The verdict on new releases from Sugababes and J-Lo.

Sugababes - Freedom

I’ve got a feeling that the Sugababes have gone mad. Not acid-house mad, or experimenting with a donk mad. The wearing socks on your hand and performing pantomimes to mice mad. The fact they still call themselves Sugababes despite perpetually revolving the door of New Look’s catalogue models to contribute to an ever changing line-up is obviously crackers.
The fact that "Freedom" has been released, despite sounding like the sweaty ghost of 2008’s rave-pop failure sleepwalking into a crayon chorus, is bargain bin barmy. Or maybe I’m wrong, and this dirtying, three minutes of head-in-bucket, ear bullying, clichéd chunk of pop-pie leftovers is actually a profound piece of satire intended to highlight the declining value of modern chart music.

[1/5]

Jack Murray

J-Lo - Papi

There’s something very Club Med about Jennifer Lopez’s latest output. It provides the perfect musical bridge at the package holiday dance-party between the last chords of a tinny panpipes Macarena and the hardcore Eurodance starting; that awkward interlude when your parents are still awake but you’re slightly soused.
Ever the canny business woman, J-Lo has tapped into this with "Papi". “Dance for your Papi!” she insists over and over to a pulsating synth, the implication surely being that then he’ll go to bed. Over-production waters down the obscure Latin origins of "Papi" like a cheap Margherita, while Lopez’s ever-flat voice captures aptly the sort of self-loathing and shame you feel when with dancing with your own papi, or indeed, any immediate family members. Save the comparatively banging "On the Floor" for when they’re in bed.

[2/5]

Catherine Sylvain