This week, Dionne Bromfield, who is only 15, launches her second album. At least her godmother Amy Winehouse can advise her on the pitfalls of fame ... or maybe not.
You could not call the album substantial. After all, how much emotional depth can a 15-year-old pour into a song? Bromfield’s voice is extremely good — too good, in fact. A little like when Joss Stone emerged from Devon at the same age to do a very good impersonation of a 50-year-old black woman from New Orleans, you wonder where this is all coming from. Bromfield sounds like one of Motown’s 1960s stable of stars, and however much she may have a genuine love for this kind of music, you sense the hidden hand of marketing men hovering over the album.
For the casual fan looking for undemanding, polished music, this probably doesn’t matter. But for those of us who want to feel that an album reflects a singer’s reality, adult contemporary soul songs sound strange when they come from a 15-year-old. “When the tears roll down my face, only you can make it better,” she sings with the sultry sophistication of Minnie Ripperton on Too Soon to Call It Love, to which you want to ask: really? Shouldn’t she be hassling her mum for a new phone, rather than eulogising a boy who smells of Lynx deodorant and old socks?
Bromfield’s sound seems like a conduit for other people’s ideas. You hope that if she’s still doing this at the ripe old age of 20, she’ll have found a voice that is more her own.