★☆☆☆☆
Not a lot of guile has gone into this grab of handbag, ritzy house. No doubt a decent set of AutoTune-free dance floor pipes media-schooled Jackson has on her, but the track set up verges on professional studio rental allowing access to a handful of presets, making an EDM hobby outside of her regular schedule.
The influences are glaring: first track “Pointing Fingers” nicks a Niche bassline mixed with K-Klass’ “Rhythm is a Mystery.” The less said about the cover of Whitesnake’s “Is This Love,” the better — Europe beware. There’s genuine surprise when Snoop Dogg turns up on the title track, before you remember he’d probably turn up to the opening of an envelope nowadays (and yes, he spells his name out). “Fun” is lyrically puny and dives headfirst into a vat of cheese, even by today’s vacuous dance standards, and “Take Me Out” reeks of Geri Halliwell’s “Ride It” with its disco switch-up, while the downturn “You Get In Your Own Way” sounds like an arty attempt at Madonna’s “The Power of Goodbye”. “You Give Me Everything” completes another twofer of J-Lo’s “Waiting for Tonight” and Angel City’s “Love Me Right”.
Concepts of independence and girls just wanna have fun, clash with the need to avoid being alone. There’s a lot of indisputable crossover, daytime radio and TV potential (and a lot made of Jackson being a forty-something mother of four), but everything is painfully, at times excruciatingly generic.
File under: Geri Halliwell, Cascada, Jenna Maroney