Kate Winslet 'What If'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

Star of a host of blockbuster movies, including the mighty Titanic, Brit-actress Kate Winslet showcases her vocal talents with a debut single release 'What If'.. The track is lifted from "Christmas Carol - The Movie" - a forthcoming animated version of Charles Dickens' ever-popular seasonal story.

I have to admit, I've never seen the film and I'd kind of forgotten it ever existed. I don't really know how successful it was but it did spawn this one big hit, written by Mac and Hector again. It transpires that Winslet actually has a fairly good voice (admittedly some studio technology may have been involved, but even so it's much better than many a performance I've heard from other people with access to the same). For the first minute or so it's a genuinely good, if slight, pop record.

The bad news is that Steve Mac is the producer and arranger as well as a writer, and once he's got one verse out of the way he starts to set out his stall as the sound of X-Factor. In come the clumping inappropriate programmed beats to rob the track of any life or space, and the phoney-sounding orchestral backing track. About a minute from the end he finally snatches humiliation from the jaws of defeat: not only is there a largely unnecessary key-change, there's a pause and a drum beat to make sure you notice the key change. In fact, the truncated "film version" released as the B-side of the original single is the better one for my money.

Still, Winslet herself emerges rather well from this. Not only because of her unexpectedly decent singing, nor even because she gave her royalties to charity. Better still, she didn't let knocking Dustin The Turkey off the top of the Irish chart go to her head: she's resisted the temptation to try and launch a further musical career off the back of this, when so many others would have thrown out an album of covers in time for Mother's Day.

Available on: Original Hits - The Girls [Explicit]