MEL C feat. LEFT-EYE – “Never Be The Same Again”
Now any fool knows that these days it’s coolest for musicians to be eclectic and cross genre boundaries and all that, so how come when a big bad pop star like Mel C tries everyone just laughs and says she’s slumming it? Personally I don’t think electicism’s so cool – in fact a lot of the time I think it’s lazier than just sticking to something and doing it well – so when Mel C came out with her tuff rockin’ poses and her acoustic power-ballad turns I felt entirely authorised to chuckle my socks off, but the last laugh’s on Mel: here she is doing R & B and it’s terrific. “Never Be The Same…” is languid and ghostly: Mel sounds underwater and numbed-out, spooked by what’s happening to her, that strange drift from friendship to something else. Left-Eye adds cred, but really nothing else – her interjections are annoying and the rap just destroys the slow, swimmy momentum. But even so it’s the best SoloSpice cut yet.