Happy, An Exercise In Irony?

Since I predicted last week's number one I'm gonna call it oce again with Leona's new single Happy. Not really as if the number one position in the last month and so has been a tad predictable but hey, take your victories where you can snatch them.

When you first take a gander at the title and sleeve you would be excused to think that for once she's taking the optimistic route with a more uptempo song. But no, here she is with yet another ballad. It begs the question as to why someone should bother changing tactic if they are still selling millions of records...

I am not here to argue against the absolutely amazing vocals that she exhibits on this release, you can tell that with Alexandra's debut she felt as if she had to up the ante. However as songs go this isn't as good as it could have been.

This is mainly due to the first chorus. Something that Leona should have learnt from her cover of Run is that in order to have the optimal effecrt you need to try and built the song into a cresendo so that by the finale all hairs are standing up on the back of your neck. However, in the latter half of the chorus she has already begun to bring in the backing vocals of some form of mans choir. After this, no matter how much they try to build it up it doesn't feel as if there is much further to go and as such feels to me as a rather flat ballad.

Someone really needs to tell Leona that Mariah does upbeat songs every now and then (All I Want For Christmas Is You being the obvious one) so Leona needs to try her hand at this to avoid being further pidgeon-holed as a one-trick pony. As such I recommend that people should listen to the Jason Nevins Remix that appears as the b-side, which in my opinion is a lot better than the original radio edit.

Original Verson - 6.5/10
Jason Nevins Remix - 8.0/10