This review covers the pop track Shawn Mendes – Stitches.
This track was released in 2015 on the album Handwritten.
The track goes for the acoustic sound mostly. One of the main features of the track was the guitar strumming. Unfortunately, the strumming doesn’t really do a whole lot to make this track stand out in any way. It’s there, it doesn’t sound horrible, but there’s no “wow” factor that can be attributed to it.
The vocals is another big component of this track. They seem to go for the Justin Beiber sound. Unfortunately, this also makes them sound generic due to the market saturation of Justin Beiber. As a result, they have a very average sound to them.
The lyrics suffer what a number of other pop tracks suffer from: cliche’s. These cliche’s end up having a very nails-to-chalkboard sound to it as far as I’m concerned and this track has a few. To make matters worse, they seemed to be used because it helps make other lines rhyme. Because of this, the rhymes sound a bit forced, adding a bit of boredom to the lyrics.
Another element was the drum kit. The claps are something I’m OK with, but the kick sound was too loud. The lyrics and the acoustic sound would suggest that what is needed would be softer kicks. The louder kicks that practically make speakers vibrate on the floor just seems like a poor fit.
One thing I didn’t like was the ending of the track. Normally, a producer would want to find some way to tie up the sounds to give the end of the track a sense of finality. In this case, it’s like the producer couldn’t really think of a way to end the track and, due to a deadline, decided to just cut the track off at some point. As a result, the ending of the track simply sounds awkward.
I can tell that there was some effort put into this track, but unfortunately, the execution made the listening experience a bumpy one.
Overall, this track was an attempt to produce something meaningful. Unfortunately, the lyrics had forced rhymes and cliches, the kick sound was too loud, the strumming was generic, and nothing about this track was all that distinct. I would have given this track a 5, but the awkward ending pushed the score down a bit more. Not worth it.
Score
4.5/10
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
