French singer making a less than impactful debut on the Jukebox…
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[5.33]
Iain Mew: One of those times context does weird things. In the way Vitaa’s pain is set over the thump of the beat and twinkle of the guitars, I heard something of Stromae’s “Papaoutai.” “Peine & Pitié” is significantly less intense in performance and lyrics, but it’s a cool thing for a new pop hit to be taking after, I thought. Then I found out that Stromae wrote this too, and what I was thinking of as fresh starts to sound a bit like diminishing returns.
[6]
Hannah Jocelyn: Take the melody, percussion, and guitar outro from “Papaoutai,” take out the pathos, add in the chord progression and mallets from “Around The World (La La La La La),” change the second chord in said progression so it’s actually “Shape Of You,” make the result less than three minutes, and you have something resembling this song. There’s enough going on other than the glaring similarities to Stromae’s previous work and the other random references I threw around so it has room to grow on me, and I suppose it gets an extra point for the “Ça fair de la peine” acapella moment toward the end. It’s not something I see myself always coming back to, but if I need some energetic French house that isn’t as heavy, I know where to go.
[6]
Alfred Soto: At first disappointed that “peine” didn’t refer to a hairbrush, I settled into enjoy glistening pop whose guitars have high life touches.
[6]
Will Adams: An exercise in unused potential. There are orchestra hits but no sense of force behind them. There’s twinkling xylophones but little uplift. There’s pain and pity but a lack of feeling.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: There’s an awful lot of detail and density in that beat, and although there’s nothing wrong with Vitaa’s voice, I want her to get out of the way so I can hear those details, because her constant intonation of the title isn’t interesting at all. I feel and detect neither peine nor pitié here, because repeating words, even ones with clear emotional links, over and over isn’t always going to be inherently evocative of those emotions.
[5]
Jessica Doyle: The lyrics seem to point to self-reliance, but both the music and Vitaa’s voice feel resigned to me, not enough life in them to help the listener gather strength. No pain, but nothing really compelling, either; a pity.
[4]