Jukebox

Over the last few years, former reality TV stars JLS have grown to become one of Britain’s biggest boybands. Cannily spotting a gap in an often oversaturated market, everyone’s favourite X-Factor runners-up (sorry Eoghan Quigg!) have well and truly conquered the European pop charts, thanks to their radio friendly mix of R&B and dance music, and they’ve thus asserted themselves as potential heirs to Take That’s throne. Which is all good – but Jukebox is their third record and, somewhat disappointingly, it offers yet another sanitised serving of tweenage diet pop. True there’s a bigger production budget (which even stretched as far as paying towards having the delightful hit-maker Dev huff and puff her way through album highlight ‘She Makes Me Wanna’) and better songwriting on show. While the likes of the robotic ‘Killed By Love’ and the far rtoo obvious ‘Do You Feel What I Feel?’ may appease the masses in the short term, ultimately the record shows up their musical short-comings and suggests that they really need a Gary Barlow-type figure if they’re going to last the distance.