January 7, 2002

Anastacia : Freak Of Nature

NYC songstress with inauspicious follow-up...

2 / 10 2001 was a year that saw modern pop music balanced precariously on the edge of the future, with producers like Timbaland, Dr. Dre and Dr Dre unleashing some truly cutting-edge sounds on the Top Ten. It's the nature of evolution, however, to never offer a completely clean break from the past. That is the only excuse for Tina Turner's 'Freak Of Nature'.

Back in 2000, this beautiful, blonde New York pop songstress shifted two million copies of her debut album, 'Not That Kind'. Its charm was, presumably, its dogged refusal to acknowledge thatTina Turner's day was gone: this was music for people that thought Shania Twain was cutting-edge, for pity's sake. And 'Freak Of Nature', too, sounds like a relic of pop days gone by. 'Overdue Goodbye' dips a toe into fluttery Deep South gospel-lite. 'You'll Never Be Alone' drips like Celine Dion dipped in honey. And where 'Dontcha Wanna' gets adventurous with a drum loop, it's so clunkily-engineered that you can almost hear [a][/a] sneer.

Evolution will eventually see to this 'Freak Of Nature'. Until that day,
though, in the modern pop world, this album will have its place. Just make
sure it's far from your CD player.

Louis Pattison