the best pop-country wallflower anthems of all time. One of the best of all time!
[4]
Alfred Soto: Until the banal chorus, the first set of verses mimics the well-calibrated rue of prime Taylor Swift; but Branch doesn’t believe in observation and deduction, she’s an industry hack who’s going after Swift’s market share now that Miley Cyrus is chasing after Avril Lavigne. Affecting girlishness will fool no one but her A&R man. I wish this song were worse than it is.
[4]
Anthony Easton: Generic, and not redeemed by the weltschmerz that someone like Leeann Womack or Terri Clark could deliver.
[3]
Martin Skidmore: She has a likeable voice, and this is a cute enough song about a man not realising what he is missing with her, but it’s old subject matter, and her voice is not special, and although the steel guitar and banjo and acoustic guitar are far more my kind of country than the usual country-rock, this still kind of passes pleasantly without making any real impact.
[6]
Keane Tzong: It may be refreshing and reassuring to know that Michelle Branch adds subtle “uhh” noises to the ends of some of her words regardless of the genre, tempo, or tone of the song she is singing, but there is a big difference between “knowing” in the abstract sense of the word and being confronted with a three-minute example of such.
[5]
Al Shipley: I like to imagine she’s addressing this lyric to the pop charts she hasn’t seen any action with in so many years. And that sly old Hot 100 takes a drag from his cigarette, laughs, and says “honey, don’t flatter yourself.”
[3]