Shura - What’s It Gonna Be?

‘What’s It Gonna Be?’ starts out life with a peppy little melody line that sounds a bit like it belongs on The Sims. It’s fitting beginning to a track that decisively picks out the pop banger career path, types in the ‘motherlode’ code, and jets off straight off to a living room rammed with domesticated dinosaurs, skateboards, and well-travelled, sci-fi loving koalas.

Racing forward with beats crispier than Gary Lineker on a mad one at a Janet Jackson gig, ‘What’s It Gonna Be?’ is packed to the nines with the all-out gutsy punchiness of ‘Indecision,’ and the same to-the-point simplicity of ‘Touch’. It doesn’t just get to the point sonically, either. Shura’s vocals are pushed right forward and bold in the mix, for one, and she doesn’t mess about with mushy poetry for a second, either. “I don’t wanna give you up, I don’t want to let you love somebody else but me,” goes that breakneck chorus, and both no-frills and plain-talking, it’s sort of victorious and powerless at the same time. Properly decent pop music is transformative, turning heartbreak into something joyful and indulgent to be roared about at the top of your lungs. If you’ve been unceremoniously dumped lately, this one should do the trick.

Shura’s at her best when she gets out of the misty soup bowl, and throws herself into a shameless embrace of cheese, and with her latest, previous experiments in drifting humidity have been well and truly tossed to one side. Instead, this song should come equipped with a whack-you-across-the-chops-welly-factor warning. It’s bloomin’ good fun, basically.