Zein Simone - The Change

by Mike Haydock

London songstress wants a major label deal, but she may be disappointed

"Simone trips, stumbles and falls flat on her face when it comes to lyrical delivery"

As promising as Zein Simone’s name is - suggesting a combination of exoticism and soulful heritage - she can’t live up to it. At least not yet. This debut EP is more a showcase than anything else, and Simone will succeed in courting major labels with her rich, simple vocal patterns and diversity.

Title track ‘The Change’ is a spiky, moody track that rumbles along before scraping the sky - it displays a dab of the drama of a Tori Amos or Kate Bush song - while there are poppy R‘n’B excursions and occasional outbursts of rock here too. But Simone trips, stumbles and falls flat on her face when it comes to lyrical delivery. The message is one of love turning sour, and the emotional torment of rejection. It’s an exhausted theme, infused into recycled song structures, rendering Simone’s work thus far over-simplistic and boring.

“You don’t come home to me no more / Your life takes place beyond the door,” she sings on ‘Behind Closed Doors’ - just one example of a lyric that tries to convey misery and desperation but fails. Rather than evoking sympathy, it’s hard to really give a shit.

And while there’s honesty here, Simone comes across as weak - an emotional wreck - rather than a hardy modern woman who takes it on the chin and holds her head high. As she admits on the same song, she’s powerless, and therefore unaware that we live in a post-feminist world. The voice is there, ready to break out. Now she needs some songs with bite.

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