Dannii Minogue
So Under Pressure
All Around The World
Let’s get the obvious out the way: Dannii Minogue is no Kylie. Willing her to morph into a perfect pop icon like her elfin-cropped sister is like asking Noel Edmonds to become the new Jordan. But she’s survived in this business we call show for over fifteen years now and scored an impressive nine top ten hits. Once you note this, her upcoming Greatest Hits collection loses its initial 'WTF???!!!' status and starts to seem surprisingly timely. New single So Under Pressure is, to use a technical term, a bit of a grower. After a few spins its thunderous bassline and electro chorus finally take hold and lodge in your brain like an egg-hungry spermatozoon. She might like touching ladies’ love maracas in dodgy bars, but she’s all right, that Dannii Minogue.
Here come some more of this week's singles reviews, by Shakira, Armand Van Helden, Clea, Sham 69 & The Special Assembly and Bon Jovi, all after the jump…
Shakira
Hips Don’t Lie
The album? Uber-hyped. Too serious. Tanking. The solution? Reissue. New song. Wyclef Jean. Yup, that’s right, Shakira’s chosen the clownish, resolutely unfashionable ex-Fugees joker to produce her career-saving new single. Hips Don’t Lie is a tropical carnival of reggae beats, salsa horns and party grooves, with Shakira gamely playing a caricature version of herself; well, who else could yodel a lyric like “Come on let's go, real slow; baby, like this is perfecto” and fail to sound utterly ridiculous? It’s as summery as burnt shoulders and Big Brother, but as substantial as a whisked egg. The result? US number one. Mission. Accomplished.
Armand Van Helden
My My My
Southern Fried
It’s hard to believe that Armand Van Helden is still going. Nine years after he remixed Tori Amos’ Professional Widow (“it’s gotta be big”) to transcendent effect, seven years after his chart topping You Don’t Know Me single, he’s still laying down those beats. My My My – a remixed version of his top twenty hit from 2004 – is a standard issue house floorfiller: one third throbbing beat, one third repetitive, sampled vocal hook and one third filter twiddling-o-rama. It may be dance music of the most cliched variety, but it’s not gonna lift you up, take you higher or make you feel like a superstar (‘cause that’s what you are) any time soon.
Clea
Lucky Like That
Upside
Since being voted off Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, Clea have scored three top forty hits, none of which climbed any higher than number twenty-one. The fact that they’re even releasing a single in 2006, a time in which mainstream pop music is tottering very precariously on its stilettos and the gaggle of British girl groups comprises Girls Aloud, Sugababes and absolutely no-one else, is quite an achievement. Lucky Like That isn’t bad: it’s a bouncy, summery pop song with some nice calypso undertones and a decent chorus, but if Girls Aloud’s brilliant, genre-busting stormers can’t become massive hits right now, what hope do their pound-shop sisters have? Number 29 again, we reckon.
Sham 69 & The Special Assembly
Hurry Up England- The People’s Anthem
Parlophone
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that all – well, nearly all – football songs are a bit rubbish. But what if we told you that we’d found a football song that was different? Virgin Radio listeners had declared it The People’s Anthem; Graham Coxon played its guitar solo; and it was essentially Sham 69’s punk classic Hurry Up Harry with new lyrics about “having a blinding team full of quality: Colsall, Ferdinand and John Terry”. Would you drop your pint and exclaim: “At last, a new World In Motion”? If you’re currently picking up shards of glass from the floor, your shock was in vain, because Hurry Up England is a bit rubbish. But at least its big chanty chorus can be belted out on the terraces when Wayne Rooney finally makes his World Cup debut. Embrace: listen and learn.
Bon Jovi
Who Says You Can’t Go Home?
Mercury
Who says you can’t teach some well-coifed old dogs new tricks? The country version of this single hit number one on the American country charts last month, a first for the veteran rock poodles. But, here in Britain, we don’t generally ‘do’ country, so we’re getting the original rawk version of Who Says You Can’t Go Home to coincide with the band’s UK tour. It’s a typical noughties Bon Jovi rocker: well crafted, bouncy and in no way memorable. It won’t be taking Livin’ On A Prayer’s place in the encore any time soon, that’s for sure.
[reviews by Nick Levine]