A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for MusicRiot on the Natalie Duncan album “Devil in Me”.  Before the piece was published, I had a few hard looks at one sentence which I thought might be seen as a bit harsh, particularly in the context of a very positive review, but I decided to go with it anyway; I must have been having a bit of a Lynne Truss moment.

This weekend one of Natalie’s supporters sent some feedback to the website in the form of a very polite and well-argued case defending the grammatical usage which I objected to.  After a very civilised exchange of emails, I’m happy to accept that the way the line was written was the result of an artistic decision and not a grammatical error.  Call it poetic licence if you like, but that’s the way Natalie Duncan wanted the line to sound and I’m not going to criticise that.  In the all-time list of grammatical clunkers in pop music, this wouldn’t even merit a mention.  How about “Live and Let Die” (thanks for pointing out that one Andy) and “Real Gone Kid”?  And Ricky Ross used to be a teacher as well.

I have to say that I’ve taken a couple of really strong positive messages from this episode.  It’s fantastic that there are people reading MusicRiot who feel so passionately about an artist’s music that they are willing to defend it in this way.  More importantly, I’m really pleased that two people can still have a respectful and intelligent debate about a fairly emotive issue and achieve some kind of resolution.

We try to make sure that everything published on MusicRiot is accurate, but any review is, inevitably, subjective and will reflect the reviewer’s opinions and prejudices to some extent.  If you don’t agree with something you see on the site, let us know why; we’re always open to discussion.  If you strongly agree with something, let us know about that as well, because we all like to have our egos stroked occasionally as well.

Anyway, the bottom line is that “Devil in Me” is still one of the best albums released this year and you should all be listening to it.