You can almost hear the meeting about this record: ‘We like John Newman’s songs, but to get him more credibility we need to thrust an off the shelf drum machine beat under him and call it a club edit.”
Proving that slower, more sombre music cannot be turned into a club hit no matter how many BPMs you make the drums, I’d suggest you dig out the original version rather than his hyped-up dancier number that needs a power-cut to the drum machine and a slap to the face of the decision makers. The clubbier style works better at the end with some more work on his vocals, though it feels like an unnecessary production decision on a record that is much more enjoyable in its album form, even if this is his weakest single in both forms so far, lacking the power as it does of something like ‘Losing Sleep’.
(6/10)
Buy: Out Of My Head (Club Edit)
