Atomic Kitten were rescued from extinction and now sit pretty on the top of the charts with the world at their feet. It's a great story and one we dont hear too often. The majority of pop wannabes are swiftly dispensed with if they fail to rapidly "shift the units" but the Kittens have used their extra lives to good effect.
The main reason the Kittens sprang to the nation's attention was through the publicity surrounding ex-member Kerry's pregnancy with Bryan Westlife's child. They decided to bin her and draft in former Precious lass Jenny to inject a touch of much needed style and sophistication to proceedings. Good move. From watered down in-your-face Spice Girls clones with attitude to the slickest pop outfit on the block. Well, something like that.
But now they've arrived at a tricky juncture in their career. Its album time! After ditching the album first time round and re-recording the tracks with the 'new girl', Atomic Kitten finally release 'Right Now' which includes their two No.1 singles the million selling 'Whole Again' and the Bangles cover 'Eternal Flame' (which actually improves with age).
As a rule pop albums are inherently bad and this is no exception. Aside from the singles there's the usual combo of mid-tempo tracks to nod along to and a helping of weak ballads. Things start well enough with the full on disco 'Right Now' and the Take That-esque 'Follow Me' followed by the two massive singles. Sadly that's where the fun stops.
To compare the remainder to Stock Aiken and Waterman would be doing a disservice to the talents of the Hit Factory. The Kittens can only dream of such credibility. Its not the girls' fault as their vocals are the least of the problems. The production and overall feel of the songs is wafer thin and it sounds like a synth demo. Souless pap at it's worst.
'Tomorrow & Tonight' is pitifully awful, 'Get Real' is stuck in a bad Janet Jackson time warp, and the imitation disco of 'Turn Me On' is worse still. Thankfully the sassy 'Hippy' is a saving grace (if you manage to get that far!)
Once the ballads are wheeled out - 'You Are', 'Cradle', 'Bye Now' it's hard to fight back the tears (of laughter). Then as if to pay homepage to their brightly coloured tracksuit phase, the early singles 'See Ya' and 'I Want Your Love' are carelessly stuck on the end sounding hopelessly out of place but somehow quite appealing considering what's gone before.
