1999 Martine McCutcheon: Perfect Moment

Like Nick 'Wicksy' Berry before her, Martine McCutcheon graduated from the soap opera world of EastEnders to 'broaden her horizons' as a singer, and to add on some 'shit or bust' pressure to succeed, her onscreen character 'Tiffany Mitchell' left the show via a bridge burning sticky end in a fatal car accident. Or so I'm told anyway - I went cold turkey on EastEnders in 1988 and I've been clean ever since, but even with my disinterest the hype around Ms McCutcheon's new career move at the time was unavoidable, a publicity blitz that painted her rising star as a cross between Garland, Streisand and Dame Nellie Melba.

So, was the hype justified? Well it's hard to say - 'Perfect Moment' is a romantic ballad of old fashioned zinging harps, plucked and swooping strings with a measured stillness adding a hint of tension. This arrangement was a departure from the more strident 1997 original which gave singer Edyta Górniak a harder surface to emote off, which she does with a cracked abandon, but if McCutcheon does have a strong voice, then her own 'Perfect Moment' doesn't provide much opportunity for her to break out of the breathless girly mode that swamps this like a daydream. But then again, as she was going for the suave, sophisticated end of the easy listening market then maybe that's not surprising - you don't want Pat Benatar turning up at your dinner party in leathers with a bottle of Jack do you? No.

Which kind of sums up why, when it comes right down to it, 'Perfect Moment' doesn't 'do' much for me I'm afraid; it's too mannered, polite and predictable to move or resonate (give me Pat Benatar over a dinner party anyday), and when her voice does manage to break free from the gravity of mush to tremor on the high notes, I'm hearing far more of the actress behind than the singer in front (but that may be more a fault of this genre as a whole than McCutcheon's). But now I'm being too harsh so let me happily say that 'Perfect Moment' is probably the best single I've heard from a former EastEnders actor. Ok, when you consider the company she's keeping, that's not saying a great deal, but the distance between her and whatever horror would be in second place is measured in leagues rather than inches.