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Rating: Scattered in this musical – and international – battlefield, which can be circumscribed as pop music, there are still delightful personalities who unfortunately are not able to validly convey the echo of their productions, whether it's due to today's trend of aesthetic-visual exaggeration, or because of record companies behind them absolutely incapable of managing such talents. This is how some artists, who started with great success, top-ten hits, and skyrocketing fame, find themselves on their second studio work having to deal with a fickle and dissenting audience, thus forced to adorn the roles of meteors to be relegated into increasingly small and miserable niches.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor unfortunately is part of this lineup: a sort of charming UK version of Kylie Minogue, tending towards sobriety and rational simplicity in terms of costumes, sounds, and background scenography, Sophie started with a trio of hits (Take Me Home, Murder On The Dancefloor, Get Over You), as well as with the debut album Read My Lips back in 2002, a year when disco-dance atmospheres were already lit up with the successes of the Australian "counterpart." However, with the subsequent works, the English artist has not been able to obtain the dazzling numbers of the first album anymore, reaching the current status of indie-performer with the latest Make a Scene. Nevertheless, putting aside the mere commercial-financial analysis of her career, Ellis-Bextor has not thrown the quality of her productions into the trash, rather she has managed to free herself from the exclusivity of pop-disco of Read My Lips towards increasingly varied and exquisite achievements and towards sophisticated and refined sounds.
Trip The Light Fantastic, dated 2007, is probably the pinnacle of this unmissable "quest for heterogeneity" by the lovely Sophie: a work with contrasting hues and sounds, an authentic mix of retro electropop (with a perpetual gaze towards the eighties season), new-wave, disco-dance, melodic rock, funky, and soul. As multiple as the sound catalog drawn for the occasion is, the semblance of musical "mixed-fry" is ephemeral: twelve tracks slipping away in the simplest and most straightforward way possible, without too many auditory aberrations and disruptions, a handful of songs where the combination between Sophie's sumptuous voice and the tinted melodies work perfectly.
The album opening is entrusted to the pleasant dynamism of the first single Catch You, an uptempo electronic-rock with evergreen-retro outlines that makes way for Me And My Imagination, direct reference to the Ellis-Bextor disco-dance, queen of a 2000s Saturday night fever. Then we move on to the sensual electropop mischief of If I Can’t Dance, to the folk-military march of frivolous synths in If You Go, and to the dark house-techno winks of indispensable 80s inspiration of China Heart, enriched by a breakdown of full-bodied strings.
With Today The Sun’s On Us, a romantic slow, the chapter related to the pop-rock crafted slow/midtempo begins, a direction particularly noticeable in the evergreen soundtrack atmosphere of The Distance Between Us, in the merry doo-wop of Love Is Here, as well as in the retro-funky cabaret accompaniment of Only One. It all closes with the romantic-passionate dance elevation similar to a final love culmination of What Have We Started.
Although deprived of the grandiose accompaniments reserved for much more vaunted mainstream-pop personalities, Sophie Ellis-Bextor's third studio album astonishes (and quite a bit) for its simplicity and creative rigor, for the varied (yet not blatantly copied) inspirations and for the balance derived from the aforementioned mix of sounds, comparable to the unappreciated elegance of the "neighbor" X by Kylie Minogue, also released in 2007. For those who do not love pop (or rather do not appreciate its background aesthetic machinations), this is probably the album needed to reassess a genre far too unduly generalized and terribly inflated.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Catch You (03:19)
The morning paper
Look in the mirror
On your key chain
Or in the coffee spoon
On your shirt sleeve
In the flat-screen
In your mailbox
I'm Breathing over you
Come on baby, when will you see
That you and I were meant to be
And now I got my target on track
Baby you should know that I'm so good at that
Run to where you want, run to where you want
I am gonna find you
There aint no distance far enough
My love's gonna find you
Run to where you want, run to where you want
But may I remind you
There aint no engine fast enough
My love's gonna catch you
In your top drawer
In your cheque book
On your cellphone
By your easy-chair
In the next room
Behind the curtain
Can't escape me
I'm watching everywhere
Come on baby, when will you see
Cause you and I were meant to be
And now I got my target on track
Baby you should know that I'm so good at that
Run to where you want
Run to where you want
I am gonna find you
There ain't no distance far enough
My love's gonna find you
Run to where you want, run to where you want
but may I remind you
There aint no engine fast enough
My love's gonna catch you
Why waste your energy
No point in fighting
Let your heart surrender to your destiny
And this world's not big enough
For you to hide for long
In this game of hide and seek
There's nowhere left to run
Run to where you want, run to where you want
I am gonna find you
There ain't no distance far enough
My love's gonna find you
Run to where you want, run to where you want
but may I remind you
There ain't no engine fast enough
My love's gonna catch you
Catch You, Catch You, Catch You, catch you, catch you, catch you, catch you, catch you!
02 Me and My Imagination (03:27)
"da, da, da, da, deeee
Da, da, daaaa
We're gonna play a game
Just you and me
You never should be won
So easily
Your eyes are on the prize
I'm worth the wait
Don't need to know the end
‘cause darling
Magic stays when myth remains
I'm under your spell
Don't release me
Never give the game away
Try to keep me entertained
Baby
Don't make
It too easy
Leave something
For me and my imagination
We're a possibility
When you make it hard for me
Baby
I'm not in a hurry
Leave something
For me and my imagination
Da, da, da, da, deeee
I don't need to know
Your every trick
So keep me guessing just
A little bit
‘cause hidden in your eyes
There's mystery
I want to get inside
To where the
Magic stays and myth remains
I'm under your spell
Don't release me
Chorus
Da, da, da, da, da dot's.
Never give the game away
Try to keep me entertained
Baby
Don't make it too easy
Leave something...
Chorus
"never give the game away
Try to keep me entertained
Don't make it too easy, baby
For me and my imagination
"we're a possibility
You make it hard for me
I'm not in a hurry baby
For me and my imagination
07 If You Go (03:27)
Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Yeah
Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Yeah
Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Yeah
Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Bop-Bop Yeah
You forgot when we were strange
Guess somewhere we got caught
Now every little bird is tame
Their wings are clipped and gulled
Fear puts your heart on ice
For some other rainy day
You'll only know that you're alive
When I melt the ice away
My life, my dreams, my everything
Is all yours, babe
I’m willing to complete this act of faith
‘Cause living only happens when you wake
If you go
If you stay
Sometimes better breaking baby, in the sun
Before it's gone
If you love
If you feel
If you wonder how this heaven could be real
Then let it burn
Some might say ain’t no sun without the rain
Like I knew. I knew, yeah
Some might say nothing given, nothing gained
I guess that’s true, how about you, babe?
My life, my dreams, everything
Is all yours, baby
I’m willing to complete this act of faith
‘Cause living only happens when you wake
If you go
If you stay
Sometimes better breaking baby, in the sun
Before it's gone
If you love
If you feel
If you wonder how this heaven could be real
Then let it burn, oh
'Cause I’d like, like
To be somebody who
You take a chance on
I would take a chance on you
Everyday
Like, like to be somebody who
You take a chance on
I would take a chance on you
Everyday
I got myself a son
I take my love and run
I've got you babe
Oh, yeah
‘Cause I need somebody’s love
And half is not enough
To make me stay
I’ve got you babe
If you go
If you stay
Sometimes better breaking baby, in the sun
Before it's gone
If you love
If you feel
If you wonder how this heaven could be real
Then let it burn
If you go, if you stay
If you go, if you stay
If you go, if you stay
If you go, if you stay
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