Perhaps La Roux doesn’t directly influence the swinging pendulum of trends, but Jackson’s keen ear and stubborn refusal to do anything but what she sets out to do means that her work certainly predates them. If the eponymous debut was an edgy slice of 80s retro-futurism before Taylor Swift or Carly Rae Jepsen even had the twinkle of an overly-quantised synth in their eyes, Trouble in Paradise predicted the wave of tropical pop that started in 2015 and unfortunately, still hasn’t ended. Minimal compositions dealing with steel drums and airless percussion, tropical ambitions with angsty undercurrents, make pretty much the bulk of chart music to this day. Then there’s “Get Lucky”-gate. Savvy music listeners noticed that the chord progression in “Tropical Chancer” had been previously used in the ubiquitous 2013 Daft Punk hit “Get Lucky” and accused Jackson of, to put it lightly, being overly-influenced by the track. Let’s overlook that it’s a very common chord progression; Nile Rodgers of Chic, who wrote and played guitar on the song, visited Jackson in the studio in early 2013, when most of the songs on Trouble were well-finished. Not saying anything but, if anyone was influenced by anyone… The only thing that could be added to improve Trouble in Paradise would be a bridge or some kind of outro to the kind of spare verse-chorus-verse-chorus-abrupt end of “Tropical Chancer”, something the band fixed with an extended jam at the end of the live version. This is a small thing; otherwise, it’s a pretty perfect album. Seeing as it’s likely going to be 2019 and another five years before another La Roux album materialises (the only tidbit of news is in an early October interview in DIY with Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey, who all too briefly mentions that he’s finishing up her third record and that it sounds “really good”), there’s still plenty of time to listen to some of the most uplifting and well-crafted pop music of the 2010s.