Colbie Caillat’s not that bad.
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[5.00]
Katherine St Asaph: Where’s Britney, bitch?
[4]
Will Adams: Those drums – ever so slightly overdriven – suggest that this song could be less safe, less twee, and less pat. The stumbling-over-self chorus is a plus, though it’s undone by the following da-daa’s, which suck the song into a Colbie Caillat wasteland.
[5]
Anthony Easton: Adding musical flourishes to distract from insipid sentiment has occurred from the beginning of popular music. When done badly, it reinforces how much work had to go in to distracting from the lyrics, and when the lyrics are especially bad, it becomes a mutually-reinforcing problem.
[4]
Alfred Soto: All the percolating synths and coffeehouse-in-the-sky production can’t disguise the gormless vocals and sentiments.
[3]
Iain Mew: The lack of detail in the song’s scenario is glaring even before Yuna presents taking black and white photos as evidence for someone being one in a million. It doesn’t hold it back, because the song sounds like a pleasant daydream that would only be weighed down by reality. Even when more drums get added in, it sounds just as much like sweetly floating away.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Inert but for her work on the chorus, halting and circling back on a basic concept. The electronic (maybe processed, I dunno) drums do the heavy lifting; when Yuna goes dark you can practically see an ellipsis where a solo could go. But no, it’s just the toms, dubbed off a quality cassette. There’s something here, and it’s not the part about the dude who takes black-and-white photos.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Fortunately a little more Bic Runga than Colbie Caillat, Yuna herself seems rather more charming than her song which is sweet but as deep as a puddle both lyrically and emotionally. Everything is oh-so-mannered and sweet to a point where you can’t quite get swept up in Yuna’s polite enthusiasm. But that’s not necessarily bad, if you believe a decent pop song is created in search of a use there’s plenty for this one; it’s gentle and hokey, but it’s freezing where I am and there’s a latent market inside all of us for a warming, fond little love song like this.
[7]