No matter what the past decade has done to the pop landscape, Des'ree has continued to produce one album of platitudinous, comfort-blanket soul after another. You can't fault her for consistency.
You can, however, fault her for making terrible records such as Dream Soldier. The Londoner's lyrical inspiration seems to derive solely from sanitary towel adverts and those pocket-sized self-help books that cluster around book shop cash tills: be yourself, follow your dreams, don't give up the fight, cheer up it might never happen, and so on.
The lazy doggerel of It's Okay is typical: "A cup of tea just might do the trick/The milk's gone off, by now you're feeling sick."
Elsewhere, the message of can-do optimism becomes bullyingly oppressive, so when Des'ree berates the weak-willed for "always thinking up some excuse" on Doesn't Matter, she sounds like Norman Tebbit. The charm that characterised early hits like You Gotta Be has soured with age. Dream Soldier is smug, overbearing and inane.
