Sophie Ellis-Bextor, "China Heart" (2007)

Almost every song on Sophie Ellis-Bextor's Trip The Light Fantastic achieves a seamless marriage between lyrical subject matter on the one hand, and melody and arrangement on the other. "Catch You" -- which is essentially a rewrite of Blondie's "One Way Or Another" -- logically features aggressively crunchy guitars for its tale of stalking, while "New York City Lights" encourages us to run away with Sophie to a city that the song represents via a 70s disco beat. "Love Is Here" bathes its slightly banal Carpenterish sentiments in a 70s AM radio sound (no surprise that's one of two tracks cowritten with The Feeling's Dan Gillespie Sells). Meanwhile, the terrific Xenomania-produced "If You Go" has something akin to a schaffel rhythm that perfectly fits the story of indecision, one full of back-and-forth alternatives ("If you go, if you stay...").

The seamlessness of the fits between lyric and music is, in itself, neither a good nor bad thing, and I point it out only to indicate one of the ways track eleven, "China Heart," stands apart from the rest of the album. This tale of a cold, aloof girl whose heart is emotionally fragile, like porcelain ("My china heart, a work of art/So cold to those who play/I can easily break") is, of course, the perfect song for someone with Sophie's ice-queen persona. But the song is not some sort of frosty electro-ballad, which would have been the obvious way to go. Instead, the story is set to one of the most gloriously breakneck beats of the entire record, bathed in pulsating, quivering synthlines straight out of the Moroder playbook. Specifically the 80s chapter, in which Giorgio decides to maniacally speed up his arpeggios, as he did when producing Berlin, or when creating the backing track of "Love Kills" for Freddie Mercury to wail over.


Furthermore, "China Heart" includes the theremin effect. There are ten seconds of pulsations at the start, a drum crash, and then a distorted ghostly voice tells us, and I approximate, "eeeooh eeeooh eeeoooh." The backing banshees return for the chorus, where they rise up with ooohs and aaaahs while handclaps swirl around them. Added to the Moroder rhythms, "China Heart" becomes pure Gothic disco, and the effect is almost self-mocking: far from drowning in self-pity about her easily breakable organ, "China Heart" sees Sophie ironically-yet-sincerely presenting herself as a kind of freakshow. Welcome to the CIRCUS, ladies and gentlemen! STEEEP right up! Come SEE the bearded lady, the Elephant Man, and also She Who Has THE CHINA HEART!

(This better be a single, if only because I think I've just written the awesome video treatment.) (Also, this will give us an extended version of the song, with a longer middle eight where the drums go COMPLETELY MENTAL, like little fists beating on the inside of your head.)