October 1, 2000

Walk Of Life

Inoffensive, if over-produced, pop ballads, making use of the latest R&B curlicues and vocodered vocal tricks.

It's an ugly business, the pop machine, and Billie Piper is just about one of the ugliest things it's coughed up for many a moon. It's not so much that her physiognomy could give Daphne & Celeste laryngitis (but let's face it, that heavy jawline and close-set eyes are no longer obscured by prepubescent cutesyness). Rather, it's that since she turned 18 and acquired a surname, her game has become all a bit predictable and tawdry.

She's a stage school brat who, at a cherubic 15, won the part in an advertisement campaign to reposition ailing teen pop mag Smash Hits. A curiously reciprocal marketing strategy ensued where Billie was guaranteed positive coverage in Smash Hits, and the mag given a new pop kitten to bung on its front cover. The resulting, exuberantly youthful single 'Because We Want To' and debut album 'Honey To The B' were guaranteed chart success, and she joined the legion of young pop things past and present who've successfully played the Lolita card.

/img/BilliePiper0900.jpg Sadly, though, since then she had the misfortune to collapse (even if it was a "kidney problem"), aged 17, inside an exclusive London nightclub, her image is forever sullied. Like Peter Pan being caught having one off the wrist, the appeal of Billie the (sweet pop) kid has been shot up the wall.

And soooo, what do you know, 'Walk Of Life', the new album, has a new spin. Piper burbles on the press release: "On the first album I was basically saying I was young and happy and everything was great. This time I wanted to sing about real things, whether they were good or bad. They have real meaning and truth." So, hey, put down that new Radiohead album, kids! You want life? You want a shout from the terraces? Get with the new Billie P album! Hmm, not quite the cunning marketing plan of yore, is it?

The songs are alright, inoffensive, if over-produced, pop ballads, making use of the latest R&B curlicues and vocodered vocal tricks. Billie's nasally mid-Atlanticism smoulders with a premature sexuality (especially on, oh yes, Blondie cover 'The Tide Is High', all breathy, semi-orgasmic bluster), but there's nothing devastatingly catchy and nothing to threaten Britney, whose pop dynamism and knowing coquettishness is genuinely interesting.

On the last track, 'Misfocusing', the ex-teen queen bemoans, Robbie style, a media world bent on misinterpreting her. Which is a bit rum, really.