Review Summary: No matter how heavy she wants this to be, it’s nothing more than a crappy pop album.
Most of America won’t instantly notice Allison Ireheta but she was the 4th place contestant in this past season of American Idol, which was won by Kris Allen. Since the non-winning contestants of American Idol usually have more say in the sound of their solo albums than the winners I honestly figured this would be more so what Iraheta had described it to be. With less writing credit to her name than Lambert and Allen, Iraheta shows less promise as a pop artist than a runner-up on one of America’s most prominent reality shows.
If you’ve heard any of the other American Idol contestant debut albums there is no reason for you to add this to your repertoire. When Iraheta had announced the making of her album she described it to be “heavy”, “punk-y” and supposed to have a definite rock vibe to it. Fail, Allison, fail. This album is nothing more than a glorified pop album. With Iraheta collaborating on only one track which also serves as the closer, she has already shown less creativity than almost all mainstream pop artists of the modern era. With help from Pink, Idol judge Kara DioGuardi, Kevin Rudolf and Chris Daughtry, this superficial team managed to craft 13 songs that do nothing but drag on with simple, boring beats and tiring vocals.
Her first single “Friday I’ll Be Over U” is just a horrendous mess. Tacky lyrics, subpar vocals and overdone, replaying beats make for a song that shouldn’t be proud to be a first single. “Scars” is a slower song with some acoustic guitar that works better with her voice since it shows a piece of emotion that is needed for some of her music to work. “No One Else” is sadly the high point of the album. With the track being written and produced by Idol judge DioGuardi and Pink, it’s the perfect song to sum up what this album is all about, dull, monotonous pop music. She wails throughout the songs which might be a better vocal style for her since it sounds better than when she tries to join the troops of female pop singers such as Britney, Christina and Mariah. Although she did lend her hand in writing one song off this album is nothing special as you’d expect. With the already generic title of “You Don’t Know Me” I honestly wasn’t expecting much more from her either. Some of the songs sound eerily similar to Pink’s music which could be attributed to the hair color similarities or a possible coincident of some sorts.
Either way this album is what it is, already been done. There is nothing that this album does that sets it apart from anything else pop out there. Had she done some heavier songs maybe with even a tinge of guitar work like she had previously stated, it might have been better than this. Obviously we just cannot expect any American Idol contestant to surprise us and actually make something decent. Well that’s certainly not going to happen if let Kevin Rudolf and Pink write your songs. Maybe the next Idol should consider having Max Bemis and Devin Townsend write some lyrics and riffs for them.
