This was a nice surprise, I actually didn't hate this album. Next up is Hopsin, and then I'm going to cover a few albums I missed earlier this year before covering Britney Spears. Sadly, one of them won't be Chris Brown - the asshole delayed his album to 2014. COWARD.
Okay, let's try this again. Back when I reviewed Cassadee Pope's long-delayed debut album Frame By Frame, I made the point that I didn't really watch NBC's The Voice, half because I don't have a TV and half because I've never cared. To me, it was yet another reality show with an overcomplicated competition narrative between a selection of big-name stars using their 'proteges' to win over their colleagues. The question I don't think anyone was prepared to answer was how on earth The Voice would help the careers of the new acts they were promoting. Well, it did what its predecessor American Idol did: set the artist up with a selection of professional songwriters and proceeded to scrub every iota of distinctive personality to create more blandly-written pablum for the public at large, which was arguably my biggest problem with Frame By Frame. It wasn't precisely bad as it was boring, and a big step down in terms of personality from her days with Hey Monday, which at least had something of a distinctive sound and soul in comparison to the neutered pop-country she was pursuing now. But at least on that album Cassadee Pope had songwriting credits, which ultimately led to the few songs I actually kind of liked on that album. With our newcomer Danielle Bradbery, the winner from Season 4 of The Voice, we've got no such luck, and thus I had a real sinking feeling when I prepared myself to look at her self-titled debut album from Big Machine Records. I mentally set myself up for yet another Taylor Swift wannabe, especially considering she's seventeen and every iota of her public persona seemed to emphasize the 'cute' factor. What did I find?
