Growing Pains Review

There is nothing wrong with this record, which is the problem. Just Fine is a genuinely great single, an unembarrassed disco lift with a vocal that sounds like she is smiling through the whole take, and it earns its place in the live set forever. Work That is a good pep talk. Feel Like a Woman and Grown Woman make the case for maturity as a subject. But the production is safe in a way her nineties work never was, mid tempo and glossy and interchangeable between tracks, and the writing keeps circling the same conclusions about survival and self worth without finding new angles into them.

She sings superbly throughout, better technically than she ever did at twenty three, and technique is not what made her matter. An accomplished album from an artist who had stopped taking risks and had not yet realised how much that cost her.