RACHEL STEVENS – “Sweet Dreams (My L.A. Ex)”
Check out the parentheses for how seriously Rachel S Club is taking the whole grown-up market thing. Not only has she been going out with someone, not only was that someone from exotically venal Los Angeles, but they have now split up! A jet-setting lifestyle, a troubled past, a hint of availability in three words – her people are pros, alright.
This is a good single, though much too aloof to be a great one. What won me over wasn’t Stevens’s slick singing or the serviceable tune but the rhythm, which is slapdash and bouncily agreeable where everything else seems terribly considered. All pop is terribly considered, I know, but this single feels sometimes like it took its personality from a Cosmo test.