Alesha Dixon - 'The Boy Does Nothing'
How do you solve a problem like Alesha? It's a bit of a quandary - despite releasing one quite good single ('Lipstick') and one amazing single ('Knockdown'), the public apparently decided they weren't that interested in her solo career, with one single stalling just outside the Top 10 and the other missing the Top 40 altogether. Thus the planned album was shelved, and she disappeared for a bit to be Big In Japan, and sadly slipped out of the public consciousness - until she signed up for Strictly Come Dancing last year, turned out to be very good indeed, and won over the viewing public gradually until she cha cha cha-ed away with the trophy a few days before Christmas.
This was all very exciting, of course, and led to dear Brucie calling her "the British Beyoncé"*, which even Alesha scoffed at, but it did pose the question: where next? Are the people who watched Strictly and voted for her the same people who'd buy her music? Is it worth giving it another go? Obviously the answer turned out to be yes, and almost a year later, here she is with 'The Boy Does Nothing', but is it any good?
Short answer: yes, it is. Lyrically, it's a slightly tame rebuking of a good-for-nothing male who doesn't pull his weight around the house and can't dance either, so those of you expecting a bitter diatribe from Alesha against her ex-husband MC Harvey will be disappointed (I, on the other hand, am glad she's got more class than that). It does, however, give us the refrain "if the man can't dance, he gets no second chance", which is both amazingly catchy and provides an impressive aloofness to the song.
Musically, however, is where it comes alive: it owes more than a nod to 'Mambo No. 5' (again, this isn't ignored in the lyrics) and I suspect it's been tailored around giving Alesha a chance to show off her fancy footwork, as she does to extremely impressive effect in the video. It's pretty hard to resist the urge to shimmy and kick your feet while listening, and Alesha's vocal is the cherry on the cake: a well-measured combination of playfulness and sincerity, with a little vocal tic at the end of the chorus which would be annoying in almost anyone else's hands, but from Alesha just seems even more charming.
It's not quite a five-star song for me, because at the end of the day it is a little bit lightweight and inconsequential, and I don't doubt Alesha is capable of better than this, but I've found it gets better and better with repeated listens, and it should go down a treat at the local discotheque. Let's just hope no one slips a disc attempting a jive after a few shandies.
Download: Out now
CD Released: November 10th
(Steve Perkins)
* The has another star in mind, however...
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