This album has, admittedly been out for a while,
and if I’d been more on the ball I’d have reviewed it sooner - but I
forgot. That’s the thing; Nicola Roberts is often seen as the
forgettable one of Girls Aloud, now personally, I don’t really care
about any members of Girls Aloud. Or I didn’t, until I saw Nicola
Roberts doing a documentary on the dangers of tanning for young people,
she talked about how determined she became not to allow her record label
and management to force her into fake tanning, and she now has her own
make-up range for pale skin. Which is all pretty admirable, really and I
promised myself I’d keep an eye on what she got up to, but somehow it
never happened.
Then I heard ‘Beat Of My Drum’, it’s fun, instant
and empowering, Roberts is standing up, telling people she’s in charge
now. The video is sadly, not very good, but she’s doing her own thing,
so we’ll let her off for that bizarre bending over dance move, and it
certainly doesn’t seem to have caught on, which is something of a
relief.
‘Cinderella’s Eyes’ is at the very least a good
listen because it’s daring. It’s depressingly rare to come across an
album that’s likely to chart, which does anything different, but if you
listened to this abstractly, it certainly wouldn’t sound like Girls
Aloud karaoke with only one member (unlike some people, naming no
names…Cheryl Cole). In fact, the opening of ‘Fish Out Of Water’ is
reminiscent of Xiu Xiu, it’s treading that beautiful line between great
pop and plain weird, which if straddled successfully is often the most
rewarding, listens. Although, I’m politely ignoring the cover of
‘Everybody Hurts Sometime’ because, well, it’s a bit rubbish.
There’s a pervading sense of dark regret
throughout, dark nights filled with drink, music and emptiness inside,
she lists her fears on ‘i’, telling us she’s “scared of dying…scared of
getting old” and “scared of bodies…scared I’ll lose control” and there’s
something truly heartbreaking about the way she says “I don’t like
nasty words, they hurt me like you’d never know”. She whispers “you’re
my childhood sweetheart the one I’ve chased for years”, which sounds
lovely until the chilling next line, “feels like you’ve got your hands
locked over my lips and ears”. The painfully honest confession, ‘sticks +
stones’, with its references to underage drinking, “too young to buy my
own bottle of vodka so I beg the driver” and mental health issues “say
no to the shrink I can fix me I think, I’ve got friends in my head”
never once feels smug. Even though she’s talking about the downsides of
famous so young, which such subject matter often leads to, instead it
feels truly honest.
The artwork shows Roberts sitting on top of a pile
of junk, a surreal Alice in Wonderland, but for all her porcelain skin,
and doll like hair, she isn’t taking any nonsense. The idea of her being
in a fairytale that turned bad, is clear, she used to “write all her
dreams in her storybook”, according to a daring and successful rap on
‘Take A Bite’, but she’s taken this idea and turned it around to her
benefit. Which is pretty much what she’s done with all that’s happened
to her. How do I know that? How do I know ‘what’s happened to her’? Well
I don’t, I haven’t read it in any magazines or anything like that, but
that’s the picture ‘Cinderella Builds” and frankly, the potential of an
honest, heartbreaking, and frankly, shockingly dark pop album, that
really tells a story, is not something I want to explain away. For all
the open confessions, I’m not left pitying her, because she comes across
strong. It may not be to everyone’s tastes, but then very few things
are, and the fact she’s done something different, begins to restore my
faith in pop music.
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