Post by The Curmudgeon on Mar 24, 2008 23:28:55 GMT 2
Two dire acts. One dire song.
Like Lord Voldermort in the Potter books, in music there was a name that meant sheer, unimaginable terror, misery and mental torment. Yet this was a name that didn't only mean ONE harbinger of doom, but TWO. A name that, for a few torturous months, you just couldn't escape, whether it was watching MTV or turning on the radio. That name meant the next three and a half minutes of your life were full of nothing but pain.
And that name was.. (shudder) Bedingfield.
Yes, over in the UK, the name "Bedingfield" was pretty much inescapable. First off, of course, was big brother Daniel, who quickly turned into a one man (s)hit machine, consisting of some wretched ballads and MOR tunes that this stupid country couldn't get enough of.
As if that wasn't bad enough, little sis Natasha turns up with her own blend of grim pop, a confusing mixture of "attitude" and doe-eyed serial stalker ("I Wanna Have Your Babies" - honestly, who thought THAT was a good idea for a song?)
Thankfully, the curse has been broken over here and Daniel is another bloated corpse on the pop scrapheap, and Natasha has become something of a mild irritant rather than the dominating chart monster she threatened to be.
So what's a girl to do? Simple; if the video for this latest attempt (and first EVER MP3 review by The Curmudgeon) is anything to go by, try and break into the US market by a) pretending to be American and b) pretending to be 17. Both of which, natch, she isn't. Also, get your record company to team you up with the latest flavour of (last) month, fake Jamaican goon Sean Kingston (who's already appeared in the Curmudgeon's reviews), for "Love Like This", a song so insipid, bland and unremarkable that a medal should be given out to whoever is able to hum the tune afterwards.
There is so little chemistry between these two, with her lifeless voice and his annoying phoney accent, you can't really blame the producer for putting that stupid vocoder thing on both their voices, in a desperate attempt to make it look like this "duet" was a good idea and they complement each other.
They don't, of course, and although it's still not as bad as Kingston's other material, this is easily Bedingfield's worse song. And coming from a back catalogue packed with Grade A crud like Babies and I Bruise Easily, that is some feat.
Fingers crossed that pop scrapheap has room for two more.
