Even if you haven’t heard of Slow Moving Millie, aka Amelia Warner, there’s a 99 per cent chance that if you reside in the UK and have access to television, you’ll have heard her sing. The 29-year-old’s cover version of The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” features on the most talked-about, eye-misting Christmas advert of the year: John Lewis’s 30-second commercial of a little boy who can’t wait for his present (wait for it!) to his parents to be given.
Millie’s slowed-down, plaintive and beautifully sung cover version is in a big way responsible for the ad’s success. And it can’t hurt that the artist has accrued herself a ready-made online fanbase as said advert has elicited nearly three and a half million YouTube views in a month.
To cash in on this, or as her publicity material says, “to prelude” the release of her debut album which won’t be out until next summer (and is currently being recorded with the help of producer Charlie Hugall), Island Records is releasing an album of Amelia singing “favourite songs from her youth”, Renditions. Her talent and stunning vocals are undeniable. But sadly, listening to her singing Banarama’s “Love In the First Degree” and the Thompson Twins’ “Hold Me Now”, the slowed-down, plaintive and overtly emotive schtick starts to wear a little thin. After giving the same treatment to the Tears for Fears classic “Head Over Heels” (which only served to remind one how good the original is) and “The Power of Love”, I was starting to throw things at the CD player.
Nevertheless, “Feels Like Heaven” is another good reworking of a well-loved classic, and “Beasts” (which featured on a Virgin Media advert) is another catchy demonstration of her skill. Like Feist before her, Amelia clearly has the potential to turn exposure via commercials into a successful vehicle for her talent and I look forward to hearing her album when it is released next summer. But Renditions feels like a hastily put-together means of profiting from recent hype.
Watch "Beasts" by Slow Moving Millie
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