Muzu
Lena idolises Keith Richard, likes listening to Irish folk music and Public Enemy and doesn't want to be your "stereotypical black female singer"... 'Gotta Get It Right' is her first Top 30 hit. From CD/tape/LP Lyrically Yours.As it turned out, the word "first" was a little overoptimistic, as this proved to be her only Top 40 appearance, though her record label (U2-affiliated Polygram imprint Mother) did at least release an album in 1994, though it seems to have ended up being called Visions rather than the title in this note. Anyway, her claims to atypicality (if that's a word) seem like protesting a little too much, but this is a pretty decent female-fronted soul track of the sort that record companies seemed only too keen to release around this time, even if the general public were slightly less keen to buy them: it's of a piece with moderately-sized hits by Carleen Anderson, Shara Nelson et al, none of whom became household names even if they should have.
It's a type of music that leaves me in a bit of a quandry: I often like it but keep feeling that I should love it and thus fall to unfairly harsh judgement. 'Gotta Get It Right' takes us nowhere we haven't been before, save for the reference to God in the chorus, but it's a very likeable number with a bit of a social conscience and over the few times I've listened to it for this post I've rather grown to like it. It hasn't left me desperate to hear more from her though, which may have been part of the problem for her career. I was curious enough to check whether she was still around though, and apparently she is.
Available on: Girls
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