Tom: I suppose a collaboration like this was inevitable. There’s only so far you can go with boy-band ballad harmony, and getting someone else in to do the rap vocals is a better idea than letting any of the condom-peddlers have a go.
Tim: Yeah, but – he isn’t, really. He’s there for less than fifteen seconds; according to maths that works out to about six and half percent, which barely justifies the ‘featuring’. The cynical part of me would suggest that they’re aiming for the Tinie Tempah fans, because for whatever reason the JLS fans aren’t enough. God knows why, though – they’ve not really had a problem getting a number 1 before now.
Tom: There’s hardly any interaction between the two, though. JLS sing. And then Tinie Tempah raps for a bit. And then JLS sing for a bit more. With the exception of a couple of quick exclamations at the end, it’s almost as if Tinie just recorded his verse to a click track and let the producers paste it in later.
Tim: Weird thing: Tinie’s yelling out the names, but thirty seconds into the song after JLS have done their bit. It’s as though they correctly thought, ‘Yelling out names at the start of the record is silly. Let’s make our song properly,’ but then he came along and said, ‘What’s this? I’m a rapper, I can’t be in a song but not yell my name out a the start! How dare they try and stop me.’
Tom: Speaking of which: I reckon you’re thinking “this sounds a lot like Calvin Harris’ I’m Not Alone“. And you’d be right – because Calvin Harris produced this too, not so much ‘laying down’ the track as ‘copying and pasting’ it.
And, while we’re at it, did they really have to rip the title from Stanley Kubrick? I’m assuming JLS aren’t getting involved in masked orgies. If they were, the tabloids would be onto them like a shot.