*** Gina G

FRESH

(Warner Brothers)

"Fresh," "I Belong to You," "Rhythm of My Life," and the big hit "Just a Little Bit" -- the speed songs of Gina G's debut CD -- boast almost too much melodic uplift. Because Gina G sings too facilely about joy and freshness and everything fun. The power of true Eurobeat, her preferred genre, is its pursuit of the perfect, the ideal love. A singer cannot render the love ideal of Eurobeat credible unless she stretches her voice far out beyond its groove -- as La Bouche's risk-taking Melanie Thornton, for example, knows to do. In speed songs, Miss G's soprano basks in its own sweetness, comfortable and thus not at all convincing. Much more effective are "Ti amo" and "Gimme Some Love," melancholy Eurodramas in which the tempo slows, the melody cries inside itself, and Miss G has to point her cuteness inward, where joys are hard to believe in -- though necessary to dream of.

-- Michael Freedberg