The unWanted…
[Video][Website]
[3.33]
Scott Mildenhall: And less than you’ll ever need. Actually no, that’s unfair, because the full-thrusted launch of a dispensable member of an inessential band like The Wanted is interesting, and maybe exactly what is needed in light of the banterregnum their dissolution has created. Sykes’s kingmaking contribution to their best single highlighted a vocal potential fulfilled here, and just think: Simon Webbe managed to sell over a million of his solo albums. Although his soul pastiches didn’t sound quite so much like pastiches.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: It’s getting harder to write about fake Motown, but not all that hard for people to keep writing fake Motown songs. It’s funny how the assembly line of music theorem that Gordy proposed would now be used to exhaust the audience in question (or at least yours truly). You can’t invest in this car, we have better cars, more energy efficient cars. But this car was in a TV Show, so… we’re supposed to be excited. But Nathan Sykes is just a slight variation on older models set to capture the vibe, like a replica Model T. Do you drive Model Ts in 2015? No. So why are you expected to be satisfied with a Model T replica?
[0]
Alfred Soto: I swear I had no idea who this big-voiced belter was until I consulted Wikipedia, and I’m still impressed by his assurance, frozen in the carbonite of this post-Winehouse soul swizzle.
[5]
Josh Langhoff: “More Than You’ll Ever Know” has me searching in vain for its AAA radio adds because that’s what it sounds like, the missing link between Adele and Stevie Ray, or Robert Cray and “Eminence Front.” (I’ve only ever heard “Eminence Front” on AAA radio. I have no evidence it exists otherwise.) That’ll never happen, of course, because AAA listeners like to hear the backstories of their new artists and I’m guessing the phrase “refugee from British boy band” carries a bit of a stigma. You know who else receives zero AAA spins? Erasure! My local station plays Depeche Mode, A Flock of Seagulls, Yaz even, but never Erasure. No Pet Shop Boys, either. Apparently the format’s audience can discern with frightening precision which synthpop artists rock hard enough for the Triple A, and which would be a fop too far; and if you’re a program director, you don’t misbehave with their hearts.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: In which a member of the Wanted goes for a slightly more poppish version of Michael Bublé, I suppose in search of those Radio 2 spins. Here’s hoping the strategy fails, because this is highly mediocre, from its drunken-striptease vibe to its lyrics to his bland vocal.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: The only thing worse than competent boy-banders’ obvious blue-eyed soul moves are incompetent boy-banders’ obvious blue-eyed soul moves.
[2]
Patrick St. Michel: Nathan Sykes has a voice, and he’s not afraid to remind you of that fact.
[3]
Mo Kim: Nathan Sykes has an ear for adlibs, and he brings a lot more life and feeling into this than I expected. And as far as reinventions go, there are worse directions to take your sound in than this sort of blunt-but-brassy jazz sound. He might benefit from a better ensemble behind him, though: the horns on this snicker like they were hired by the local circus and snuck into the wedding next-door just for kicks.
[6]
Anthony Easton: By the numbers funk-lite, with no grime and less sweat — not because he is good at passing at being effortless, but because he just doesn’t seem to care. All the points are for the finger-snaps.
[2]