Not That Kind

On first listen, the debut album from New York-born Anastacia comes across as fairly innocuous stuff. Not That Kind is comprised of twelve ditties ranging across rock, R ‘n’ B and dance styles.

Delve deeper though, and a scarier picture emerges. Anastacia, straight from the stage-school of cool, is an artiste more worthy of an Oscar than a Grammy. Every track masquerades as a hipper than thou passport to credibility, while at base revelling in the kind of cliché-ridden schmaltz of which Stock Aitken and Waterman have in the past been so unjustifiably proud.

On the title track guitars wah-wah along in a weak homage to Macy Gray-style soul. ‘Cowboys and Kisses’ borrows its chord sequence straight from The Verve’s ‘Lucky Man’, while on ‘Who’s Gonna Stop the Rain’ and ‘Black Roses’ Anastacia comes on like Mariah Carey minus the helium.

No surprise then, that Tommy Mottola is invoked rapturously on the credits nor that the list of collaborators involved here is longer than a chief constable’s arm.

Lyrically, Michael Jackson has nothing on Anastacia and her songwriters-for-hire. On ‘Who’s Gonna Stop the Rain’ she sings “Each day another boy and girl/Sets foot into this world/One reaches out to touch the sky/One never learns to fly/Where is it written in the stone/That any child should walk alone/On their own.” Quite.

Anastacia is just one more puppet on the same old set of strings. Avoid like the plague.