Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Song samples

from Adam's For Your Entertainment album, courtesy of Amazon UK, are here. H/t to mmyy9 at Hooplamagnet.

Soaked is by Muse and is operatic and I think it will appeal to those who prefer less production.

Update: Soaked sounds a lot like a k.d. lang song to me. Update V: It's that damn scooping. I hate scooping, even when it's not a crutch. (Unpopular opinion: Frank Sinatra was a crutch-scooper.)

Update II: Everyone hoping for a renaissance of Led Zeppelin etc will be sorely disappointed. Anyone hoping for a great voice filling up the pop charts will be happy.

Update III: And you can imagine Freddie singing Soaked.

Update IV: It's hard to tell much from tiny snippets, but I'm hearing a lot of 80's influence.

Update VI: Extra good news: very little voice manip in these snippets and lots of use of his lovely middle and lower range which was under-used on Idol and Idol recordings, IMHO.

Update VII: Songwriters are clearly happy to have found a singer who's not afraid of big intervals, e.g. octaves all over Sure Fire Winners, and sixths (I think) in Whataya Want From Me. Update IX: Also octaves in Pick U Up which is a song Weezer gave to him.

Update VIII: Pronoun watch: Fever was written by Lady Gaga. Adam leaves the "he" pronoun. Yay!

Update X: I can't quite tell, listening quietly on my computer speakers, but I think Sleepwalker includes a big choir. Yay, again!

Update XI: Overall verdict from snippets: wow. I think it's amazing. I think I'm going to love everything on it, except for If I Had You which sounds like another club-like song that is not as much fun as FYE.

Update XII: Broken Open has a bit of a Roxy Music vibe. Roxy Music crossed with a particular Journey song that I can't quite place.

Update XIII: Music Again nods to Queen.

Update XIV: Sure Fire Winners conjures Terence Trent D'Arby.

Update XV and XVI: Reviews (or descriptions) of the snippets are coming in: Gil Kaufman at [update: NOT Rolling Stone but] MTV (glam is back) and Jim Cantiello at MTV (he likes Music Again, Whataya Want From Me, and Broken Open; Jim is horribly wrong about Sleepwalker and I predict he'll change his mind). Rolling Stone says it's a "musical odyssey". Update XVII: Joey Guerra seems to like what he hears.

Sleepwalker, by the way, was written in part by Aimee Mayo who tweeted for weeks about her angst as to whether the song would get chosen to be on the album and, in sharing her hopes and angst, she collected a whole batch of fans who will now pay attention to what she writes for others. More proof that Twitter is more powerful than it appears at first blush.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If scooping is what I think it is, you need to elaborate on Frank and crutch.

Stephanie said...

Scooping it getting to the desired pitch from below. Frank did it constantly. I know people will say he did for stylistic purposes, but I disagree. I don't think Frank could reliably sing a clean interval to save his soul.

Stephanie said...

Have you listened to the snippets?!