Alesha Dixon: The Alesha Show
It's The Alesha Show on her solo debut
Also In The News
|
England flanker James Haskell is hoping that he can prevent South Africa returning home with a clean sweep of victories from their tour of the UK after being given a starting berth for Saturday's clash. |  |
Friday, 21, Nov 2008 11:10
Asylum Records, out November 24th.
In a nutshell...
Sassy, sexy, energetic, fun, chart-friendly
What's it all about?
Fifteen tracks (well, 14 tracks and an intro) of vocal karate chopping and sweet lively singing which will make lots of young girls go crazy with excitement for the new prima donna of R 'n' B pop.
Who's it by?
Dixon is already famous for being one-third of Mis-teeq, and adding her saucy MC skills to garage-flavoured girl-pop anthems like One Night Stand and All I Want. She has also established herself as a bit of a mover following her tricks on Strictly Come Dancing, as well as appearing as a spangly-dressed podium dancer in NERD's hit video for She Wants to Move. Nobody is likely to be surprised at her decision to attempt a solo career. Nor should anyone be surprised if she does rather well.
As an example...
"Does he wash up? He never wash up/Does he scrub up? Never scrubbed up/He does nothing, the boy does nothing... " - Only Alesha Dixon could sing about washing up dishes in a way that gets people hot under the collar, but somehow she does.
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys?
Given that Dixon is already so established it's possible she could get a few awards. The Alesha Show isn't quite an artistic masterpiece of epic standing, but it is great fun, and is likely to be very popular with teenagers.
What the others say:
"The deliriously desiccated mambo of The Boy Does Nothing has the room on its feet, but - oh, dear - a grisly power-ballad kills the excitement even faster than a low score from the judging panel." - Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph
"It's great to see Alesha back on her feet and, with an album like this to her name, the world is her oyster." - Capital FM
So is it any good?
Alesha Dixon has enough genuine talent that it would be very hard for her to make a bad album, and although a few of the songs themselves stray on to the bad side of 'predictable'' she manages to keep the overall result pretty decent. There's enough sass for fans of her Mis-teeq style rapping with the likes of Let's Get Excited, and there are a few very sweet moments with ballads such as Do You Know the Way it Feels, penned by Diane Warren who wrote, among other hits, Unbreak My Heart for Toni Braxton, and I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing for Aerosmith.
Chasing Ghosts sees Alesha in fun, Motown mood with its gentle, upbeat production, and it is very hard not to be warmed by it. In fact it is very tempting to start hand-jiving.
Although her singing is not so breath-taking as to render her completely unrivalled, (comparisons with Rhianna and Beyonce are perhaps less useful than comparisons with Estelle), it is certainly good, what she might lack in range, Dixon more than makes up for with sheer force of diction. The squealing on her first single, The Boy Does Nothing is so much fun to mimic that even if the rest of the song didn't have an annoyingly catchy tune, (which it does, by the way), hundreds of people would be walking around singing along to this on their iPods.
Also deeply likeable is Don't Ever Let Me Go which is the warmest and most girl-group-like track on the album, and Dixon's voice has a creeping warmth which makes this cheerful little track perhaps the easy highlight of the album - and a good choice for a second single.
Rather than the good outweighing the bad, this is more a case of the very good outweighing the mediocre. Not the most serious music ever written perhaps, but still seriously great fun.
7/10
Louise McCudden