“I had no control over how I was being edited. And it was as if only the footage in which she came across poorly – inarticulate or frustrated – was the footage that got used.
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She hadn’t yet learned how to express herself, she says. Watch Cher Lloyd’s audition on The X Factor in 2010 “I wanted so desperately to be heard for who I was, and didn’t understand why now a million people had something to say about me.” “I’m not going to lie at the time I was very hormonal, a naughty teenager,” says Lloyd now. From 2010 she was portrayed, obliquely on The X Factor and explicitly by the media, either as a stroppy diva and desperate copycat of her mentor Cheryl Cole, or as a fragile little girl, struggling with the spotlight. Lloyd is now 26, with a young family and a third album, finally, on the way – yet, still, she is being called on to explain her teenage self. Would you go up to a 16-year-old girl in the street and say: ‘I don’t know you, but you look disgusting, with your disgusting eyebrows’? That’s what people did to me.” “But truly, if you can imagine the shit that I got, just for my eyebrows. We are better now.” The steel returns to her voice. “Me and my eyebrows have gone on a journey – a transformation. Perched on the sofa of her PR’s home in north London, swimming in an outsized orange hoodie and Doc Martens with jeans, Lloyd seems younger than she did then, softer – defences not exactly down, but softened by a disarming humour. Neither the judges nor the public could believe the brass of this Cher from Malvern, Worcestershire, who appeared convincingly older than her 16 years, “in a pair of homemade ripped jeans, hair up in a crazy bun, crazy eyebrows”, as she remembers it now. Well, it’s a bit of a dog’s dinner if we’re being honest, but there’s also enough good stuff on ‘Sticks + Stones’ to suggest Cher could have a bright future ahead of her as a ‘recording artist’, as Cowell himself would have it.Back then, Simon Cowell’s eyes lit up at her potential: a promising singer, with an unapologetic presence that made for unmissable reality TV.
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This is all pouty sadness like Beyoncé at her primped and preppiest, and makes us think Cher could make a genuinely useful pop star if her peeps concentrate on giving her quality songs to work with, rather than randomly flitting quirkfests packed full of ‘cheeky’ (read: annoying) asides. Makes us wanna listen to Katy B to remind ourselves UK pop can keep it classy when it wants to. Listen, it’s five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and I’m hungover to shit, what do you want me to tell you here? That this song sounds like a car door being repeatedly slammed over my head? Oh, alright then.Ĥth-placed X Factor contestant + grime kids prattling on about Simon Cowell + chainsaw dubstep wobble = new low point in cultural history, right? Well, not quite, but this is pretty clueless anyway – exactly the kind of focus-group play that makes people grumble about stuff like this.
That’s the second time she’s laughed at her own jokes on this record: bad form, Cher!įucking hell, she’s making with the dubstep now. Although we do catch her laughing at her own boast that her flow’s “ hot - like steam from a coffee pot”. A solidly-crafted little tune from ‘Whip My Hair’ mastermind Jukebox, nicely spruced with cut-up strings and a very believable vocal from Ms Lloyd. Somewhere off in the distance, the boy at school who got ribbed for wearing ‘Adidas’ five-stripe is rejoicing. “ He got a lean in the gangsta stance / he needs to rock the sickest brands”. “ No playa boi can win my love, it’s sweetness that I’m thinking of”, admonishes Cher. The track is plagued by a litany of vocal FX lifted straight from TOTP circa 1989. Does this mean I’m part of the problem or the solution?Ī scandalous lift from Neneh Cherry’s eternally awesome ‘Buffalo Stance’ (yeah! We’re updating urrrrban gal-pop Y2K11 stylee!) here, but this is wickedy wickedy wack and no mistakin’.
I wouldn’t know about this type of thing, ‘cos Christina Aguilera told me I am beautiful. It’s OK, if rather perfunctory, stuff: “ It’s beautiful people who get whatever they want / and it’s beautiful people like you who suck the life right out of my heart”. Having already proved her zen-like mastery of R&B, bashment and Pharell-style minimalism, this time Cher turns her hand to maudlin indie balladry with the help of American indie stars Carolina Liar (me neither).