Kate Ryan, let's call a truce!

Don't fuck with Kate Ryan! I learned that lesson the hard way when I referenced Belgium's gift to pop music in my Adya post and was consequently flooded with irate emails telling me to sit down and shut the hell up. Are you bitches really gonna do me like that? Who else in the Southern Hemisphere devoted an entire ten minutes to reviewing the diva's iconic collection of French covers and then spent a small fortune importing it from Europe? My hard earned cash helped pay for Kate's new 'soccer mum' hairstyle! To prove, once and for all, that I have the Belgian Madonna's back, I thought I'd write a post about her new smash. Despite the damage the cover is doing to my eyesight.

Kate deserves a lot of credit for reviving her career with 2008's excellent "Free", which performed well across Europe and established the 30-year-old (*cough*) as one of the continent's leading dance divas. Hell, she even had the honour of recording not one but two duets with Spain's legendary Soraya! Expectations are understandably sky high then for her 5th studio album. So, it's unfortunate that "LoveLife" is an underwhelming experience. Before you pull out your poison pens, let me explain. Kate's last few singles ("Voyage Voyage", "Ella, elle l'a" and "Évidemment" etc) were of such a high standard, that anything less than amazing was going to be a letdown. Don't get me wrong, "LoveLife" is far from awful - in fact, I rather like the cheerfully inane lyrics and Eurotrash production - but it sounds like a reject from 2006's "Alive" and that's not good enough for a global star of this calibre.

On the bright side, I'm sure there's better material on the album and "LoveLife" will, no doubt, be another smash in her key markets of Belgium and Poland. Maybe Kate could collaborate with Kat DeLuna on her next single? She also hangs out in Brussels and has plenty of time on her hands. But I digress. The best thing about the return of Ms Ryan is the classy, big-budget video extravaganza (below), which finds the evergreen beauty walking the catwalk as a supermodel. Prepare to get hard!