Well the shrieking cow finally drops her album and upon first listen it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. The album opens up with a good song "Ridin' With The Radio" that should be a country hit and would be a good country floor filler in the dance halls of America & Canada. She then does a decent cover of an oft covered tune "For What It's Worth" that might also garner some radio attention. The big surprise here is that whomever is the mainline producer on the product figured out how to get her strongest vocal abilities out and toned down the over singing and that annoying shriek she was commended for on Idol for weeks upon weeks unfairly.
Now I'm not going to lie I don't want to like her music nor do I want to see her be successful but I'm a music fan first and when something is good I'm not going to say it sucks. The title track is ok albeit a little contrived but worthy of a listen as well. When the studio magic is put to work it really can help but many times on the album she hits that loud sharp note that makes my ears cringe and it almost makes my brain hurt. Part of that is she sings softly and then cracks that one word so much louder that it just stands out too far. But back to the songs she's obviously a CCM artist with many references to the big black book of bullshit, lies and hypocrisy.
The song "Lonely Won't Come Around" has a sweet intro but vocally Crystal is bland singing with no belief in the lyrics or the melody dancing around her voice. I do see this one getting used in a commercial but I don't think its radio ready. Her Elvis funk displayed on "On The Run" misses the mark because she doesn't have the charisma or soul to drive the song in the manner its needed to be successful. Her Janis Joplin blues moment comes the way of "Speak Now" an ok tune and she sounds pretty good here. I admit this song is radio worthy and deserving of being a hit song but will probably be dismissed because country radio would rather support garbage songs by faceless artists more so than something with a little substance.
The album includes a lot of filler material and poorly executed stuff and outside of the three I've pointed out this album is a miss. I do have to eat a little crow on this one because she is better than I thought and shouted from the roof tops. But three songs out of twelve does prove I was closer to right than wrong. A critical listener will agree with me and the ones who think she's great before even opening their ears will disagree but that's ok because you folks are all allowed to have your wrong opinions.
