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Album Review: Various - Rio 2: Music From The Motion Picture

Roshan Clerke
StarStarHalf Star

Don’t Go Away is a lovely mixed-language duet between Anne Hathaway and Flávia Maia, while Beautiful Creatures is tainted slightly by the character dialogue that ruins many later tracks.

The commercialisation of Indigenous music always rides a fine line. Rio 2 takes inspiration from Brazilian genres like samba and bossa nova, throwing Western pop influences over them, the results an unsurprising mix of crossover success and tasteless imitation. Janelle Monae steals the spotlight with the album's first song, What Is Love, her gleeful ad-libs probably more animated than anything in the actual film. Don't Go Away is a lovely mixed-language duet between Anne Hathaway and Flávia Maia, while Beautiful Creatures is tainted slightly by the character dialogue that ruins many later tracks.