Cool Music Blog

I must admit, I only listened to the previews so I didn’t get the complete “aural experience”, but come on…someone needs to tell me why this is any different than hundreds of other supposedly soulful young ladies out there and why I should throw down even $2.99.

I cannot comment on her vocals, because they’re overdubbed so heavily one really has no notion who’s singing. I cannot comment on the quality of the songs because each one is so over produced all you hear is the rhythm track and it forces you to focus on it rather than anything else. I cannot even comment on the CD cover which wants to make MS Digby look like a young Catherine Zeta Jones.

Harsh?…..perhaps….but this is merely “product” put out by a record company and of no intrinsic value.
Rating: 2 / 5

~ Possibly the best song (Sanctuary) is not on the CD. Marie’ even featured that song on her You Tube site as part of her album promotion. So what gives? I think Amazon tried to make up for this by giving people who bought the CD one free MP3 download. Of course, I used mine to download Sanctuary. I rated 4 stars before I actually heard the whole CD. Now my honest rating would be 3 stars. If sanctuary was on it, I would give it 3.5 stars. Sanctuary would have fit on the CD, so I don’t know why she/they chose to omit it. Big mistake.

The CD makes a good first impression with the first 3 or 4 songs being solid efforts. Then it tapers off a bit. Two of my favorite songs are “Crazier Things” and “Shoulda Been Simple”. As with all her songs, you really have to listen to the lyrics. If you like the lyrics, you might like the song. This is a good album by most standards, and better than 95% of albums out there in similar genres.

She definitely went in a different direction with this one. It has some good melodies and catchy tunes, but I just wish it would have had more of her natural voice, instead of being so drowned out by synthesizers, drum machines, and backup vocals. It’s so mixed, and multi-track overdubbed. It’s definately a good production effort. However, it just didn’t need so much production to be good.

I could be wrong, but it seems like another instance of a record company exerting their influence over an artist to commercialize their music into the “mainstream”.

If this album doesn’t do well, will she go back to her roots? and If it does really well, will we never again hear the Marie’ we had all grown to love? Those are my only questions. I’m sure when she plays these songs live, they will sound much better than the album. ~

Rating: 4 / 5

MUST READ — This music is Junior POP NOT SINGER-SONGWRITER!!!!!!! First of all, I do not like Pop so this is not my kind of music. My 13 year old niece loves this album and so this gets 5 stars but she won’t buy it becasue she would rather have Hannah or the Jonas. I do not mind someone like Nora Jones or Jewel diving into Country every once in awhile. I just will not by any country or any pop/rap so I don’t buy those albums. She is a new artist and should try to get a foothold on what made her famous and then try to broaden her portfolio. Why would she put out a CD that I could put out myself in my basement? Don’t we have enough of this J-pop out there?? I wish her luck but I will not be buying this for me. Unfortunately not many 13 year olds know about her so the sales will probably flounder.
Rating: 5 / 5