Everyone from reality talent show experts to low-functioning pets noticed the lack of musical capability displayed by Cheryl Cole at the Queen’s Jubilee concert last month, as she trembled through Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now’ in a key so far removed from duetting partner Gary Barlow’s, she might as well have been sitting in the Archbishop Of Canterbury’s lap.
Most of us had already gathered that the Girls Aloud graduate was not an Adele-sized talent, but this particular performance was not just Lana-Del-Rey-on-SNL bad, it was a cringe-worthy, toe-curling piece of car crash TV and, with a new album to plug and 15 million people watching, it threatened to put a halt to Cole’s multi-million pound career.
Then, just two weeks after the shambolic display, Cheryl’s ‘Call My Name’, became the fastest-selling single of 2012, proving that a whole lot of music fans don’t care whether she can carry a tune or not, especially not with Calvin Harris’ great, throbbing dance pop beats to sweeten things up. Therefore, if you’re wildly intoxicated by the hip-swivelling euro dance hooks on A Million Lights, it’s because someone else put them there. If you think Cheryl sounds ravishing in her sultry contralto on bitchy lovesong ‘Craziest Things’, it’s because will.i.am, who has bizarrely become her manager, moulded the beats around her. If you’re digging the carefree chimes of ‘Under The Sun’, Alex Da Kid’s the name to put on the flowers. Ditto ‘Girl In The Mirror’, a superior, sassier ‘Call My Name’ and the Lana Del Rey-penned number, ‘Ghetto Baby’, which sounds exactly like something from the Deluxe Edition of Born To Die.
Of course, now that we’ve agreed that Cheryl’s getting none of the praise for the record’s highs, we can hardly blame her for its missteps. Straight-up snorefest ‘A Million Lights’ is a joint writing and producing fail, while the finger point to Taio Cruz for the godawful medical metaphors on ‘Mechanics Of The Heart’.
But if most of the album sounds pretty good and the fans don’t care, why does it even matter that Cheryl herself had very little to do with it? After all, nowhere in the job description does it say that singers have to mastermind their own drum breaks. Well, it matters because Cheryl’s name is on the cover – not Calvin or Taio or Lana – and because Cheryl, the person, insists that she’s the one who makes the final call on what appears on the little round discs.
A Million Lights proves that while her singing’s clearly not up to much, she is, at least, a decent curator of danceable, chart-stealing, kitchen sink pop.