If you looked at the music business clinically, with a view to masterminding an act that would sell a million albums, Simon Fuller-style, you’d probably come up with someone exactly like Lianne La Havas: a female solo artist (naturally), young (22 is just right for PR bios), British (as current trends dictate), gorgeous (goes without saying), talented (thankfully, increasingly important in the YouTube era), and brandishing an accomplished but malleable sound, capable of charming the two most powerful groups in the music-buying universe, i.e. brainless teens and loudmouth snobs.
Actually, one of La Havas’ first singles ‘Forget’, an elaborate, backflipping jibe at an old flame, had all the hooks necessary to charm both the hard-nosed Later…With Jools Holland devotees and the mainstream radio fans who base their monthly music budget around their chosen station’s Hot 100 or Fresh 50.
Yup, this Greek-Jamaican (I forgot – add multiracial to the above list) is every inch the pop paragon, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that a record exec at Warner Bros threw in his severed index finger as part of the deal to tempt her over to the label’s roster.
Still, it feels wrong to talk about an artist as genuinely gifted as La Havas in terms of contracts, capital and market research. Possibly the strongest chink in the Londoner’s armour, and the one that adds the most heft to her case for chart stardom, is her emotional transparency. Where Adele pines, “We could have had it all…” Lianne sighs, “I’m glad that it’s just my heart that he stole/ And left my dignity alone.” Where other female stars shy away from lyrical humor (pulling funny faces in a saucy music video doesn’t count), Lianne has the last laugh with lines like, “Is it such a problem that he’s old?/ As long as he does whatever he’s told.” For all her A-list qualities, there’s something undeniably genuine about the yarns she spins, whether it’s the cheeky one about the older man (‘Age’), the angry one about the lazy songwriter (‘Forget’) or the sincere one about the guy who made her hate herself (‘Lost & Found’).
And then there’s ‘No Room For Doubt’, which might just be the first truly perfect boy/girl duet of the 21st century. Offset by her vocal polar opposite, gravel-toned ‘Oxegen’ singer Willy Mason, La Havas sounds devastatingly sweet as she croons, “Please sleep softly, leave me no room for doubt”, with Mason echoing sturdily behind her. It’s funny, really, that the loveliest moment on the whole album should be the part on this song where her voice cuts out before she can finish her line. The character La Havas creates on Is Your Love Big Enough? is not a romantic wimp – far from it – but all those ballsy declarations and knowing tuts make the occasional flash of fragility hit extra hard.
With all this boardroom jargon, I still haven’t had time to mention the voice: the silky, swooning, somersaulting star-turn of Is Your Love Big Enough? that marries the allure of Jill Scott and the emotive punch of Erykah Badu. La Havas’ breathy soprano is more developed than a 22-year-old voice has any business to be, and it can only get richer with time.
Unfortunately, La Havas’ first LP isn’t always musically cohesive; the Style Council-esque faux French feel of ‘Au Cinema’, the Soulquarian vibrations on ‘Tease Me’ and earthy acoustic spiritual, ‘Don’t Wake Me Up’ may sound fantastic, but they don’t fit together like the songs on a mammoth pop album should.
But then, Is Your Love Big Enough? isn’t really a mammoth pop album. To the Simon Fullers of the world, it’s far from the heartstring-pulling soul behemoth that’s going to topple Adele’s 21. Better to think of it then as a pretty introduction to a singer who is demure, charming, witty, ladylike, sophisticated and all the other words that are compliments when applied to say, a Casablanca-era Ingrid Bergman, but have somehow become unacceptable in the world of mainstream music. Of course, La Havas could be the artist to change all that ...