Emeli Sandé: Our Version of Events – review

(Virgin/EMI)

Not all that many half-Zambian Scottish former neuroscience students work in pop music, let alone win the critics' choice Brit award. Even fewer declare Virginia Woolf as an influence and fewer still have a giant tattoo of Frida Kahlo down one arm. There is such a great deal to commend singer Emeli Sandé. If her peroxide quiff stands visually for Sandé's unconventionality, the title of her album, Our Version of Events, promises perspective, too. One of its best outings provides just that. Underscored by strings and a trip-hop shuffle, "Daddy" is a tale of an unhealthy love affair told through the eyes of a jaded friend.

Over the course of these 14 songs, Sandé is revealed as an able storyteller, making universal singalong fodder out of grainy specifics. There's a packed bag and a dangling key on "Suitcase", a song about leave-taking that could be set in the fragrant dust of country music just as easily as it is in the aspirational loft living of Sandé's metropolitan pop-soul. It's not quite clear what's happening on "Heaven", an opening track that fondly recalls both Shara Nelson singing with Massive Attack and Baby D's drum'n'bass hit "Let Me Be Your Fantasy" . It could be about identity, or disappointment, or impatience, but the mystery is righteous. Both Sandé's vocals, and her authorial voice, are distinctive.

So many female pop performers don't write their own stuff. That is no barrier to enjoying their wares, but Sandé not only writes her own songs, her partnership with producer Shahid "Naughty Boy" Khan has produced great swaths of the stuff, destined for gritty rappers and X Factor outcrops alike. Cheryl Cole, Susan Boyle and Cher Lloyd have all been Sandéd. Chipmunk's breakthrough "Diamond Rings" was one of hers, as was Professor Green's summer chart-topper "Read All About It"; she is currently writing for the original Sugababes lineup. Last year, Sandé became known as Simon Cowell's favourite songwriter and in that particular commendation lies the kernel of this album's shortcomings.

While you feel you are in the hands of an able pop surgeon, Sandé never cuts the cancer of blandness out of the genre as decisively as you would hope. The ballads tend to recall Sandé's idol, Alicia Keys; Keys figures prominently on "Hope", a particularly buttock-clenching album closer that seeks to heal the world's ills, but makes you want to deface pianos. Only "Breaking the Law" bucks the boring ballad trend. It's a cut-back curio that sounds as though it could be about standing up for a disabled relative as it could be for a lover.

Ultimately, though, her version of events could have been so much more intriguing. Although Sandé has something in common with Jessie J, another backroom songwriter-turned-singer, her album has a preternaturally middle-aged, middle-of-the-road feel. It's understandable, given Sandé's Cowell connections. But it is regrettable. You can hear Leona Lewis singing too many of these songs. And while that's good for Sandé's future prospects as a songwriter, it's a waste of her idiosyncrasies.

Contributor

Kitty Empire

The GuardianTramp

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