RIGHT SAID FRED - STOP THE WORLD

I admit that, as an old git who will happily dance to Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy in a knowingly post-ironic way at parties, but whose taste generally includes almost any music as long as it's good, I approached this one with a mix of hope and fear. I hoped that I would be able to say something like "although this isn't really to my taste, people who like good, smart, witty pop music will probably like this." I even had a faint hope that this might be that rare thing, pop music that I like (see: Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Shakira). I hoped that at worst I might be able to say it was so bad that it was actually quite good.

I feared that it might be dire pop pap from start to finish though. Sadly my fear was correct. In the interests of getting a few more opinions, I tried playing it to friends and family. The politest things any of them said were "next track, please" and "this one [track 9, Happily Ever After] has a nice, Latin beat to it; it's the least offensive so far, but it's very repetitive; oh... next track, please."

It's as though some reasonably competent but utterly uninspired computer programmers had decided to work with some reasonably competent but utterly uninspired singers, with a a working brief of crafting a kind of middle-of-the-road tribute to the naffest pop music of the past three decades, and then the finished project had been painstakingly drained of all traces of life, energy, inspiration, or fun by a producer whose idea of a good weekend is cleaning his Volvo and watching the EastEnders omnibus.

IAN STURROCK