it's atrocious. it takes all the life and energy and emotion out of the real version--both vocally and production-wise--and makes it this boring, robotic disaster.
Jack Antonoff and Tinashe Kachingwe are two vocalists so fundamentally different from one another that they might as well be from different planets. Antonoff, from Bleachers, is big and nasal and shouty and declarative, like someone who should be playing the lead in a Broadway jukebox musical about the mall-emo era. Tinashe, on the other hand, is subtle and elusive and rhythmically focused. Even on her club-centric R&B hits, that voice slides and slithers, and it never punches the obvious note hard. So credit her for finding a way to translate “I Wanna Get Better,” a manic-depression anthem comprised of nothing but big notes. The drum crashes and triumphant synth-bursts of the original become distant echoes, and Tinashe just struts though the shadows. But she isn’t shy about that big melody, or about the big sentiment that it contains. Even though her delivery is so fundamentally anti-Broadway, Tinashe actually is an actress, word to those 2 And A Half Men checks. So even if she’s not a fundamentally broken person — and I have no idea whether she is or not — she absolutely sells the idea that she didn’t know she was lonely until she saw your face. –Tom
