If you don’t still scream in horror at the mention of Shawn Desman’s name on account of his popularizing “The T-Dot” as slang for Toronto about a decade ago, then you are not a Canadian…
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Anthony Easton: Everyone does it like this.
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Katherine St Asaph: Recall the ’90s, when pop was sugared with descants and spiced with reggae touches. Now recall them horribly wrong.
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Jonathan Bogart: This could be a pleasantly creamy late-summer pop-R&B song, if it had a less rinkydink production and the conviction of its fingersnaps. And maybe a less smarmy singer.
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Edward Okulicz: Not everything about this is bad, because the stammering production is, if not inventive, then certainly ear-catching. We must take the good where we find it, because Desman himself is such a dead weight of a singer who couldn’t convey an emotion if his life depended on it. Or at least not the emotion he’s trying for; when he yodels the chorus he does so not in rapture or pleasure, but with a distinct impression of awkwardness.
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Alfred Soto: The fuck outta here with that yoohoo-oo-oo shit.
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Jonathan Bradley: That “yooooooouuuu-hooooo-hoooo” sets my teeth on edge. The too-cute synth sputters and guitar chirps don’t redeem matters in the slightest.
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Will Adams: Amazingly, the line “and I put my hands on your bodayyyy” wasn’t the final straw. It was the yodeling anti-hook whose repetition is the most baffling choice in pop music since Jessie J’s Crazy Frog antics in “Who’s Laughing Now.” Most telling, though, is how the song just drops off a cliff at the end, as if too embarrassed to live.
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Brad Shoup: Sometimes I feel like a yodel. This could be the most romantic song many, many 8-year-olds have ever heard.
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Iain Mew: The “you-oo-ooo” idea isn’t inherently bad – less than a year ago something very similar was the highlight of David Guetta and Usher’s “Without You”. That song put something behind it though and, more to the point, that was Usher and this is Shawn Desman, who is unconvincing at best throughout. The jittery electro intro deserves better, if nothing else does
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