Paul MacInnes 

Josh Osho: L.i.f.e – review

He's been soundtracking ITV's football coverage, which tells you quite a bit about Josh Osho's slick pop-soul, writes Paul MacInnes
  
  


When ITV come back from the break and Adrian Chiles delivers a line about the performance of the Spanish football team, the music playing underneath is by Josh Osho. The song, Redemption Days, was first released last year, and reached 162 in the charts, but is now the lead track on an album that hopes to establish Osho as a soulful, sincere singer-songwriter. The formula is roughly Seal times Lightning Seeds, with the odd "contemporary" effect added for good measure (a DJ's scratch, a Ghostface Killah verse, acronyms for titles). The lyrics cast Osho as ideal husband material, determined yet vulnerable and focussed on helping his love realise her dreams. It's the kind of stuff you'd imagine to have been written by focus-group if it weren't for the beguiling way Osho occasionally turns a phrase – "Just when I think I'm growing stronger, the stitiching starts to fray" – or latches on to a melody. Even if the melody, as in the case of TMAIA (Take Me As I Am), is a barely tweaked rework of Bette Davis Eyes.

 

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