whoever she is, she looks great!
Kelly Clarkson had a bit of fun at her own expense in a recent posting on her blog.
Critiquing her computer-enhanced image on the cover of her new album,
“All I Ever Wanted” (RCA), she wrote,
“it’s very colorful and they have definitely photo-shopped the crap out of me
but i don’t care haha!
whoever she is, she looks great.”
Now that’s the kind of pop star anyone could root for.
She garnered even more go-get-‘em applause in 2007
when the former “American Idol” winner rebelled against
her record label boss, Clive Davis, and made a more personal album,
“My December,” against King Clive’s express wishes.
Sales tanked, but Clarkson at least strongly suggested
that she had a personality far more interesting and contradictory
than the mainstream assembly line would allow.
That personality, however, has been checked at the door for “All I Ever Wanted”.
The album is a determined effort to put Clarkson back into everyone’s iPod.
It appears already to have succeeded spectacularly:
the first single – “My Life Would Suck Without You” – has leaped into the No. 1 spot
on the Billboard chart and sold more than 290,000 downloads in a week.
But that success has not come without cost.
Of all the “Idol”-manufactured singers, Clarkson has emerged as among
the most genuine. She’s got a robust voice and a winning personality,
a former Texas waitress who projects an anti-diva sincerity.
When last seen, on a theater tour in 2007, Clarkson divided her show into three parts:
gothic break-up songs, sleek pop tunes, and stripped-down acoustic ballads.
The latter were a revelation. When tackling substantive songs such as
Patty Griffin’s “Up to the Mountain” or stripping away the gloss on a voice-and-piano
version of “Because of You,” Clarkson sounded like she had more depth
than her “Idol” pedigree suggested.
On “All I Ever Wanted,” however, Clarkson is back to the business
of making Clive Davis-approved music. The first clue is the predictable production choices.
In the pop arena, for-hire songwriters and producers rule, and the biggest hit-makers
tend to get recycled until they collapse from over-exposure.
Clarkson relies primarily on Howard Benson, producer of modern-rock hits by Papa Roach and Daughtry,
and soft-rock guru Ryan Tedder, the One Republic singer-songwriter-producer.
She also employs Katy “I Kissed a Girl” Perry and new “American Idol” judge Kara DioGuardi
to write songs, and reunites with Max Martin and Dr. Luke,
who wrote her 2004 hit “Since U Been Gone.”
There’s not a single unknown, not a single surprise among this group
of established industry pros, and the results are predictably in line
with the sounds that have ruled commercial radio the last five years.
Most of the songs are designed to show off her big voice, and raise the roof
with cathartic tears or fists.
There’s a throwback to the ‘80s hair-metal era (“Whyyawannabringmedown”),
a bunch of extravagant ballads (“Cry,” “Already Gone,” “Impossible,” “Save You”),
thumping disco (“If I Can’t Have You”), an arena shouter (“Long Shot”)
and even a song that rips off the bass line from Spoon’s moody “I Turn My Camera On”
before ruining it with a whiny chorus (“All I Ever Wanted”).
In this procession of formulas, there’s not a lot of nuance, but pop radio
is a diva-eat-diva world these days, and may the biggest chorus win.
It’s a hollow buzz, in part because the songs and lyrics are so formulaic,
the sounds compressed to make everything sound unnaturally loud.
Subtlety may be greatly undervalued in today’s quick-fix mainstream market,
but it’s an essential ingredient in allowing songs to breathe and personalities to emerge.
The shame of it is, Clarkson seems to have a personality worth exploring.
Yet “All I Ever Wanted” insists on shouting at the listener from start to finish.
It allows no room for the down-to-earth voice that Clarkson brings to her blog entries,
the plainspoken charm she evinces in her concerts. She deserves better.
(Greg Chicagotribune.com)
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Tracklist:
01. My Life Would Suck Without You
02. I Do Not Hook Up
03. Cry
04. Don’t Let Me Stop You
05. All I Ever Wanted
06. Already Gone
07. If I Can’t Have You
08. Save You
09. Whyyawannabringmedown
10. Long Shot
11. Impossible
12. Ready
13. I Want You
14. If No One Will Listen
download video “My Life Would Suck Without You” (here)
download “All I Ever Wanted” album (here)
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Filed under: All I Ever Wanted, Kelly Clarkson
