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Apr. 9th, 2007 09:24 pmI finally bought the Daughtry album last week. He was my American Idol fav last year, and I promised myself I'd support him.
So, I plunked down $9.99 at iTunes (Enjoy your $1.11, Chris!) and burned my CD right before I left for Boston last week, listened to it all day before I left, then listened to it while driving in a snowstorm to my hotel (while wincing as I had just left low 80sF/mid-high 20sC) and listened to it the whole time commuting around eastern Mass.
I like it despite myself, and I only just realized that while typing this sentence. Overall, it's just a bit too safe and too amateur. Chris has writing credits on almost all the songs (which is rare for AI people) but long before I bought the album, I feared how much he would be pushed around by the AI label.
Lyrically, almost all the songs are typical mid-rock love-angst, and the lyrics aren't exactly the most original or inspiring. Take "Feels Like Tonight":
I was waiting
For the day you'd come around.
I was chasing,
But nothing was all I found.
From the moment you came into my life,
You showed me what's right
Catch a bit of a yawn there? The same lyrics could have been done better, and more convincingly, by Styx in 1985. The music isn't much better. It's definitely rock with a glance toward alternative, as opposed to pop with a leather wristband, but for most of the album there's no huge hook or edge. Drums, Guitar 1, Guitar 2, Bass, and the occasional orchestral crescendo.
I think that's my biggest problem. Since I liked the guy on the show, I'm expecting, if not Disturbed or Shinedown or Live, at least something either gritty, like early Soundgarden, or lyrically or musically quirky, like early No Doubt. Since Simon Fuller grabbed him as a test project over Yamin or Hicks or McPhee, I supposed anything gritty or quirky was nixed immediately, and will have to wait until Chris' soul gets out of hock from the show's contract.
On the other hand, I compare the album to anything by Seether (whose repetitive, boring lyrics can only be improved by a guest wail by Amy Lee) or 3 Doors Down, who will never advance beyond the same 3 chord riff or nasal lyrics, and I wonder if Daughtry's album sales (double-platinum and more than the other same-season AI albums combined) will give Chris a little more leeway the next time around.
Some people say, if you like 3 or 4 songs on an album these days, it's a success. I'm at 2, with a couple other maybes. The first single, "It's Not Over", is the best of the love-you-can't-lose-you-but-we're-having-problems-anyway theme of the whole album. I can't help wondering if the lyrics are an explicit plea to his wife after his snapshot PR buildup on Idol (The rocker who married the girl and gave up music to raise his kids, but she pushed him toward his dream anyway and now he is haunted by his success vs. the possibility that it will drive them apart anyway... now starring Mark Wahlberg as a shorter, stockier Chris...):
My life with you means everything
So I won't give up that easily
I'll blow it away, blow it away
Can we make this something good?
The thing that makes this song less yawn inducing than the earlier one is that there is a unique hook to the music this time around. Musically, the song doesn't progress linearly from lyric to chorus, to lyric (wait for it -- key change!) to chorus. It throws in some stops and runs and, though still a bit too marketing-slick, some believable passion.
Similarly the second single "Home". It would almost be a shameless grab for the AI go-home song of season 6 this year (lyrics: "So I'm going home/Well I'm going home"), except Hicks and Pickler and McPhee have similar songs (and didn't get the sweet-spot exposure), so either the AI producers are seriously quick to pick up on album sales, or there's a bit more potential with Chris.
I lean slightly toward the latter because he has a bit more authenticity than I would believe from anyone else's first-album. "Home" lyrics like:
I said these places and these faces are getting old.
So I'm going home.
and
Be careful what you wish for,
'Cause you just might get it all.
You just might get it all,
And then some you don't want.
would sound seriously egotistical, or even just plain silly, from the typical first album artist whose previous success would be top billing at the best bar in the state capitol. But, with Chris' 40+ million exposure on AI, sequestered in Hollywood for months, then his dog-and-pony trot with the other top-10 AI contestants tour before working on his album, he has more world-weary tour experience than most alternative newcomers like (say) the 16-year-old's in the Australian band Silverchair ever saw before their first hit.
And, perhaps, that sums up my feelings of Daughtry. I just expected more, even with the full knowledge of the AI machine's marketing and producing wings behind him. But, overall, it's not bad. My biggest barometer of any group is their second album, and I'll probably buy that, too.
So, I plunked down $9.99 at iTunes (Enjoy your $1.11, Chris!) and burned my CD right before I left for Boston last week, listened to it all day before I left, then listened to it while driving in a snowstorm to my hotel (while wincing as I had just left low 80sF/mid-high 20sC) and listened to it the whole time commuting around eastern Mass.
I like it despite myself, and I only just realized that while typing this sentence. Overall, it's just a bit too safe and too amateur. Chris has writing credits on almost all the songs (which is rare for AI people) but long before I bought the album, I feared how much he would be pushed around by the AI label.
Lyrically, almost all the songs are typical mid-rock love-angst, and the lyrics aren't exactly the most original or inspiring. Take "Feels Like Tonight":
I was waiting
For the day you'd come around.
I was chasing,
But nothing was all I found.
From the moment you came into my life,
You showed me what's right
Catch a bit of a yawn there? The same lyrics could have been done better, and more convincingly, by Styx in 1985. The music isn't much better. It's definitely rock with a glance toward alternative, as opposed to pop with a leather wristband, but for most of the album there's no huge hook or edge. Drums, Guitar 1, Guitar 2, Bass, and the occasional orchestral crescendo.
I think that's my biggest problem. Since I liked the guy on the show, I'm expecting, if not Disturbed or Shinedown or Live, at least something either gritty, like early Soundgarden, or lyrically or musically quirky, like early No Doubt. Since Simon Fuller grabbed him as a test project over Yamin or Hicks or McPhee, I supposed anything gritty or quirky was nixed immediately, and will have to wait until Chris' soul gets out of hock from the show's contract.
On the other hand, I compare the album to anything by Seether (whose repetitive, boring lyrics can only be improved by a guest wail by Amy Lee) or 3 Doors Down, who will never advance beyond the same 3 chord riff or nasal lyrics, and I wonder if Daughtry's album sales (double-platinum and more than the other same-season AI albums combined) will give Chris a little more leeway the next time around.
Some people say, if you like 3 or 4 songs on an album these days, it's a success. I'm at 2, with a couple other maybes. The first single, "It's Not Over", is the best of the love-you-can't-lose-you-but-we're-having-problems-anyway theme of the whole album. I can't help wondering if the lyrics are an explicit plea to his wife after his snapshot PR buildup on Idol (The rocker who married the girl and gave up music to raise his kids, but she pushed him toward his dream anyway and now he is haunted by his success vs. the possibility that it will drive them apart anyway... now starring Mark Wahlberg as a shorter, stockier Chris...):
My life with you means everything
So I won't give up that easily
I'll blow it away, blow it away
Can we make this something good?
The thing that makes this song less yawn inducing than the earlier one is that there is a unique hook to the music this time around. Musically, the song doesn't progress linearly from lyric to chorus, to lyric (wait for it -- key change!) to chorus. It throws in some stops and runs and, though still a bit too marketing-slick, some believable passion.
Similarly the second single "Home". It would almost be a shameless grab for the AI go-home song of season 6 this year (lyrics: "So I'm going home/Well I'm going home"), except Hicks and Pickler and McPhee have similar songs (and didn't get the sweet-spot exposure), so either the AI producers are seriously quick to pick up on album sales, or there's a bit more potential with Chris.
I lean slightly toward the latter because he has a bit more authenticity than I would believe from anyone else's first-album. "Home" lyrics like:
I said these places and these faces are getting old.
So I'm going home.
and
Be careful what you wish for,
'Cause you just might get it all.
You just might get it all,
And then some you don't want.
would sound seriously egotistical, or even just plain silly, from the typical first album artist whose previous success would be top billing at the best bar in the state capitol. But, with Chris' 40+ million exposure on AI, sequestered in Hollywood for months, then his dog-and-pony trot with the other top-10 AI contestants tour before working on his album, he has more world-weary tour experience than most alternative newcomers like (say) the 16-year-old's in the Australian band Silverchair ever saw before their first hit.
And, perhaps, that sums up my feelings of Daughtry. I just expected more, even with the full knowledge of the AI machine's marketing and producing wings behind him. But, overall, it's not bad. My biggest barometer of any group is their second album, and I'll probably buy that, too.
