For your central Jersey real estate needs: JudyNJHomes.com
The album quickly rattles off infectious, R&B-infused pop numbers "Love Story" and "Over It," allowing McPhee to showcase the personality that turned KT Tunstall's "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" into a national phenomenon. The backing track of "Love Story," in particular, is a hook that's difficult to deny. To her credit, McPhee seems in her element singing this kind of music, showing as much fun in her voice as the public should have listening to the music. At the same time, McPhee does little to differentiate herself from singers like Fergie in songs like "Dangerous," riding club-friendly grooves into an easy, almost mailed-in performance.
The ballad queen McPhee does show up in a few tracks, notably "Home" and "Ordinary World." Her breathy delivery at the beginning of "Ordinary World" builds into full-out belting mode with such comfort and confidence that it's easy to remember how easily she seduced us over the airwaves.
At its heart, the album is the very definition of guilty pleasure pop. "Open Toes," for instance, is an awful, cheesy song by most standards, but you just know it's going to be a monster hit this summer. That cheesiness does have its ugly side, though, as "Do What You Do" throws the album off track to a point that it can't recover. "Neglected" is a clunky pseudo-ballad that, put up against any songs from the front of the album, doesn't even seem like it's worthy of McPhee's time.
Of course, an album full of ballads isn't what anyone wants, and so it seems a waste to ask that McPhee focus on songs like "Ordinary World," easily the best on the album. But, while the pop is certainly fun and gives her an avenue to show off her spunk, it's nothing more than safe, manufactured radio music. In time, her catalog will grow to erase the memory of some of the more egregious missteps this time around; for now, it's best to focus on the promise of a good portion of the tracks and disregard the handful of anomalies.
Of course, an album full of ballads isn't what anyone wants, and so it seems a waste to ask that McPhee focus on songs like 'Ordinary World,' easily