WWTBAM Bored

Ugh.

I gave it two listens just to be fair, but I will only be transferring two songs to my library for future listens: "Cannonball" and "Empty-Handed". The rest is not dreck but there are remarkably few highlights. I think it is the writing - Lea Michele does everything she can with the material, but most of it is just not about anything. I'm glad they delayed the release from last summer when Cory Montieth died, as many of the lyrics would have been too weird then. They are still a little weird now, with him in mind.

I haven't been this disappointed since Adam Lambert's second album. His first had five or six well-written songs or songs that were not so great but that he made ear-catching. The second one was just straight-up dance with few "moments" (I'd been trying to avoid that word but it's the best way to capture this concept).

I hope on her next album Lea Michele either covers Broadway stuff or gets better writers. We know from "Glee" that she can do pop, and do it well (many of her covers are superior to the original writers - see Katy Perry's "Firework" for an example) but her forte is torch. Nothing wrong with that.

If you hated Cristina Perri's "Thousand Years" or whatever it was named, I would avoid "Empty-Handed," as she is one of its writers. I kind of liked most of it, but I did like the instrumentation of that first song of hers. It became my Dub song last year, as it was on the radio the day we said goodbye to him.

The main writer on "Cannonball" is Sia Furler, an amazing musician from Australia whose solo albums I may be checking out, now that I've read about her.

I enthusiastically recommend the movie 20 Feet From Stardom, about backing vocalists.

I had pretty much the same reaction from listening to soundbites on Lea's cd. Like "this is ok, but nothing is reallty grabbing my ears and holding on tight. Perri is not an artist I am inclined to audition anyway. 20 Feet is in my Netflix queue.

I am still assembling my 2013 Boneys (yes, way behind schedule but I've been occupied with a buncha stuff over the last number of months), so 2014 is still on the back burner.

Thanks as always for the updates...