As pop soap operas go, Destiny's Child are beyond Aaron Spelling. Their career in the last year alone makes the designer high rollin' big hair-action of Dynasty look a bit mundane, what with shape-shiftin' line-ups, the ensuing hassles and legal actions and the Diana Ross Complex rumours, - paying in the form of a global chart-topper. Hear'Say are barely Family Affairs in comparison.
'Survivor' is the point where things should get really interesting, and on the whole it does, there's enough here to illuminate pop and keep the laydeez in fur pants for quite sometime to come, but at times the quantity threatens to overshadow the quality.
Kicking off with the still immense hands-aloftin' 'Independent Women Part 1', followed by the current chart-mugging semi-hysterical title track, the real adventure kicks off with the bonkers 'Bootylicious', which uses a Stevie Nicks sample as its crumb-base, topped with liquidised NASA funk and our heroines going on about being 'ready for jelly'.
As for the frankly mental 'Nasty Girl', well, crikey. It revisits the 'Bills Bills Bills' template but this time throwing in references to Salt n Pepa's 'Push It' and - you'd better sit down here - Baltimora's 'Tarzan Boy'. 'Fancy' is fairly bog standard R'n'B in comparison, 'Apple Pie A La Mode' is essentially a sasssome boogie noodle about chocolate, and 'Sexy Daddy' claps around with sublime harmonies, although could've done with a bit more of a tune.
The cracks start appearing as the ballads schmaltz in with the none-more-Celine evil that is 'My Heart Still Beats' (written by Michael Bolton's pseudonym - yikes!), and ending with the identikit soul-baybee-smooch of 'Brown Eyes'. The real gem here though is a version of the Bee Gee written 'Emotion', which has 'future single' written all over it.
From then on it tails off into nondescriptness with 'Dangerously In Love' and 'The Story Of Beauty' before really taking the piss with a 'Gospel Medley' and the self-congratulatory 'Outro' wherein Beyonce, Michelle and Kelly thank each other for being them and a member of Destiny's Child. As a climax to an hour of empowerment, future and foxiness in general, it's a bit pony.
At 18 tracks and a whopping 72 minutes long, 'Survivor' could've done with a bit of pruning, but as a self-produced testament to Destiny's powers and the sound of 2001 in general, it's a masterpiece.
