It cannot have been an accident that Rowetta has kept a low profile since losing the X-Factor contest to the strangely unlikeable Steve Brookstein. Rather wisely she has kept her powder dry for a year and has timed her re-emergence to coincide with this year’s contest, by which time Brookstein has been, flopped, gone and been dropped by his record company. Rowetta is probably best remembered as the woman with the huge personality and even bigger voice. If you were expecting an album of big, belting ballads then you won’t be disappointed. The former Happy Monday's backing singer unquestionably has a big, powerful, soulful voice and producer Ian Levine has built this album around her vocal performance.
Pitching herself somewhere between the throatiness of Cher and the sheer volume of Patti Labelle, Rowetta belts her way through thirteen cover songs and three original tracks. The track listing is redolent of the weekly song selection of the talent show that brought her here: a bit of this, a bit of that, never straying too far from the diva / belter box. This album could not be more middle-of-the-road if it had white lines painted on it.
The album begins worryingly with the cheesiest Sammy Davis Jr. number, ‘Hello Detroit’, its big band setting suggesting dreams of headlining the Sands in Las Vegas. There is a pull of bygone eras that runs through this debut album: from the Motown choruses of ‘Thunder and Lightning’ to the ultra lounge showboating of Etta James’ ‘Just A Little Bit’ (which Rowetta interprets almost as a female Tom Jones), there is a feeling that if only Rowetta had been born earlier, her career choices would have been more obvious.
At times, the repertoire is far too obvious. ‘The Look of Love’ may be a classic song, but Rowetta’s very standard interpretation takes the album dangerously close to classy karaoke. The sensitivity and yearning of legendary chanteuse Dusty Springfield is painfully absent. Similarly, could there have been a more predictable choice for the big voiced singer than ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story? All meaning and thought behind the song is sacrificed in favour of sheer volume. The result is horrible to listen to with Rowetta’s voice resembling a freshly sharpened hacksaw. There is a fine and interesting vocal tone in there, but it only shines when she connects to real feeling.
This is not to say that Rowetta has no singing talent. The beautiful ‘It Should Have Been Me’ is soulful, focussed and compact. Just as you cannot drive a car in fifth gear all day, the vocal performance works best when it is nuanced, rather than relentlessly forcing it out.
The right balance of restraint and careful, controlled unleashing of the power is struck in ‘If Ever I would Leave You’ from the musical Camelot. Here her voice soars as perfectly à la Streisand.
Perhaps the standout track of the album comes from a rather surprising source. ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’, by Oasis, is delivered effortlessly as a modern classic – it is unexpected and Rowetta redefines the emotion of the song on her own terms. It would make an excellent choice for a single.
Aside from her strong voice, Rowetta’s vivacious, wild and energetic personality fixed the singer in our collective memory. Her producers try to reflect this by harnessing Rowetta to a series of foot-to-the-floor 70s disco numbers. Whilst ‘And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going’ maybe a tad over insistent, ‘The Greatest Performance of My Life’ is disco diva heaven: camp, tasteless, insanely over the top and would give Gloria Gaynor a run for her money.
If there were any doubt at whom Rowetta is aiming this album, she stakes her gay credentials by finishing the album with ‘Over The Rainbow’. It poses the dilemma for Rowetta and her future. She can interpret old, familiar songs well, but by opting for such immortalised standards, she will never make them her own.
The album Rowetta is an acceptable starting point but she needs the courage to make a leap away from her safe X-Factor zone.
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