Robin Murray of Clash awarded the album six out of ten, calling it "a tale of heartbreak that could benefit from focus", noting that the track listing contained 17 songs and although there were some "exemplary pop moments", "it struggles to maintain momentum". In terms of production, Petridis said the album did differ from Smith's previous work in that it swapped "retro- soul afflictions" for "misty pop-facing electronics, gentle tropical house shadings and Auto-Tuned backing vocals". Alexis Petridis's review for The Guardian described Love Goes as a "heartbreak album plays it safe in hard times", noting that "Smith attempts to mix despair with euphoria on an album that delivers plenty of gloom but not much glitter". On Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, Love Goes received an average score of 64 based on 13 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
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Critical reception Professional ratings Aggregate scores With the release of the album, the music video for " Kids Again" was released. " My Oasis" featuring Burna Boy was released as the lead single from the album on 30 July 2020, followed by the second single " Diamonds" on 18 September 2020. " Promises" with Calvin Harris, " Fire on Fire" from the miniseries Watership Down, " Dancing with a Stranger" with Normani, " How Do You Sleep?", " I Feel Love" (Smith's cover of Donna Summer's 1977 single), " To Die For", and " I'm Ready" with Demi Lovato were all included on the album's original preorder, but are now all included as bonus tracks on the album, with the exception of "I Feel Love". Singles īefore its delay, Smith had released a number of singles in promotion of the album.
Upon postponing the album, Smith announced that a new cover art would be produced. The hands on the album cover belong to Smith's "chosen family", Shea Diamond, Alok Menon, Jeff Hova, and Madison Phillips. This has been a really sad and awful time for us, so I've changed the album title, I'm going to change the album cover." The original cover art depicted Smith facing head-on with hands all around them. On Friday 17 April, Smith explained the reasons for changing the album during an interview with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2, stating that the "album had the word 'die' in the title, which I just felt really uncomfortable with, with what's happening and it's so important for me to be sensitive to my fans and to people listening to my music. I will be renaming the album and pushing back the release date-both of which are to be confirmed at this time". I have to come to the decision to continue working on the album and make some important changes and additions. On their social media account, they posted the following message: "I have done a lot of thinking the last few weeks and feel that the title of my album and imminent release doesn't feel right. By the end of March, Smith had confirmed that they had decided to delay the album till later in the year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally planned to be titled To Die For, Smith's third album was due to be released on, but was then pushed back to 5 June 2020.
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On 15 July 2021, the title track of the album was featured in the final episode of season 2 of the Netflix series Never Have I Ever. Smith opened a pop-up store in Soho, London named after the album in February 2020 before the release of the single " To Die For". This, I would like to say that we loved each other. The others were the idea of it and it was pure unrequited love. That feeling of they're gone, you can't sleep, the really, really bad feeling.
"I'd say the first proper time I've been actually heartbroken. In an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, Smith said Smith went on to explain that the reception to their recent songs had "almost given me permission to kinda do what I've always dreamed of doing but I was always scared to do, which is pop music." Smith described the album as their "first proper heartbreak album". In an interview with Zach Sang in October 2019, Smith confirmed that their third album would be released in 2020, and said it would feature "fewer ballads and plenty of poppier tracks" than their previous albums, which they called an "acoustic-y, soulful version of pop music".