Erm, haven’t we heard this all before?

ROMANCE

Camila Cabello Syco/Epic

In 1992, Swedish band Ace of Base released All That She Wants, a synth-pop ditty blending sing-song melody with the breakbeats and basslines of hip-hop and reggae. Co-produced by a local DJ called Denniz Pop, it went on to conquer the world, and effectively began the Swedish song factory that has come to dominate pop production. Nearly three decades on, 22-yearThey old Cuban-American star Camila Cabello has brazenly borrowed the melody of

All That She Wants for her recent single Liar. Just for good measure, a sample of Lionel Richie’s 1983 hit

All Night Long has been bolted on to double the hook quotient. These may have been oldies by the time Cabello was born, yet what could be more fashionable than recycling?

Adhering to Denniz Pop’s team-based theories of song construction, 12 writers and three producers are credited on Liar, with 33 writers and 15 production teams involved across Cabello’s new album, Romance. It may sound like an awful lot of cooks for a basic broth but that’s how things are done these days. Cabello herself is a product of assemblyroom pop. She was a teenage contestant on the American X Factor, where Simon Cowell made her a member of girl group Fifth Harmony. She scored a massive solo hit with salsa smash Havana in 2017, drawing on her Cuban heritage, although her

2018 debut album, Camila, dialled down the Latin spices in favour of a more generic digital R’n’B pop style.

The follow-up places her on a Venn diagram between the featherlight sensuality of Ariana Grande and pushy swagger of Taylor Swift, with just a hint of Rihanna’s Caribbean sass. To add to her demographic appeal, Cabello is dating Canadian pop idol Shawn Mendes, with whom she nimbly duets on Señorita, number one this year in 35 countries.

Romance sounds spacious and understated. The songs bristle with hooks; the lyrics are shallow but pithy. Credited as a co-writer on all 14 tracks, Cabello’s emotions swing between gushy devotion (Easy, First Man), flirty seduction (My Oh My, Living Proof) and tart rejection (Should’ve Said It, Feel It Twice). Her voice is beautifully airy, at its most dazzling when she rises to fluttery high notes on Bad Kind of Butterflies and Dream of You, but she is more than capable of getting down and dirty on edgier tracks, such as Shameless and Cry for Me.

That Cabello is clearly a fine singer hasn’t stopped producers smoothing her with Auto-Tune. Romance is state-of-the-art pop yet it lacks the real romance of music made from the heart. If you feel like you’ve heard it before, it may be because you literally have. NMC