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Miss Black America

Talk Hard

Label: Integrity Records Release Date: 03/06/2002

-gen- by Gen Williams June 7th, 2002

I could tear this to pieces if I wanted to. It's not devoid of faults, and if the mood took me, and I really thought about it, I could rip it to shreds. But the crucial thing about this single is, I really don't want to. It's likeable. It makes me groove. It's naïvely optimistic, full of the "I can do fucking anything, me" hopeful promise of youth - the kind that you perhaps thought abandoned you long ago, only then this swirly, sexy, innocent but sincere song comes along, and you realise there's still a little left. Yeah, you could pull the foundations out from under it, and berate it sternly for being naïve, you could make much of the fact that Seymour Glass instructs us to "talk hard" and follows it directly with the inspirational line "sha-la-la-la" - but come on... it's scraping the barrel a bit isn't it?? Because overriding this is the kind of fuck-everything-let's-dance melody that makes your chest threaten to burst inconveniently, compressed into 3 and a half minutes. It's not rocket science, but unlike a lot of the worthy, pretentious and frankly unnecessary shite that we're peddled, dishonestly huddling under the banner of "art", it's fucking joyous. It triggers irrepressible grins, and it reminds me why I like Miss Black America. Cos they're good, innit.

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