Leona Lewis - 'Better In Time'
Sport Relief is, musically, an odd charity phenomenon in the sense that its related singles are generally really quite good and audibly have very little to do with the whole endeavour. Possibly I'm basing this a little too much on the triumph of Rachel Stevens' 'Some Girls' but even so, I've looked up the rest and none of them are completely excreable, which as far as charity singles go is an exceptional run.
This, Leona Lewis' sort-of-second single (assuming we just forget the immediately-post-X-Factor song) is actually vaguely relevant to the whole charity business, in terms of it's one of those inspirational "things will turn out ok" songs, although there's some heavy lashings of self-loathing somewhere in the middle that rock the boat enough to be slightly confusing, but I suppose better that than a weak cover version.
Even so, having run a mile through a muddy field a fair number of times, I'm not sure this would necessarily keep the adrenaline up enough to stop my lungs putting up quite a lot of protest but maybe it's more for the dramatic post-run heroic thoughts.
The crux of the song, really, is not entirely fitting anything. The instrumental parts are very Christmas-number-one (in the world before X-Factor, ironically...) and the lyrics aren't far off that, except that it's March and despite 'Bleeding Love' having reigned the charts for nearly two millenia, attempting to reach right the way through to December from this point might be a little overambitious, even for Leona.
The tune's quite nice, fairly hummable without ever actually going anywhere and despite the floaty, Mariah-esque qualities of Leona's vocals, it never goes completely mental in the throat-breakdancing department.
People are going to write rude things in the comments about this sentence but the best you can say for the song is that, like Leona, it's very pretty and seems extremely nice in a generational-gap-transcending manner but doesn't actually do anything.
Which is alright for this single, it's a charity release and the aim there is to reach the biggest demographic possible so there's nothing wrong with playing it safe but then My Chemical Romance can manage to rock grandads and under-tens and everything in between so it doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
Ultimately, the song isn't bad, it's for a good cause, it's just not great either and there are other ways to endorse Sport Relief without having to necessarily go through this single.
Download: Out now
CD Released: March 10th
(Hazel Robinson)
Comments
hey u ok ?
im a great fan of yours and watched you perform on dancing on ice last night.
9/3/08
write back 2 me as soon as you can x
Hazel, you weren't on Dancing On Ice, were you?!
Leona is a phenominal artist nd better in time is a catchy song which is very good! Leona performin love on dancing on ice last sunday night was a brilliant performance!! Has 2 make number1!!!