Posted: Sunday 27th July 2008

Cyndi Lauper has been away from the music scene since the 2005 release The Body Acoustic. Bring Ya To The Brink is Lauper’s thirteenth studio album and marks a brand new style for her. Working with producers including Kleerup, Basement Jaxx and Axwell, Lauper has reinvented herself as a dance diva and is determined to reclaim her position at the top of the charts.

Bring Ya To The Brink is musically a big departure for Lauper but every song is packed with her trademark attitude and sass. Opening track High and Mighty, produced by Scumfrog, sets the album’s tone with its pulsating electronic beat and Lauper’s raspy vocals. From that point on you need to get out your glitterball, put on your dancing shoes and crack open a bottle of wine. Bring Ya To The Brink doesn’t relent and over its duration Lauper experiments with minimal electro-beats on Echo, hip-hop beats on Lyfe and good old-fashioned disco on Give It Up.

Lauper has recorded some real gems with this album. Current single Into The Nightlife could easily become a new anthem for Lauper with its soaring chorus, crunching electro-synths and euphoric instrumentation. Other highlights include the Kleerup collaboration Lay Me Down, a song that proves that Robyn’s With Every Heartbeat was no fluke, and the gay-anthem-in-the-making Same Ol’ Story. The latter sounds like a lost gem from the 70s and you can see the partygoers in Studio 54 dancing their feet off.

Bring Ya To The Brink isn’t without its flaws. Rocking Chair, recorded with Basement Jaxx, is pretty annoying. The instrumentation is classic Basement Jaxx but Lauper’s vocals fall onto the wrong side of irritating. She squeaks and croaks her way through the verses and sadly it just doesn’t really work.

Lauper has really hit the mark with Bring Ya To The Brink. This is potentially the best pop album released by any female artist so far in 2008. Forget all the hype over Madonna’s latest record (which we thought was rubbish) and check out Cyndi Lauper’s as it’s much better. At 55 years of age no one expected Lauper to record such an incredible album but knowing how unpredictable she is, we shouldn’t really be that surprised. Hopefully the music-buying public will take notice and give Lauper the success she deserves.