Elton John's most interesting discovery since he formed Rocket Records is Kiki Dee, a singer with the potential to do for British pop-rock what Olivia Newton-John has done for pop-country. With her second album, she has earned commercial success, but artistic success remains a matter of potential.

Kiki's principal strength is not her voice but her enthusiasm. She is so spirited that she sometimes reminds one of a post-adolescent Suzi Quatro. Like Suzi Q., whenever talent fails, Dee trusts that energy to get her through. Unlike Quatro, however, Kiki has some vocal talent to go with her lack of inhibition.

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Kiki is really only a rocker by inclination. A certain pushiness characterizes everything she attempts. But most of the material on this album is closer, both in arrangement and composition, to the neo-MOR love songs of Newton-John, Anne Murray and even Helen Reddy. She is occasionally masterful at this sort of thing, as the success of the title cut (which is in the Top Ten as I write) proves. When she attempts something more adventurous -- such as her original "Water" and "Little Frozen One" -- she manages to sound vaguely like Joni Mitchell, but without Mitchell's incisive vision.

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Rather than intelligent and sensitive lyrics as "Little frozen one, I know you could be fine/ But nobody told you you still got so much time" seem sententious and pretentious. In this, she is more reminiscent of Bernie Taupin, Elton's lyricist, than Mitchell.

She fares better with the songs of Bias Boshell, the band's keyboard player. Boshell wrote five of the album's nine tunes, but he tends to be long-winded. (Even "I've Got the Music in Me" clocks in at five minutes here.) Still, if his songs are in some sense overblown, they are lyrically and melodically simple and straightforward, which is a great advantage to Dee, who is at her best when she is crudest.

The group, which is fine onstage (perhaps having benefited from a long tour with Elton) is little more than competent here. On "I've Got the Music," however, they shine. Guitarist Jo Partridge, in particular, is shown to good effect.

If Kiki Dee were capable of restricting her attempts to reasonable lengths and topics without straying into the sentiment and bathos which prevail too often on this album, she would make an extraordinarily pleasant addition popular singing. Her inclination, I think, is to cut loose and rock. But it is unfortunate that that instinct is expressed so infrequently on I've Got the Music in Me.

- Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 1/16/75.