Album Reviews |

Little Mix

Related Genres - Pop & Dance

DNA 5 ( 2012 )
Wings / DNA / Change Your Life / Always Be Together / Stereo Soldier / Pretend It’s OK / Turn Your Face / We Are Who We Are / How Ya Doin’? (Ft. Slick Rick) / Red Planet (Ft. T-Boz) / Going Nowhere / Madhouse

Formed for the eighth series of X-Factor, Little Mix became the first group to actually win the competition. 'DNA' is modern Pop and R&B and put together with the help of many co-writers and producers - the usual route for such acts breaking out of TV talent-shows. Perhaps the most surprising feat this album has achieved is a top five placing on the US billboard charts, becoming the highest charting album by an all-girl group in the US since 2006. Front-loading of albums is a particularly pet hate of mine - the first three songs on the album are also the first three singles taken from the album, in release date order. I blame Michael Jackson, he started this kind of thing. Little Mix and the like even releasing albums unless you are going to do it properly seems fairly pointless, to me. Musically, we have loud drum beats, nods to house music and harmony vocals, harmonies wrapped up in modern R&B dance production techniques. With so many composers and producers on board, it's perhaps inevitable the result is something of a mess, with only the girls differing individual vocal styles and accents, when allowed to come through, marking Little Mix out as anything remotely different. Mostly, Little Mix remind me of an updated All Saints, with nods to TLC and inevitably, The Spice Girls and Girls Aloud somewhere along the way.

Relentless modern dance-pop is the order of the day, with 'Turn Your Face' half-way through surprising by being a Piano accompanied ballad - shorn of the girls trademark harmonies, this attempt at being Alicia Keys falls flat. Well, as each singer can't hold a light to the likes of Keys, which is why when auditioning as solo acts initially for The X-Factor, they all fell at the boot-camp stage. The Spanish guitar that rides throughout 'Going Nowhere' is probably a nod towards Nelly Furtado, 'Stereo Soldier' sounds good enough to be a single, at least as good as the first three singles, at any rate. The loud drum-beats seem the only notable music identity the girls have, and they should probably develop this sound across later releases. 'Wings' and 'DNA' are the highlights, but then you would have guessed that already just by listening to the radio and without even hearing the parent album. Guessed? Well, such is the way of the digital musical world, an act like 'Little Mix' are never going to be about having an album career, rather just about scoring hit songs and perhaps, conquering the lucrative US market.

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