Proof that Cheryl’s not just a mime act
CHERYL: Only Human (Polydor)
Verdict: Sticks to her strengths ★★★✩✩
NO NEW Cheryl album would be complete without a season as an X Factor judge and the ensuing miming controversy — and both elements are in place ahead of next week’s release of the former Mrs Cole’s fourth solo effort.
With Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, as she is now, seemingly delighted to be back in the recording studio — ‘my first true love,’ she sighs — Only Human also rekindles a little of the spring that has been missing from her music since Girls Aloud.
With its emphasis on the quirky and catchy, this is her most consistent record since her former band ruled the airwaves.
The lip-synching issue — raised again after her performance of new single I Don’t Care on last Sunday’s X Factor results show — does her few favours. She is no Whitney Houston, but she is a distinctive vocalist with a sweet, plaintive tone.
One of the few reality stars to achieve longevity, she is beginning to impose herself musically, too.
In 2009, when I reviewed her lacklustre solo debut 3 Words, the three that sprang to mind were ‘could do better’. Five years on, she is much more expressive.
The singer also works with a brace of promising British newcomers: singer- songwriter Cass Lowe and R&B singer Joel Compass. There are writing collaborations, too, with former bandmate Nicola Roberts.
Cheryl is most at ease with bouncy pop. Recent chart-topping single Crazy Stupid Love was taken up with relish after being mystifyingly rejected by Kylie Minogue, and Cheryl makes the most of its lively handclaps, honking sax and a cameo by rapper Tinie Tempah.
She sounds similarly engaged on Live Life Now, an electronic dance number. Amid a fair amount of self- help babble, Cheryl tosses lyrical barbs at an unnamed former beau. ‘It’s about time I started loving again,’ she sings on It’s About Time (co-written with Roberts) before admitting, on Throwback, that she’s ‘thrown away my diamond ring’.
Her vocal limitations are exposed on ill-advised detours into R&B. All In One Night demands a swagger that Cheryl doesn’t possess, while Stars is one of several generic dance-pop tracks.
The appealingly strange Coming Up For Air, with label- mate Compass a potent presence, and the hypnotic Goodbye Means Hello are far more suitable vehicles, as is the Eighties-style ballad Fight On, co-written by Lowe.
‘I’m now a woman, and not so unsure of myself any more,’ says Cheryl, 31. And these songs certainly reflect a renewed self-belief.
It might pale in comparison with the year’s benchmark pop album — Taylor Swift’s towering 1989 — but Only Human shows that Cheryl can still cut it when she plays to her strengths.