Critical Reception
"Anytime You Need a Friend" was generally well received by contemporary music critics, many of whom praised the song's gospel influence as well as Carey's vocal range. Following the mixed reception to the song's parent album, Music Box, "Anytime You Need a Friend" was deemed a strong contrast to the album's pop influence. Critics agreed that through lowering Carey's vocal bombast, the album suffered due to lowered passion and energy levels. The song however, was considered the only standout from the album, altering heavily from the pop oriented formula of Music Box. J.D. Considine from The Baltimore Sun wrote "Where another singer might have been tempted to turn "Anytime You Need a Friend" into a full-blown sanctified sing-out, Carey and producer Walter Afanasieff use the gospel harmonies on the chorus as contrast for Carey's pop soul vocal." A writer from Portland Press Herald called the song one of Carey's "original classics", and felt it earned a place on her compilation album Number 1's, even though it did not top the Hot 100. In an article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a writer commented that Carey's vocal range in the song sounds as if its from a "glass-shattering dimension" and complimented her incorporation of the gospel genre and church choir into the song's climax. Christopher John Farley from Time described the song as "gospel flavored" and wrote "'Anytime You Need a Friend' demonstrates Carey's vocal power, although too fleetingly." While calling it "undeniably strong", David Browne from Entertainment Weekly gave the song a mixed review, writing "'Anytime You Need a Friend' feature gospel-inflected choirs seemingly intended to demonstrate that Carey has soul — which she doesn't — but they're beautifully arranged, and they serve as a nice counterpoint to Carey's own lapses into show-offy vocal gymnastics." Suraya Attas from The Straits Times described Carey's voice as husky, and felt it "exploited her vocal range to the fullest." In 2003, The Daily Record named "Anytime You Need a Friend" one of the "World's Greatest First Dance Songs." USA Today critic John T. Jones called the song "inspirational", while a writer from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution branded it "the center of the album." "Anytime You Need A Friend" won a BMI Pop Award and an ASCAP Pop Music Award for the Songwriter Award in 1995.
Read more about this topic: Anytime You Need A Friend
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reception:
“The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear—and even, in certain respects, would be—the most modern of critical movements.”
—Paul Deman (1919–1983)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)