Vocea României contestant goes reggae…
[Video][Website]
[6.14]
Hazel Robinson: This lass has my haircut, which makes me instinctively conditioned to hate her. Fortunately she has an amazing line in stuttering and ok, yes, she does seem to be the Romanian Cher Lloyd but I’m not opposed to an international corps of strutting women with excellent eyeliner taking over the charts. I thought this song was a crush, at first, from the tone and the lustiness of the video and the fragmented bits I actually understood (my Romanian is p shitty) but it’s actually a heartbroken, hand-wringing wail of despair about a relationship gone so wrong you can’t stop it.
[7]
Mark Sinker: Singer contests local X Factor equivalent as “the Romanian Adele,” radically self-transforms popstress-style. The bright sprightly ersatz reggae Dr Mako gives her isn’t totally horrible (I mean, I like it, but I have very vulgar tastes), and her voice is lithe and strong enough that being gimmicked up a little sorta kinda its strengths. Better to come. Let’s hope. I feel she deserves better.
[6]
Brad Shoup: When she opens up on some vowels, she sounds like a clarinet. I can’t imagine that’s easy. Eli’s bars coincide with the track taking a wistful tone, a crack in the clouds before the irritated reggae comes back.
[6]
Scott Mildenhall: From a distance, reggae approximations seem to be right up there with clipped vocals and glassy beats in Romanian pop, with more than enough artists ready, willing and able to adorn them. In this case two out of three isn’t bad — no glassiness — but there is at least scene-setting, shoulder-shrugging accordion. The clipped consonants are the highlight though, the heaviest of a number of weights sending the song off-kilter, while never heavy enough to lose its straightforward pop quality.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I like how the percussion and her spat-out chorus function together against the brass.
[4]
Iain Mew: It’s Oana Radu’s song all the way. Dr Mako tries to conjure an afternoon at the beach; Eli sounds like he’s already lazing on the sand. Oana, with exciting dissonance, sounds ready to go into battle armed with just her voice. Not so strange an idea for a reality TV competitor, but it’s how far she takes it. Even Gabrielle Leithaug has never made singing sound so much like battering away enemies with a sneer.
[8]
Frank Kogan: Radu’s wondrous skitter-scat is almost up to the standard set by Celia, thought it doesn’t altogether compensate for how the warm reggae atmospherics get stultifying as the track goes on. Skitter-scat works better with the more conventional Romanian clip-cloppity rhythm, which is one reason the latter got to be a convention in the first place.
[6]