Wrong Soundtrack

Pixie Lott was eighteen, English, blonde, tall, genuinely talented, and had more straightforward sex appeal than basically anyone in pop at the time. She had every ingredient to make something properly good—something in the vein of Robyn, Lykke Li, or Little Boots. Smarter than the mainstream, sharper than the obvious. She had the tools. And then she just… didn’t.

Watch the video for Boys And Girls on mute and it’s genuinely something. Kate Moss–adjacent models, men doing cool things with disco balls, a location that looks like the best basement club you never got into—and Pixie Lott herself looking absolutely devastating throughout. On mute this is one of the sexiest pop videos of the year. She looks unreal. I’m not being subtle about this.

Then you turn the sound on. What you get is the most competent, inoffensive, bloodless pop song imaginable—nothing technically wrong with it, nothing right about it either, and it has zero relationship with the visual world the video just built. The album Turn It Up offers no improvement; it’s the same polished beige all the way through. The move is obvious: watch it on mute, put on La Roux, and try not to think about what this could have been.