It often seems, to my ears at least, that commercial success will be denied to any artist who dares to do anything other than use as much digital processing as their budget allows on their journey to success. Ellen Benediktson, a Swedish pop singer and potential style icon, duly heats up her processor with her EP “WID4L”.
To her credit, all these five songs have a more than fair chance of commercial success and she clearly has the knack for selecting songs that sound like they should hit the charts with the kind of vengeance that leads to success. Her influences are perhaps deliberately obvious - Britney in “Jealousy” and Taylor Swift in “I’m That Girl” – yet it is difficult to imagine doing anything other than joining, if involuntarily, in on the chorus and, when she does take off in her own direction such as on the title track, she shows herself perfectly capable of making a distinctly memorable example of premium electro pop.
“WID4L” demonstrates that Ellen Benediktson has both the confidence and the songs to chase the crown of commercial success and, while it might well be a digital world that we live in, even the machine cannot disguise or hide actual talent.