Paloma Faith – Bad Woman Review

Teeing up her new album with tracks to champion those who have not heard this gambit before, Paloma Faith is struggling to find an angle with Bad Woman. Power pop like this comes and goes with such a frequency that these messages and wonders are dead on arrival. Others did it better elsewhere, the age-old trouble of being one step behind the best of them. Yet here it is, and while it lingers we listeners may as well try and enjoy what Faith is attempting. Her pop-soul style sounds tired here as she watches chaos unfold, despite there being no sense of urgency or fiery observation. These are the exceptionally plain experiences of pop artists struggling to keep up with the hot streaks of Dua Lipa and Jessie Ware. The Glorification of Sadness may take a pop at those who revel in the shoegaze shame, but at least it marks genuine emotion, unlike this pop shell.  

Had Free Yourself from Ware not already championed the act of selfish righteousness, then Bad Woman would probably claw at about half of this message. Flaky work from Faith, whose voice is still very much intact but appears to be without its edge or reasonably effective musicianship. Instead, there is a jaded feel to this one, a relatively light pop-orientation from the backing vocalists and production from Martin Wave. It reeks of by-the-numbers pop stylings and everything within, from its intention to its lack of lyrical spark, screams of mass-produced slop. A tremendously sad shame but it was to be expected after the ropey attempt on passable first single How You Leave a Man.  

This is the standard of soon-to-be chart-topping albums, anyway. No surprises, the safety is well and truly on and a mixture of progressive messages with the support of a major name but with no punch or individuality to them. Expression of support is different to action in conjunction with it. Bad Woman is an act of defiance for the sake of it, unlike the effortless brilliance found in That! Feels Good! from a year prior. Ware and Faith work within the same circles here, and only one works tirelessly, taking risks on new genre blends. Faith has the usually drab back-and-forth of expectation and shock outcome though the ripples of this effect are lost almost entirely to a predictable set of rises and falls from her production.  

Nothing sloppy about Bad Woman, quite the opposite. It is here the problem arises. A song strict in its intention and its hope of being this power pop ballad without the effort being present for such a label. Attitudes of perfection are cast aside rather positively on Bad Woman. Faith has all the right momentum to mount a charge for the unseen or unheard though her platform is used not for championing the everyday but for blank spots of steady-yet-redundant messages produced better elsewhere, and earlier than this offering from Faith. A paint-by-numbers equivalent to important messages of social interaction – dulled and dumbed down for a shot at appealing to as broad a range as possible. No heart, no soul, just plain pieces from an artist who once put their soul on the line. No more shall this happen; it would seem Bad Woman is, ironically, the end of that trailblazing era.