Rachel Platten - Wildfire: Pop songs built to withstand a wrecking ball

Most unusually for a US pop act, Rachel Platten’s debut album for a major label is released on January 1st, so much for the quiet seasonal period.

Not that Platten is a total unknown – in early 2015, her single Fight Song took the viral route to mainstream success via infectious, some might say empowering pop in the vein of Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift.

This said, a good pop song is just that, and Wildfire (Platten's third studio album; her debut proper, Trust in Me, came out in 2003) is full of them.

Recent single, Stand by You, and album tracks such as Lone Ranger, Congratulations, Speechless and Superman, are bound by the laws of pop song logic (we predict your air-pumping fists will get tired by song six, Better Place), but they're so well constructed only a hungover Santa Claus could gripe.

[ rachelplatten.com ]