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Ok, so first off I must iterate the fact that this particular run down is in no particular order, nor is it a definitive list of the best British record labels of all time (as if such a breakdown could ever be truly quantified). It is simply a list of some personal favourites within the British...MORE>>

Pixie Lott is 18 years old and from Kent, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her, or listening to her debut single, Mama Do. She may be fresh-faced and new to the pop music scene, but years of stage school drills, an astute stylist and a sexy, soulful voice have conspired to turn her into a precociously accomplished singer, cut from the same cloth as Joss Stone or Duffy.

Pixie is an alumnus of the Italia Conti stage school, but at 14 she skipped for a day, pretending she had a dentist appointment so she could answer an ad in The Stage calling for solo female musicians. She found herself auditioning for a music industry bigshot, and it went so well that she became the subject of a fierce bidding war between rival record companies. She has been working on her debut album for around 18 months now, and her entrance onto the glitter-dusted stage of dreams – her first single release – will be made on May 11.

It’s just a shame that her opening gambit, Mama Do, is essentially a PG-13 version of Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black. Check out the retro handclaps, the rhythmic piano chords, the jazzy bass trombone

section… sound familiar?

I wouldn’t mind – some people might take sounding like Back To Black as a compliment – but the song is supposed to be about secret thrills and teenage larks. It doesn’t sound nearly fun enough to be convincing. The slow beat and treacle-thick production leech much of the energy from the song, and it’s only in the middle eight, when some of the fuzzy backing vox is taken out and only a showtune-esque brass line and Pixie’s voice remains, that the track wakes up.  

The best thing about Mama Do is Pixie’s voice, which has remarkable depth of tone and brims with emotion. This girl’s got a serious set of pipes, and what comes out is strong, bluesy and effortless. She performs the prerequisite trills and decorations with ease, but thankfully she also knows how to hold back. Mama Do’s chorus, which marries the catchy ‘oh oh oh oh’ (it sounds better than it looks on paper) refrain with frillier vocal lines asking rhetorical questions, is a masterclass in how taking it easy can be just as powerful as showing off your entire vocal range in three seconds.

Mama Do showcases Pixie’s talent well, but the sentiments it expresses are cliché. Girls and boys have been getting up to nonsense and laughing at the thought of what their parents would say if they knew since before the Dark Ages, and though Pixie does a good job of treading the line between innocent and mischievously flirty, it’s a line that has been well trod.

In short, Pixie Lott could be the next Adele or Duffy. But she needs a great song to back up her campaign, and this isn’t it.