TBQH, we kinda wish we hadn’t come back from the weekend…
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[3.30]
Thomas Inskeep: Alicia Keys is the Grammys’ dream: a “proper” R&B singer/songwriter/piano player who makes records boring enough for middle-aged white record executives. John Legend is, by and large, the male Alicia Keys, albeit a better singer. And Sam Smith is the trifecta: the gay, British male version, only with less soul. Which is why he won all those Grammys a couple months ago. Keys and Legend are at least capable of roughing up their sound a bit; Smith is far too squeaky-clean for such nonsense. Accordingly, he drags Legend down with him. And furthermore, this’ll likely win a boatload of Grammys in 2016. I doubt I’ll hear a more boring single all year.
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Alfred Soto: A crossover effort by a guy who didn’t need a crossover, a pop validation for an R&B singer who before “All of Me” had only himself to blame for never getting anyone to give a damn; this horror gets pounded into meat sauce until it’s not even recognizable as gravy. I know for damn sure that Chris Brown and Nicki Minaj would have begged for the shows of soul.
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Katherine St Asaph: Only a cynic could resist this mucus-gooey romantic display. And as it turns out, I am just that cynic. I think Lite FM just wet the bed.
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Micha Cavaseno: Decades ago, when you had an insufferable Brit proving they had soul after surprising crossover success by hiring a recognizable icon, you had George Michael and Aretha Franklin. Now, you get Sam Smith and John Legend. As per usual, Smith is the epitome of saccharine portentousness, while John Legend makes noises that sound like someone whining in pain as they linger in a hospital ward after painkillers. Did you hear that falsetto? What the hell was that shit? What we have is a case of two overly mannered egomaniacs, one whose astonishing lack of talent continues to baffle me to this day, kiss their own reflections as if their ego were their own child. And grossly enough, we get invited along to watch. No thanks, guys.
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Iain Mew: Sam Smith has now scored three UK #1s from his first album. He’s partly benefited from not having any one song so monumentally popular as to hamper later releases, but it’s still some feat. The last to manage the same was Bruno Mars; if I’ve researched correctly the last Brit to do so was Will Young. Let’s hope Smith some day produces a “Leave Right Now” then, because “Lay Me Down” is as horrible as “Evergreen.”
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Michelle Ofiwe: This is a record Sam could have carried on his own. (Perhaps I’m still feeling John Legend fatigue from “All of Me”‘s assault on radio last year.) Legend does sound nice here, but Smith clearly blows it out of the water with that intro. However, I am a little confused by the sudden change in tempo — the song becomes a jaunt that doesn’t really match the subject matter. I’m sure that won’t matter to either star when the song makes an appearance on either of their setlists.
[6]
Abby Waysdorf: The first minute and a half of this is absolutely sublime. The thing about Smith is that for all he has A Voice, it’s never entirely about showing off its technical qualities — at his best, he’s feeling everything, giving him an affective edge that’s often lacking in pop stars that are known for their voices. This affective edge (occasionally shading into melodrama, which I’m mostly fine with) makes him most effective in two modes — either the dance music he was first introduced with, or the sparseness that makes up this starting minute and a half, where it’s just a few piano chords shading that high, aching richness. The trappings of more mainstream balladry tend to make him a little too banal, when there’s the potential to be much more interesting. The 30 seconds of Smith’s voice almost breaking, with the piano resonating in the background, points to what that might be. This version of “Lay Me Down” wisely strips back the overblown strings of the album version, which tipped it too far into schmaltz even for me. It also makes it a duet, adding in mainstream pop’s other favorite ballad-maker in John Legend. While Legend isn’t quite the vocalist Smith is, he helps to focus the song on the piano, and he adds a nice groundedness to Smith’s soaring. Making it a duet also adds another narrative layer to the unrequited yearning that has generally made up Smith’s persona. Is there yet hope?
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Anthony Easton: It bugs me how much I hate Sam Smith’s bleating, yet I love John Legend’s crooning — it might be a love for cocktail piano; or it might be this weird, residual authenticity problem; or some nugget of unprocessed queer construction that I don’t want to dissect just yet. Having them sing together makes me think that I might be overestimating Legend and underestimating Smith, which proves the producer did an excellent job at synthesis.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: A cataclysm of safe. Red Nose Day used to facilitate things like Mandy Dingle cavorting to a Billy Ocean cover. This year it’s an unabashed vehicle for dozeballad bulldozers. Nothing is sacred. It’s a strange choice of release for an organisation called Comic Relief, but most inexplicable is the continued sale of the original, not-for-charity version that has led to it charting simultaneously with this. What’s more, it’s barely even a duet anyway, just two men singing the same song as if in separate rooms — almost impressive given that they were in the same one. Perhaps they recognised that it wasn’t a song that called for chemistry, and thus railed valiantly against it? It wouldn’t have been difficult; when it eventually escapes its plod and transforms into a Weekndish performance piece, there’s a hint at multiplicity of meaning, or feeling, or something, but alas, it’s mostly nothing.
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Brad Shoup: Two is the loneliest hour that I’ll ever do.
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