Album review: Shura gets the ball rolling with Nothing’s Real

Former Manchester City player turned pop star Shura makes a promising debut with an album, based on a relationship and its break-up, that is ingrained with vulnerability and pain.

Album cover image of Nothing's Real by Shura. Courtesy Polydor / Interscope

Nothing’s Real

Shura

Polydor

Three stars

In another reality, you would have been reading about Shura in the sports pages, under her real name, Alexandra Denton. Once a promising women’s youth-team footballer with the Abu Dhabi-owned English club Manchester City, she swapped matches for melodies when she decided to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time musician.

At first glance, it seems the switch might prove artistically ill-advised: the opening gambits of this debut album are flyaway synthpop, with a somewhat troubling lack of substance. The title track and What's It Gonna Be? apply plenty of broad sentiments and open-ended lyrics that could have emanated from the mouth of almost any vacuous pop hopeful.

Just when you begin to think about clicking the stop button, however, Shura draws you back in with a double-whammy: Touch and Kidz 'n' Stuff. Respectively based on a real relationship and its break-up, they are ingrained with vulnerability and relatable pain.

The latter song’s repeated question, “How can I not be everything that you need?”, is among the most deso­late pop-chorus lines in recent memory – a trick that Canadian contemporaries Tegan and Sara also managed this year.

From there, she app­ears to go through logical emotional stages. What Happened to Us? demonstrates acceptance, while querying her own maturity, with the chorus line: "I was never ready for your love / No, I'm no child, but I don't feel grown up."

Make It Up is a hopeful olive branch, theorising that perhaps something can be salvaged after all. And then there are a few tentative steps into her post-­relationship world. Most potent is 2Shy, a sweet, sensi­tive ditty about being scared to tell a potential new flame that they "could be more than friends", while White Light has her "stepping out of the dark" with the eponymous fresh illumination of her life – although the mid-tempo song itself is less memorable than its lyrical significance.

Though not included on the album, it's also worth tracking down the alternate version of Touch online, featuring veteran American rapper Talib Kweli.

It adds an extra viewpoint to the subject matter and gives a glimpse of what Shura might be capable of in the future. From her point of view, you hope that she’s luckier in love between now and then – although whether happiness is conducive to the development of her initial promise is another matter altogether.