Gwen Stefani – Wind It Up / 2006 Interscope / 1 Track / http://www.gwenstefani.com / http://www.interscope.com / Reviewed 16 December 2006

Gwef Stefani and Fergie are encroaching on one sound, as this track (“Wind It Up”) and “Fergalicious” have a lot in common, especially the chorus hook that the two insert into the track. However, Stefani’s track has a little more in the way of interesting arrangements stuck into the space of the track than Fergie’s track. Still, there are a few things present during “Wind It Up” that just do not seem to work. This includes the very sixties sounding yodeling that starts up the track and fits in to random segments of the track, as well as the eighties, synth-led back drop that sounds like a re-tooling of the music from “Press Your Luck”. Still, the track has charted in a big way in a number of nations, without anything too terribly off-putting from Stefani. It is interesting to hear slightly different approaches to pop music, and just think about it; it’s better than the slow, sappy songs of Pink (which seem to come out about once every two months, by my calculations). It will be interesting to see how the rest of “The Sweet Escape” works its way around this one track; if “Wind It Up” is par for the course or an outlier in terms of topics and genres broached.

Top Track: Wind It Up (there IS only one track on this CD)

Rating: 5.0/10

[JMcQ]