- Mon, 2011-02-14 12:56
Clare Maguire has been cropping up all over the shop as a name hotly-tipped to start playing the fame game in 2011. Fifth on this year’s ever-influential BBC Sound Of poll, the rest of the mainstream media has been quick to pick up on the young, talented singer. It didn’t all begin for Maguire as recently as it seems though; she has been the subject of significant expectation for some time now. After a major-label bidding war several years ago she signed a rumoured million-pound contract with Island Records, and subsequently retreated into the shadows, with all traces of her removed from the interweb so that the label might protect its new asset.
Now she’s ready to step forward once more with her appropriately titled debut album Light After Dark, the way for which is being prepared by her new single, Last Dance. It’s clear as soon as Maguire opens her mouth why so many labels were after her signature; her voice is rich and powerful, with a slight operatic undertone to it that makes it stand apart from the crowd that she will be looking to call her contemporaries. The song is what can only be referred to as a power ballad, with impeccably produced strings, thunderously rolling drums and a whole load of long, soaring notes. It occupies similar territory to Katy Perry’s recent hit Fireworks, but exchanges the club-oriented four-to-the-floor beat with a more classic edge, which lends it a different feel to the majority of current female-fronted pop.
Whether the mainstream is willing to accommodate music of a marginally more traditional bent remains to be seen, but if it is Maguire certainly has the talent to go a long way.
