Cher Lloyd - Sticks and Stones

Thanks to Twitter the art of criticism has taken a lot of the wind out of my sails. Why wait for a review when you can just check your name trending and see 3,000 death threats? Sadly, the venom and vitriol directed towards the world's rich and famous has come to be more covered than the poised judgments and critical reviews. There therefore came a requirement, a self-defense mechanism installed into the lyrics of the popstars, to brush aside such anger: and that's how the birth of 'haters' came about.

It's so convenient that music can now come with its own review. "You're a hater, just let it go" has become the catchphrase of a generation of clueless, tasteless, mindless and worthless pre-teens who've reached past the age where Barbie dolls are a go-to form of entertainment but are still aeons before any sense of self-respect. Lloyd, the fourth-placed contestant on last year's The X Factor, seems to have stuck in this awkward phase. Engaging with the trolls on Twitter far too often, Lloyd has become a poster-figure for the victimised - but I'm willing to bet that all of you reading this have received some form of hate-message at some time, and at the end of the day if you're going to dismiss Dannii Minogue's opinion you deserve it.


Of course there's always the option to "let it go" and totally ignore her music, but in doing so you'd be required to never enter the premises of a shop, restaurant, café, workplace or club that may, on a whim, play it. As tempting as the life of a hipster is, it's an expensive one, and one I can't afford, so let's just stick the knife in and get this over with. Sticks and Stones begins aptly with 'Grow Up', where Lloyd boasts "We're doing stuff and we don't ever have to tell our mums" over a tune a little bit similar to that new Toys'R'Us advert (a nice coincidence). Angry grunts on 'Want U Back' make it a league above the majority of other tracks given that it's being upfront about its gimmicks, and a strong chorus helps.

Second single 'With Ur Love' has a frustratingly catchy vocal hook (the title) and features a bafflingly-relevant (why?) Mike Posner to boost its street cred, but even at the heighty age of 21 it's lost on me. Easily the year's most angrily-greeted single, 'Swagger Jagger' then kicks in with its nursery rhyme (Oh my Darling Clementine) tune and angry wasp-sting synths, truly the council estate's answer to the Black Eyed Peas. She thankfully pins up the swag for 'Beautiful People' which at least demonstrates she appears to have some tolerable and, dare I say, pretty elements to her voice - and throwing on the unknown Carolina Liar helps reaffirm its palatability - but the tune reminds me a lot of Alesha Dixon's To Love Again, which is a bit of a shame.

In a brutal assault on the English language, Lloyd then fumes about the antics of those 'Playa Boi's with the wit of a year 3 playground pupil (literally using the line 'liar, on fire'). A fairly inoffensive tune then comes on 'Superhero', with Lloyd employing Rihanna-style vocal twangs for the chorus, and it's pretty decent. 'Over the Moon' starts much on the same wavelength with a nostalgic tune, but then gets put through the dubstep meatgrinder and becomes a series of references to her rise to fame (which, let's face it, was a hell of a lot easier than most), going so far as to reference Simon Cowell before using the line "I'm feeling tall, so tall like the Eiffel tower".


The introduction of dubstep wasn't really going to endear me, so 'Dub on the Track' can basically go on and do whatever it does that teenagers find so fascinating about this whole wubwubwub-WEEEEEEEEE genre. Final track 'End Up Here' is another self-referential chunk of autotuned chipmunk vocals, boring Facebook-update romantics and bland melodies.

So there. I'm a hater. Let it go.

Rating: 1/10
Highlights: Want U Back, Beautiful People, Superhero
Avoid: Swagger Jagger, Dub on the Track, Playa Boi, With ur Love, Over The Moon

Artwork Watch: How The Little Mermaid might have turned out had Disney been outbid for the legal rights by a paraletic Kat Von D.
For fans of: Destroying culture and Socratic society, piece by piece, with increasingly illiterate and self-aware talent-vacuums hellbent on addressing their own haters before they've been addressed themselves, bleeding away at the tabloid press and social media with non-stories and tantrums, with all the contained dignity of a fanny fart.