Album: Alexandra Burke, Heartbreak on Hold (RCA / SYCO MUSIC)

 

Andy Gill
Thursday 31 May 2012 16:44 BST
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Alexandra Burke claims that, as executive producer of her follow-up to Overcome, she's ensured that Heartbreak on Hold is a much more personal album.

Well, up to a point, perhaps: the songs (only two of which are actually written by her) cover the well-trodden terrain of heartbreak and hope, while the plethora of producers renders the music blandly generic, another round of Guetta-style synth-stomps and incessant keyboard vamps, largely interchangeable with those on Rihanna's and Madonna's last albums. Burke's best represented on "Between the Sheets", shifting comfortably from intimate confidante to exultant pleader, but when she strips the arrangement back to the revealing nakedness of "What Money Can't Buy", the results aren't all that flattering.

Download: Elephant; This Love Will Survive; Between the Sheets

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