Scotty McCreery - Clear As Day

The American Idol winners album release is here and it's well, what one would expect from the Idol machine. Albeit the album doesn't 100% suck but c'mon this is completely pedestrian, professionally written modern country. When Scotty sings the songs I'm not convinced he even likes most of them. The cover version of "Walk In The Country" originally done by The Ranch who was Keith Urban's band is decent but it pales in comparison because the guitar and banjo aren't present enough and Scotty's voice is too um gurplely if that makes sense kinda almost muppet-ish.

The over reaching production has taken any personality out of his vocals for sure and that was his best asset on the show. The first song on the album that I really like and want to listen to a second or third time even is "Write My Number On Your Hand" as it sounds like it could have been a hit from Neal McCoy or Kenny Chesney dare I say George Strait even. It has that sort of feel and I'm not going to lie I really like this song so hopefully it will be a single quickly so the kid has a tiny chance to get on the radio. He does have another winner on here called "You Make That Look Good" which should be another single for him but I tell ya if Trace Adkins or Blake Shelton was singing it the song would already be number one and sold a truck load of singles. Here is the trouble with the album overall; too many freaking ballads and bad, weak run-of-the-mill heard it all before done better garbage ballads too.

This kid was handed some really lame material to sing and if I was in his camp I would have refused at minimum six of the twelve tracks here. Scotty has some talent and he deserves a much better set of songs to sing than piss poor wanna be pop ballads with a twang installed for country status. The alternate Idol single "Out Of Summertime" is a far better song than that awkward sounding "I Love You This Big" kinda proving the American Idol powers didn't want him to be the winner. I will admit he didn't deserve to be crowned the winner over Lauren and anybody with ears and eyes know that but somehow stupid American's got it wrong again for the third straight year. Again this album is pretty cookie cutter fluff that lacks spirit and emotion from Scotty who obviously doesn't like a good portion of the junk they forced him to sing. Maybe his next album will be a little better.