Quick pop quiz – name two members of Texas in five seconds……no? Thought not. Texas have become one of those bands, alongside Jamiroquai and Simply Red, who have morphed into the personality of a single individual, in this case the admittedly striking Sharleen Spiteri. Like the others, they’ve become something to be looked down upon by the snobs amongst us, music for people who don’t really like music.
Yet, given their sales figures, there are a lot of those people out there. Red Book, album number six, will do little to change the opinion of either camp. For those looking to carp, it is the perfect representation of the faceless corporate music industry; aside from Spiteri’s increasingly confident vocals you’d be hard pushed to find the evidence of human hands here – apart from those pushing the buttons on a computer.
The album leads with the current single and swiftly follows it with the next one. Everything moves in the realms of the unchallenging, the kind of safe pop rock that adults are supposed to listen to. But this listener has two kids and a mortgage, which is pretty damn adult, and there’s not a lot here that would float my boat and nothing that you won’t find done better on the Sugababes record. The multitude of fans, on the other hand, will find their boat decidedly unrocked and will buy it in their millions.
So maybe everybody’s happy, with preconceptions and expectations met all round. Music, as another pop singer once said, does make the people come together.