Pixie Lott, Roundhouse, London
There is no denying that Pixie Lott is a consummate pop star. She smiles! She sings! She waves! She has nice hair! But in such a competitive field, a pop star needs something altogether more important to succeed: good songs. And for Pixie Lott, tonight it becomes evident that these are severely lacking.
She has sold 500,000 copies of her debut album, Turn it Up, over a million singles and even has No 1s, MTV awards and a hat trick of Brit nominations under her glittery belt. You'd think that there would be more on offer than this formulaic, bland soul-lite.
She bounds on stage like a cheerleader to perform the album title track, before announcing, "I'm so excited, this will be the longest set I've ever played!" This should be interesting.
We're then treated to a bunch of album tracks that range from the derivative ("The Way the World Works") to the inexcusable ("Here We Go Again").
She introduces "Nothing Compares" as "a bit of an emotional one", and proceeds to sing the song on her knees, face scrunched up, pulling her fist towards her. It has all the emotion of a break-up scene in Hollyoaks.
A rather ill-advised medley takes place halfway through, where Pixie decides she wants to sing us some songs from the charts that she likes dancing to. Great. Her attempt at rapping on Tinie Tempah's "Pass Out" makes up for the rest of the show (I laughed throughout). She then goes straight into Rihanna's "Rude Boy", which the crowd loves and which gets by far the biggest reaction of the night. That has to hurt.
There is no denying she has a great voice, which she showcases on "Cry Me Out" and "My Love" and she's so enthusiastic and smiley, you can almost see why much of the crowd seem to idolise her. There's just no soul, no substance. People deserve better, don't they?
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