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Entertainment Weekly- February 5, 1999 Opinions on B*Witched The latest girl-pop export from the British Isles arrives on our shores with a similar air of bravado and glee (and Sony money to boot). On the cover of their just-released first disc, the four members of the Dublin-based B*Witched smile as they leap into the air, a sensibility that also infuses their bouncing-ball melodies. There's also a clever, if cynical, twist. With songs that weave in the occasional fiddle or tin whistle, B*Witched sound like the Spice Girls' younger sisters abroad the Titanic. Still, it's hard to deny that music's appeal. B*Witched's pajama-party tunes, from "Rev It Up" (about the joys of heading to the beach with pals) to "Rollercoaster," are effortless jump-rope pop. And while their windswept ballads manage to be corney yet heartfelt; the dreamy intensity of "Castles in the Air" captures the senstation of a high school love that feels as if it will last forever. What isn't entirely bewitching about the album is how it peters out two thirds of the way through. The final tracks feel like retreads of earlier cuts, giving B*Witched the feel of one ice-cream cone too many. Still, it is an educational experience--think of it as homework for adults. The quartet's first single, "C'est La Vie," finds them singing, winkingly, at an apparently reticent male classmate: "Hey, boy, in your tree/Throw down your ladder, make a room for me!" The album has numerous other such double entendres, especially in the heavy-breather "We Four Girls," and makes clear that this generation is much more knowing in the ways of the flesh that were its predecessors. And they're not afraid to let us know they know it. 98 Degrees growl very adult references to "makin' love" and going "all the way tonight," and the roughhouse innuendos of Spears' "...Baby One More Time" would have caused Debbie Gibson to faint. In complacent times, teens have to take their rebellion where they can find it. B*Witched: B+.