In country pop crossover land there is the might of Shania Twain. Huge songs, meticulous production, perfect singing, great cosmetics and lustrous hair.
Rayne gets close to Twain in the rhyming dictionary and the press release but musically speaking she doesn’t quite catch the bridal bouquet. Australian born Fiona Shaw can dance, look well, do crystals, cuddle tigers and put pictures of Native American people on her glossy CD artwork. But.
Where Shania Twain gets a lot of money and grudging critical recognition despite her US of A too good to be trueness Rayne falls just short of pop perfection and loses any claim on authentically contemporary credibility in the process.
Maybe the world is cruel when ambition is so strong, and achievement is so maddeningly not quite there. Artists with less of a voice, less beauty, less of a work ethic and less of a vision can get by with an album or two and a footnote in the chronicles. But no amount of gloss can smooth the way for someone like Rayne who plunders the superficial indicators of global music with such thinly disguised insincerity.
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That pout, that huge mixing desk, those cadres of pro session players and producer Steve Bush are just not right. The songs are mostly written by Rayne with Marco Dalle Luche. But they don’t have the weight or penetration that would have them break into the clear space of public (and Paul Gambaccini) notice. They plead, but they don’t convince. It's the classic imitation of sanitised MOR popular music that professional musicians make when they're paid to do it. Clever. Nearly right. But even Terry Wogan wouldn't mistake it for the real thing.
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