Marie Serneholt, "I Love Making Love In The Morning" (2006)

I'm eleven, and Sheena Easton seems like the greatest pop star ever. I walk around the house shrieking out "9 To 5 (Morning Train)" at the top of my lungs. "Night time is the right time, we make love," I crow. "That is his and my time, we take off!" Probably around the time of my nineteenth rendition of the song, my sister gets completely fed up. Turning to me, she sneeringly demands, with all the weight of being five years older: "Do you even know what 'making love' means?" Well, sure. Technically. Even at that tender age. But I hadn't really made the connection that that's what Sheena was saying. Surely she didn't...but...eh?...oh. Gross. To my sister's great satisfaction, I was completely mortified into changing my tune.

"I love making love in the morning!" There is much less shame now in me walking around belting out such a sentiment. (Untrue as it may be. I'm more of a nightime lover, baby.) This is especially because Marie, the former A*Teen, sings the song with a kind of pure innocence, and you barely notice the more sexual references ("I feel you deep within," ahem). The old-fashioned production -- typical of a lot of the tracks on the album -- helps in this regard: the string arrangement recalls somewhat The Love Unlimited Orchestra's "Love Theme," while the "la la las" in the background come across as weirdly asexual, perhaps like something from one of Kylie's 50s-influenced records from her more USO days, or even better, Olivia Newton-John. "I can't help myself! I love making love in the morning! Let the sunshine in!" Marie might as well be declaring what she's having for breakfast. "I love chocolate milk! And some cheerios!"

Marie's whole album, Enjoy The Ride, is really quite disposably fantastic pop. If there is indeed, as Into The Groove cheekily implies, a Celebrity Death Match between "girls from successful Scandinavian pop acts with 'Mari' in their name[s]," then I'm definitely voting for Marie Serneholt, although this is not the place to express my bewilderment at why Marit Larsen, whom I find totally boring, is getting so much love. (Oops. Just did.) Marie's record starts with quite a punch: there's the title track, which is underpinned by a hilariously apt horse-galloping beat that mutates into a faux drum-and-bass rhythm; a surprisingly unkitschy use of the "Good, The Bad, And The Ugly" motif, continuing the Western theme, in "Wasted Love"; the earwormy "That's The Way My Heart Goes" single, of course, and the equally catchy "I Need A House." The middle of the record is totally 90s pop: aside from "I Love...", we also get the Britneyesque "The Boy I Used To Know," which has a Brother Beyond-cy title and glorious shouty backing vocals straight out of an S Club 7 track (specifically, this one). There's also the so-straightfaced-that-it's-almost-not-cheesy "Calling All Detectives," which takes a metaphor and extends it to death, a la Rachel Stevens' "Negotiate With Love": "Calling all detectives, calling FBI! You can say what you want, the evidence never lies. Calling all detectives, calling CSI! You can say what you want, the evidence never lies....You do the crime, you gotta do the time. Case closed!" And the slushy closing track, "Oxygen," develops the whole you-are-the-thing-that-makes-me-grasp-for-air trope better, much as it pains me to say this, than Alexis Strum's clumsy "It Could Be You." I'll be sick of it next week, but for now this is a fab pop album.