By Dennis Asiimwe
Sheebah’s music gets significantly more scrutiny lately. This is not too surprising – she recently deserted Jeff Kiwanuka’s stable, and eff turned her career around remarkably.
One thing Jeff is significantly effective at is selecting material for his artistes. It is an under looked aspect of his managerial style, something I find odd – he has a musicality approach to artiste management and the music industry here seems to ignore this.
It showed when he was handling the Goodlyfe Crew (they will refute this, of course) and it showed when he took on Sheebah.
Now that she is involved in some sort of pre-concert ‘battle’ with Cindy, well, we look a little closer at her material when she drops something new.
Only Girl doesn’t have the same melodic resonance that some of her earlier material did, which is something of a pity because it’s got a banging beat. The melody is bland though, with about as much personality as a blank sheet of paper.
It may explain why the video went all out, with Sheebah showing off her best bits in a bid to rope in some views (which worked). I am always somewhat suspicious of songs that drop a video almost reflexively. Her singing is also a little um… well, here’s what Jeff’s management also helped with – it hid her flaws, pretty well. Only Girl simply doesn’t.
The song is somewhat bold in the way it lets the world see Sheebah without makeup, and without the concealer of a carefully curated song, the cracks are rather visible.
In her defence, Sheebah tends to position herself as an entertainer so this revelation is not such a damning one. At least we get to watch her wriggle suggestively in the video for the song – this is arguably something that makes the whole mess worth it.
