No-one seems to agree with me about Shayne being A Good Thing, so I’m going to prove it. I came up with a theory last night and already it has been proven true. While listening to the album The Anthem by Swedish Idol contestant and generally amazing popstar Darin, I realised that it would make an absolutely perfect album for Shayne. It’s pop in an r’n’b style – very similar to *N Sync, with Darin alternatively sounding like Justin and JC, and I can totally imagine Shayne singing any of the songs on it. They would fit his voice and the style would place him exactly where he needs to be in the British pop market, while also being rather brilliant. The number of ace songs Darin has released (2 albums this year!) shows that there is plenty of this style of music available and being a UK act signed to Sony BMG I’m sure Shayne can afford the best of them.
Listening again to Darin on the bus into town this morning and thinking about Swedish songwriters’ success in Britain, I suddenly remembered that Evergreen was written by the Swedish songwriting team, Jorgen Elofsson, David Krueger and Per Magnusson, who are also to thank or blame for hits from Britney Spears, Westlife and the Backstreet Boys. This inspired me to rush into HMV and grab a copy of That’s My Goal, which (don’t worry, I didn’t buy it – it was £3.99!) I opened to find that the writers were exactly the same – Elofsson, Krueger and Magnusson! In fact, the only non-Swedish thing on the song is Shayne’s voice! So he’s worked with some Swedes – so what? So a lot actually! Not only does this mean that my excitement (mocked by still annoyed Maria fans) about the possibility of Shayne working with Swedish people was absolutely warranted – it’s happened already! And this also proves my Darin theory above correct, because on The Anthem is a song called Coming True, written by…guess who? Elofsson, Krueger and Magnusson! I’m even more of a psychic genius than I already thought!
And this isn’t all. I have also noticed parallels between Shayne and some of the best-loved female popstars in current UK pop. First is Cheryl Tweedy – her dodgy (to put it nicely) background has been well-documented, she has even been charged for assault, and still she is probably the most popular member of Girls Aloud, certainly the best-known and the one who is always appearing in the gossip pages with her footballer boyfriend. Shayne’s background is far worse than Cheryl’s, and as all avid X Factor viewers will have noticed, his girlfriend is hardly the epitome of youth and beauty, so I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to persuade him to date a footballer! He’s a “good Northern lad” with a rags-to-riches story – you couldn’t make it up.
The second parallel is with Rachel Stevens. This may seem random, but let me explain. Rachel is known for being very pretty but not having much of a personality – she seems lovely but she’s a bit boring. This may not make for the most exciting interviews, but she makes a fantastic popstar because she is a clean slate – utterly malleable. Great pop songwriters such as Richard X, Cathy Dennis and Vacuum write pop songs and she has a fanbase ready to buy them. Although Rachel’s recent releases haven’t been anywhere near as successful as they deserve to be, it’s a better financial option for the songs to be given to her where they will certainly sell fairly well, rather than to a new singer who will need a lot of promotion and even then may just not go down well with the public, as so many pop acts recently haven’t. Shayne is also good-looking, young enough at 21 to last several albums and, like Rachel, there’s nothing particularly distinctive about his personality and in pop music it’s always better to have no personality than an unlikeable one. Shayne has the potential to be the perfect outlet for all of the male pop songs being written with nowhere to go because there is no British male pop at the moment.
I honestly can’t think of any route Shayne could conceivably take and not be ace. If there is one, I wish someone would point it out so I can stop making a fool of myself to stick up for him. The worst that could happen is that he releases a whole album of songs like That’s My Goal, and that will never happen because they need to be saved for Idol winners from other countries! That basically rules out sub-par ballads, and he’s never shown an interest in swing music so I reckon we’re safe from that one. Any other pop sub-genre, there are plenty of good songs around. His management are completely incapable of their jobs if they don’t make a huge popstar out of Shayne. On the other hand, he does have many similarities to Kavana…