Album of the week
If they gave out Grammys for Best Song with a Soap Opera Theme, the single "Heard It All Before," from this impressive debut effort, would win hands-down. With a slurred, slightly off-key voice that recalls Mary J. Blige, Sunshine Anderson lets fly with a vivid, bluesy lament about bad men happening to good women.
Anchored by a swampy wah-wah guitar and steered by Anderson's no-nonsense finger-wagging, the song puts cads on notice: Fool around and she'll shop around—for another man. On a funky Memphis-style grits-and-gravy workout like "Lunch or Dinner" and the hard-driving "He Said, She Said," a pitch-perfect dialogue between battling lovers, Anderson dishes up the sort of old-school soul that even philandering men will groove to. As well those no-good so-and-sos should: Anderson (who is managed by neosoul songstress Macy Gray) sounds fiercely righteous when she is wronged.
Bottom Line: The sun shines on a rising soul star
