For someone who’s often said the media make her life difficult, Cheryl Cole has been at best naïve, and at worst, very cynical, in the songs she’s chosen to release thus far.
Her first single outside of Girls Aloud, “Fight For This Love” was a righteous sounding pop song that told the listener that love with worth fighting for. Parallels with her personal life, were and remain, indisputable. So after her split with Ashley Cole last year and her many statements about her hatred of media intrusion, you’d think she might have chosen songs about subjects that could be less directly linked to her former husband. She hasn’t, especially as she’s picked the same songwriter who penned “Fight For This Love.” Wayne Wilkins, who’s also written for Natasha Bedingfield and Michelle Williams.
His latest creation, “Promise This”, the lead off single from her second album “Messy Little Raindrops” is a lot more low key than “Fight For This Love.” It doesn’t have either the instantaneousness of that track, which, whether you loved or hated the content, had a chorus that took hold in your brain like chewing gum to an oversized trainer. It’s also much less brash, less in your face.
The track is built like a classy piece of electro pop, much more low key than her previous work which had Will.I.Am’s bolshy, attention seeking production all over it. This is much less aggressive and more refined, with layered electronics and a gentle nagging bassline. It’s more nuanced and actually much much better. Comparisons are, of course, far and wide, with names from Kate Bush to Madonna in the mix. The best way to encapsulate this track though, is it’s the kind of thing Tori Amos might have written if she’d had an arena tour booked and really needed a number one hit.
“Promise This” also has some bizarre bits of French in the bridge, with Cole repeating the words “Alouette uette uette” which translates as “Skylark lark lark” throughout the track. Whether this is an attempt to be abstract or just what happened to fit the instrumental is unclear, but given Cole hasn’t given been too fussed in the past about making people look for deeper meanings in the songs she picks, it’s unlikely this is a deeply veiled dig at someone. To be fair, Cole and her bandmates told us not two years ago they couldn’t speak French, so it’s no surprise that this dabble en francais ends up with something quite so nonsensical.
This track is, for want of a better word, promising. It hints Cole may actually have carried through the nouse that made Girls Aloud such excellent choosers of songwriters into her solo career and she might end up selling records for other reasons then her likeable media persona. Names linked with her new album include Starsmith, Ne-Yo and Australian geniuses Nervo, all of which bodes pretty well.
Let’s hope her second album is full of songs about the first world war, ham sandwiches and Morocco, anything but more non-subtle references to her marriage. The tabloids’ appetite might be never ending, but for those of us who actually like music, enough was, quite a well ago, enough.
Her first single outside of Girls Aloud, “Fight For This Love” was a righteous sounding pop song that told the listener that love with worth fighting for. Parallels with her personal life, were and remain, indisputable. So after her split with Ashley Cole last year and her many statements about her hatred of media intrusion, you’d think she might have chosen songs about subjects that could be less directly linked to her former husband. She hasn’t, especially as she’s picked the same songwriter who penned “Fight For This Love.” Wayne Wilkins, who’s also written for Natasha Bedingfield and Michelle Williams.
His latest creation, “Promise This”, the lead off single from her second album “Messy Little Raindrops” is a lot more low key than “Fight For This Love.” It doesn’t have either the instantaneousness of that track, which, whether you loved or hated the content, had a chorus that took hold in your brain like chewing gum to an oversized trainer. It’s also much less brash, less in your face.
The track is built like a classy piece of electro pop, much more low key than her previous work which had Will.I.Am’s bolshy, attention seeking production all over it. This is much less aggressive and more refined, with layered electronics and a gentle nagging bassline. It’s more nuanced and actually much much better. Comparisons are, of course, far and wide, with names from Kate Bush to Madonna in the mix. The best way to encapsulate this track though, is it’s the kind of thing Tori Amos might have written if she’d had an arena tour booked and really needed a number one hit.
“Promise This” also has some bizarre bits of French in the bridge, with Cole repeating the words “Alouette uette uette” which translates as “Skylark lark lark” throughout the track. Whether this is an attempt to be abstract or just what happened to fit the instrumental is unclear, but given Cole hasn’t given been too fussed in the past about making people look for deeper meanings in the songs she picks, it’s unlikely this is a deeply veiled dig at someone. To be fair, Cole and her bandmates told us not two years ago they couldn’t speak French, so it’s no surprise that this dabble en francais ends up with something quite so nonsensical.
This track is, for want of a better word, promising. It hints Cole may actually have carried through the nouse that made Girls Aloud such excellent choosers of songwriters into her solo career and she might end up selling records for other reasons then her likeable media persona. Names linked with her new album include Starsmith, Ne-Yo and Australian geniuses Nervo, all of which bodes pretty well.
Let’s hope her second album is full of songs about the first world war, ham sandwiches and Morocco, anything but more non-subtle references to her marriage. The tabloids’ appetite might be never ending, but for those of us who actually like music, enough was, quite a well ago, enough.
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