False Smiles

Look there’s no way to avoid this, so let’s get it off our chests right from the start. However way you slice it, 16-year-old Amy Studt is going to have to spend the next few months fending off Avril Lavigne comparisons, just as Lavigne herself was rated against Alanis Morrisette and so on. But that’s pop music for you.

And pop music False Smiles most definitely is, however much you dress it up in faux teenage rebellion. With all the regular suspects in place (Simon Fuller, Cathy Denis, a sinister Scandinavian production team and even Gary Barlow), Studt has as much in common with Darius and Mickey Joe Harte as she does the alternative set.

Seen in those terms, False Smiles is yet another perfectly pleasant middle of the road pop album. Studt has an agreeable voice and a burdgeoning songwriting talent but, as with Lavigne, the problem is that there are so many hands involved with the album’s writing and production that it’s hard to work out where the Studt ends and the corporate machine begins.

To be honest though, life’s too short to get sniffy about this sort of thing. Studt’s carefully controlled visage will be all over the place before you know it and you’ll be singing along to her on the radio for the rest of the summer. Resistance is futile and we’ll just have to learn to live with it.