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Saturday 17 Oct 2009

In the booklet that accompanies Alexandra Burke’s debut album “Overcome”, she gushes “thank you Simon Cowell for allowing me to be myself and believing in me”, winner of last years series X factor, or, ‘The most popular talent show on earth’, Miss Burke had a huge mountain of hype and expectation to scale with her first full length album, and I am pleased to announce she succeeds admirably, dancing, grooving and (occasionally) warbling along the way.

From the opening seconds of first track ‘Bad Boys’ you realise this is a real change from the usual schmaltzy, snooze inducing ballads that are usually churned out by X factor winners. Burke isn’t afraid to re-write the rulebook and produce an album chock full of up-tempo, arms in the air, feet on the floor stompers. Of course there’s a couple of ballads in there, but they feature post-Umbrella synth beats as opposed to the slow tapping of piano keys which pretty much make up the whole of Leona’s debut. 

Highlights include Dumb, a bass heavy look-what-you-could-have-had anthem, All Night Long and Broken Heels are quick slices of trance that wouldn’t look out of place on a Madonna record and the stunning duet Good Morning, Good Night is a delight. There are few duds in the mix, particularly during the final third of the album, but this doesn’t detract too much from the buckets of ‘fun’ that constantly flow from the music.

Burke has been hailed as the “British Beyonce” and although there’s not a track on here that comes close to the genius of Single Ladies‘, it certainly shows promise. It comes as a huge relief then that Cowell did indeed let Burke “be herself”. To bring another Beyonce comparison into this, Overcome is far from perfect although it is much better than the queen Bee’s debut album, and look how far she’s come….

7/10

Overcome is released in the UK on 19th October

(Image: @alexandraburkeofficial.com)

Alex Evans contributing for Showbiz-i…..find Alex on Twitter at www.twitter.com/oolix