“What makes you itch?” are the disconcerting first words on this album, but the voice intoning them doesn’t belong to Cheryl (who dropped her surname when she was still Cole). Surprisingly, her fourth LP has been front-loaded with a lecture by philosopher Alan Watts, whose questions she attempts to answer as the record goes along. That’s where this album diverges from her others: having discovered Watts during a long hiatus, she’s developed a screw-you pepperiness that leaps out at the listener. The actual radio-ready chorus to I Don’t Care, a jaunty bit of Casio-pop, is: “It feels so fucking good to say I swear/ that I don’t care.” And on the breezy, 80s discoesque song It’s About Time, she announces: “All the time I was so scared of flying … I’m not running any more.” More power to her, but there’s a frustrating lack of distinctiveness to the music that is exacerbated by generic, Auto-Tuned vocals. Exceptions are Goodbye Means Hello, an intriguingly arid co-write by ex-Girls Aloud Nicola Roberts, and the hit Crazy Stupid Love, which has the best horn motif since Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love.

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