Review Summary: It honestly feels more like a cashgrab than it does an honest album.
Not everyday you see an American Idol contestant turning into a rockstar in just a few months. Daughtry made a name for himself in the mid 00's by playing at the time extremely popular post grunge music, and quickly became a big deal with his debue self-titled record.
This record is by far his most popular record, containing his iconic single "It's All Over". It is a ballad which infuses some pretty nice clean electric guitar work, and explodes in the chorus, all while Chris Daughtry gives an excelent preformance. He is an amazing singer, and his voice is undeniably the best part of the record.
That being said, the music itsef... There isn't all that much to talk about. The first thing that already bugs this album is just how many ballads they've put on the first half of the record. Seriously, every track is a goddamn ballad, it honestly gets old halfway through. There is little to no edge to electric guitar, it all too soft and it is just strum-by-numbers all the time. By track 7 you're already zoned out almost entirely, but them "What I Want" wakes you up and it is probably the best cut here. It has more energy than half of the songs combined, guitars are actually great (Slash was a part of it so it makes sense), and it is way more fun than what we've heard so far.
Now, the overuse of mellow tracks is not the bad idea if you can do it right. So many of them sound so painfully generic and unoriginal, you really have nothing to focus on instead of his voice, and even that becomes boring after a while. "Home" and "Over You" are both as commercial throwaway singles as they get, both bland and uninteresting, with no distinctive melodies, even his voice doesn't save them.
Chris' lyrics sure does not save majority of these tracks. It's just cheese, with just a little variation in themes, but nothing particulary memorable. There are some decent hooks here and there where Daughtry shines, but verses can literally be randomly switched to another songs, and it won't make much difference. Drums are of course just bashing along, they don't stand out at really any point, and bass, I mean, find it if you can. Some nice piano touches on the closing track really want to stand out, but it is by-the-book been-there-done-that key-work that does not sound engaging at all. The track "What About Now" itself, and "Breakdown" are some higher points here, along with "It's Not Over" and "What I Want", but I don't think there's much else.
It is as middle of the road as it gets. After "Want I What" it is basically the first half repeated, with about 1/4 of time spent on some decent hard rocking sound. It is way too mellow and repetitive, but he worst thing it is not especially winning formula, so it really makes the album overall pretty bland.
There is very little fun to be had with Chris' boring lyrics for the most part. It is basically every other post grunge record of the time, but still worse cause, yeah, some will argue Hinder ane Nickelback made far worse music, but we are still able to get some fun out of their albums, if nothing they can be so bad they're laughable. That is not case at all here. There are no mysogynistic or egdy lyrics, which is a good thing, but really aside from that and his voice, this one's a mediocre snooze-fest.
I don't really hate Daughtry, not by any means, I actually think "Leave This Town" is a miles better record than this one (though it is downhill from there). As I mentioned, the biggest problem with this record is that it is not a good album, but it isn't awful either, since there are a couple good songs, it is just...meh, which in itself makes it easily ignorable.
It honestly feels more like a cashgrab than it does an honest album. Looking at his recent records - yeah, that might be the case.
