Michael Cragg 

Steps: Tears on the Dancefloor review – unashamed sugar-rush

(Steps Music LLP)
  
  

Steps, left to right: Claire Richards, Ian ‘H’ Watkins, Faye Tozer, Latchford-Evans and Lisa Scott-Lee.
Steps, left to right: Claire Richards, Ian ‘H’ Watkins, Faye Tozer, Latchford-Evans and Lisa Scott-Lee. Photograph: PR Company Handout

There’s something almost moving about returning 90s pop mainstays Steps’ refusal to change. Their fifth album sounds exactly how you remember (or imagine) a Steps album to sound; second-tier Abba choruses (not an insult); heavily signposted, Eurovision-grade key changes, and a sense of fun. Lead single Scared of the Dark is fabulously dramatic; You Make Me Whole is high-energy dance-pop JLo would kill for, while the brilliant Happy encases a devastating breakup in laminated Europop. Occasionally it’s a little too flimsy (I Will Love Again), or a bit too on the nose (No More Tears on the Dancefloor), but overall it’s a nostalgia-coated sugar-rush.

Watch the video for Scared of the Dark by Steps.
 

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