Melanie C
Northern Star

THE REVIEW

The start of this album has a heavy rhythm and aggressive lyrics: "Go, find what you're looking for / Go, you've lost me for sure / I don't even want you as a friend" ("Go!"). Melanie C herself knows she needs to go, to "find another direction". This record tells us about some of the moments when the relationship between two people deteriorates: "I won't let you ruin another day / You say you're into me, but where were you last night? / I don't have time for bitterness, I want to get away from all this" ("Be the One") and the age of innocence already seems over.

Released in 1999, "Northern Star" is the first solo album by Melanie Chisholm, who was still part of the Spice Girls at that time, the band she joined at twenty, achieving worldwide success from the first single. But success sometimes comes at a cost, and Melanie would pay it with bulimia and by damaging her sporty, peppery physique. Like a premonition of what was soon to happen, "Northern Star" is an attempt to find the course, as ancient sailors did by orienting themselves with the North Star.

The title track is a melancholy ballad, with sadness lurking deep in the piece: "They buy your dreams so they can sell your soul / Is it any wonder we've lost control?". And "Goin' Down" serves to vent the anger over another relationship gone wrong: "How could I not realize you were making fun of me? / What can I do to get revenge?", and Melanie's voice is no longer the same, distorted in the studio, damaged as well.

This album retains its dual nature; it can be listened to as a collection of hits (there are at least five or six) or viewed as a personal diary where feelings, even the raw and painful ones, are laid bare without false modesty or hypocrisy. The range is broad, there's also room for looking at others, as in "If That Were Me," a song that describes the condition of the homeless with delicate yet effective strokes, and whose proceeds were donated to a homeless charity. It was the fifth single from the album: a successful album for Melanie, and an important milestone in her personal journey to find direction.