The last thing everyone needs at the moment is a review of the best pop star in the country right now by a middle aged white man. But here it is. Maybe I’m not the target audience, but what kind of hippy free for all is this if a grizzly old git can’t enjoy the very sexy CMAT Band.
As a fairly recent convert to Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson only last year, Crazy Mad For Me became a happy place. Some of the best pop songs for a long time, stellar lyrics, humour, darkness and brutal honesty. Any songs that talk about what a horrible person they can be when they’re horny is a bit more than heart on sleeve. It soothed even the savage beast and tempered rages.
With the singles taken from this, her third LP, she and the sexiest of bands are going stratospheric. The viral dances for ‘Take A Sexy Picture’ meant one of the biggest daytime crowds at Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage was one big line dance. Then came ‘Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’ a shoe-in contender for Single of the Year. Not many songwriters can articulate (or not) why the face of the celebratory chef at food counters in petrol stations creates such vitriol and why that actually has deeper rooted issues than wanting to rip his eyes out because he was looking at her funny.
Experience seems to be an oft used word by her during the lead up to the release. She said “On this album, I’m reckoning with my identity, and speaking to the experience of being embarrassed by your fractured relationship with your own country, so Irish seemed like the best way to do that”, in reference to the beginning of the title track ‘Euro-Country’. Considering this was recorded in New York City, she spent a period of writer’s block in Paris where a mistaken knock on the door resulted in ‘Aw Shoot ‘ and she spent formative years in Manchester, London and Portsmouth. It’s fair to say she either can’t sit still or has yet to find her home. Unless it’s always been Ireland.
All the best things in life come with a side of humour, even in the bleakest of times, and a huge slice of sarcasm can help get the message across. Suggestions are that she was going to take this record seriously. Weighty topics. Yet, if anything, the titles are more tongue in cheek, the lyrical content is more laugh out loud funny and the imagery is more luminous and neon. The blue presumably a nod to the EU flag and the UK’s departure but also a comment on growing up in Ireland and the emblem is now a shopping centre and the closing of shops and brands. There are cutting lyrics in titular single about how the outside image of the Emerald Isle is far from the reality and the corruption at the top of the tree is staining her love of her home.
‘Take A Sexy Picture’ is blatantly a comment on the disgusting bile she receives on social media about her body and appearance and she has been leaning into the flagrant disregard for those hideous people by flaunting what God gave her even more. It would be easier to say that this is because she doesn’t care about what they think, but to write a song to confront it would suggest otherwise and why wouldn’t she want to do the opposite to what they want and call them out for the ugly people they are inside. It’s also one of her biggest and best pop songs.
This is perhaps the most varied of her LPs. The natural Country inflected pop is always present, but there’s the Motorik rhythm of the aforementioned ‘Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’ and stadium size soul infused pop ‘Running/Planning’ and ‘When A Good Man Cries’.
To try and suggest she was lashing her horse to the Country bandwagon that Beyonce and Chappell Roan have been dragging around would be disingenuous to someone who has had the stallion in the stable for years now, not just when theres a few more dollars to be made by the latest trend. Plus, there’s so much more to her and she doesn’t need to resort to covers to bulk out a double LP and twenty coloured variants. If anything, there’s probably more of a Father John Misty influence with the Americana and sarcastic, witty words, on tracks like the excellent ‘Iceberg’.
It’s fairly apparent she is rapidly becoming a humongous megastar. We still seem to be fawning over the stereotypical U.S pop princess, we claim they are doing something special and yet there is one closer to home that bucks the generic, has a way with melody and word that so few of her peers can even get close too. She is the pop star we need if not the one we deserve.
