The bad press has been off the scale for Cheryl Cole in the last few weeks. Apparently when she mimes it’s a lot more of a crime than when, say, JLS, The Saturdays, Justin Bieber, The Wanted, One Direction and basically most other popstars ever mime. But the good news is that, this week, she has finally just let the music do the talking. ‘Call My Name’ shifted a staggering 97,000 downloads in three days and today her third album A Million Lights landed in our inbox ahead of its official release on Monday.
It’s good. Whereas 3 Words felt uneven and Messy Little Raindrops was a little too dependent on filler, A Million Lights is just a solid album of relentlessly good pop. Opener ‘Under The Sun’ and closer ‘All Is Fair’ are two particular highlights, and there are plenty of dubstep-tinged midtempo treats littered in between. Heck, even the bizarrely-titled ‘Sexy Den A Mutha’ is fantastic. The only mis-step? Will.i.am contribution ‘Craziest Things’ – less dope, more dull.
She isn’t the most talented singer in the world, and we’ve known that for ten years. But you wouldn’t go to a Cheryl concert to see her bust out the Adele-style vocal gymnastics, would you? You’d go for the performance and for the Grade-A pop music. And the good news is that A Million Lights has that in spades.
The album is out in the UK on Monday (June 18).
