This is rubbish.

Depechay Mode-style bippy-boppy synths.

"I've got bigger large family of small passerine birds."

Last track - Sticks and Stones.

Electric piano.

"Called me a rude ginger b*tch and say I bought bigger "

She could have bought something bigger than those couldn't she?

Ballard.

Sad one.

Oh give it a rest now, Roberts.

The self-pitying schtick is getting a bit tiresome.

Trying to be like "Beautiful" by Christina Aguieliararara.

I'm surprised this wasn't a single.

It is ova.

Nightjar wrote:

I'm surprised this wasn't a single.

It could've'd mopped up on the angsty teenage girls demographic/market.

It is over.

That was an album that started off entertainingly but started to become quite wearing by the second half. It had some decent tunes and she has a voice that is more than capable of doing its job.

Now to look back at the thread and see what everybody else made of it.

I shall give it three stars, as it did a decent job of what it was trying to do.

I thought it was great, one of the best pop albums of the last decade.

Has dated though, oh well.

It's hard to assess stuff like this.

Lot's of money thrown at it by the record company, lots of well-payed songwriters and producers hired, lots of cash splurged on promotion...

About £50 spent on the videos.

Anyway, it wasn't hateful or even remotely offensively bad.

It was a product designed to showcase a reasonably good, young singer by means of various, suspect, albeit painfully conspicuous tactics.

An emotional arc of self-pity, narcissism, defiance and finally redemption.

That said...

The best thing I can say is that they didn't mess about with her vocals in post-production.

That's not actually insignificant.

She doesn't have the best voice of all time but she can obviously sing.

That said, I remember that when I met and subsequently moved into a flat with my two fellow art students in Bounds Green in '99 I one night discovered (some soul classic was on, er... the radio?) that both had astonishing '90s R&B-type singing voices.

I was at once pleasantly astonished and quite dispirited.

There are a million girls and women across the whole world who have amazing voices, but they don't have that serious an ambition to go down that career path or have no opportunity to do so.

This is mad...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticks_and_Stones_(Nicola_Roberts_song)

It's longer and more involved than a Wikipedia entry about a major world city or Helmut Kohl.

Or something.

Let me know when voting has been completed.

Being re-released on the vinyls for 10th anniversary