Album Review – REBECCA FERGUSON

Album reviews by ACID
Artist: REBECCA FERGUSON
Album: Heaven
Label: RCA/Syco Music/Sony Music

WHEN the then-legal secretary Rebecca Ferguson first showed up on the television screens via the British singing competition The X Factor in 2004, her musical debut was relatively uneventful and cut short by a lack of confidence. Six years later, she went into the competition again, this time stronger,  refreshed and with guns blazing. She impressed the judges so much with her smoky, mildly gravelly voice that she became the first woman in the show’s history to be the runner-up, losing to Matt Cardle.

Shortly after, Ferguson signed with Cowell/Sony Music (why does it seem that Simon Cowell gets his claws on just anything that remotely seems to make money before anyone else does?) and Heaven is her first full-length album.

Heaven features songs Ferguson has co-written with a host of others. Fairly stylishly executed, the first praiseworthy note is that her voice, which has been described by UK’s The Telegraph as “somewhere between a less annoying Macy Grey and less squeaky Minnie Riperton”, takes true centrestage in all its soulful, heartfelt eagerness.  Frankly, I couldn’t find any Riperton in her vocals, but thought she compared more to a weaker, sandier and younger version of Aretha Franklin though perhaps with less sonorous power.

The content of her songs deal with nitty-gritty rather than gloss – of worry, unemployment lines, complicated emotional mixes and relationships that are special in all of their messed up tangles. The third track Shoulder to Shoulder, has Ferguson keening in earnestness, “So I’m gonna drag you down, whilst you drag me down / And I’m gonna shout at you, whilst you shout at me / Until we realize that real love is free, free.”

There are also more playful musical treatments, like the relaxed, semi-disco of Fairytale (Let me Live my Life This Way), and Mr Bright Eyes, whose whimsical tempo and cleanly innocent lyrics are all about pure, joyful yearning. Fighting Suspicions is a big favourite for me, with a strong melodic line with equally muscular lyrics, archly delivered with emotion and precision by her vocals.

But then the songs themselves clearly carry a weight of meaning for her, whether it’s the punchy R&B wisdom of Glitter & Gold, the fragile optimism driving the disco groove of Fairytale or the swirling melodic confusion of Shoulder to Shoulder’s gripping portrait of dysfunctional love.

Ferguson is credited on every song, most of which are co-written with Eg White, a collaborator who helped bring out the best in Adele and Duffy. Ferguson is in the same Brit-soul terrain, a retro sound made commercially viable by Amy Winehouse, but doesn’t really sound like any of them. She sounds like herself.

All in all, not a bad first album at all.