Love in song for many is a hope that there will be some reaction to a new metaphor. There are easier ways of bringing that feeling to life than heard on Taste, but credit to Sophie Ellis-Bextor for once more finding a few moments of wisdom in the dangerous pop waters. Perimenopop sounds like a rare moment, where an artist can tackle their personal life with a positive, head-on attitude, but also offer those same relaxed and expected commentaries. It’s a fine line Ellis-Bextor walks, but her consistency speaks for itself across her discography. From Read My Lips to now, the experimental side of Ellis-Bextor’s music has always been its strongest draw. Taste has a slower tempo, a recognisable instrumental touch, but the lyrical choices are, at times, inspired. It’s an expected result for these lyrics, but there are signs of brilliance to be found. Little flashes of smart pop songwriting.
Recipes for love and a desire to uncover the secret ingredients are what Ellis-Bextor brings out here. Hooked not on sugar or caffeine, but on the mixture which brings an unexplainable desire. It’s all about finding a route to explaining love for someone without expressing it with obvious words. Synonyms, metaphors, and longing are all the crucial elements of this heightened songwriting. Only in rare cases, as was found with I Love You from Fontaines D.C., is the clarity of the message an advantage for the artist. Arctic Monkeys avoid the word entirely, while Bob Dylan has a clarity of expression to his work, which has kept him on stage in various instrumental forms for decades. Ellis-Bextor is aiming for that short and sweet spot of pop stylishness. A sub-three-minute song where the selling point is the catchiness. But that feels tertiary when there are some very solid lyrics to be found throughout.
Taste gives in all too easily to the straightforward and somewhat underwhelming chorus, but such is the point of chart-friendly music. Ellis-Bextor has some exceptional writing preceding and following those chorus breaks. It makes all the difference; it means Taste is a song which cannot outstay its welcome because it’s more a fleeting moment than an experience. It does get dangerously close to sounding like pop filler, the type of song which would play over the end credits of an ITV game show, but the context of the song will prevent that from happening. It’s a song Ellis-Bextor needed to get out of her system. Sweetness and stylishness have affected other singles from Perimenopop, like the sweeter side of life on Dolce Vita. More a rhyming hook than a food fixation again, but there’s an unavoidable sweetness which starts to feel a tad weak.
Give it some time, and Taste will drift out of your mind. It’s a song which starts with strong, suggestive comments about recipes and their uniqueness, but it drifts into muddled pop expectations. A transitional song, a track which serves as a break between heavier material. Listeners can only hope that is the case for this one, with Perimenopop a truly mixed bag of best-ever showcases from Ellis-Bextor as a writer and pop sensation, but also an example of how rapidly the charts can change. She can still offer a pop trip worth attending, as has been the case for some time with Ellis-Bextor. Taste is solid work, a short but solid showcase of her continued draw as a star with depths to her work. Few can say they offer the same. Even less offer better.
