 Charlotte Church Certainly one of the more insulting albums I've run across in awhile, Voice of an Angel is the debut release from Welsh soprano Charlotte Church, who was 13 years old at the time it was recorded. Clearly an attempt (successful attempt, I should add) to cash in on the Sarah Brightman craze that's sweeping the (more or less adult) mainstream, this is a pandering collection of church anthems, patriotic songs, and other overly accessible melodies, sung by a little girl with (cringe) "the voice of an angel." Now, before I am accused of trendy knee-jerk Charlotte Church bashing (?), I should say that for a 13-year old girl, Charlotte Church is phenomenal – in parts of the disc she sounds absolutely brilliant, but it's just that in (many) other parts, she makes audible mistakes and even noticeably runs out of breath in a few places. Like LeAnn Rimes, Doogie Howser, and other precocious teens, her apparent mastery is totally on the surface and evidently learned by rote – there is such an absence of real emotion on this disc that I end up being more mad at Sony for being so exploitative (of Church, certainly, but also of every sucker that will buy the CD). The lead track (and Charlotte's "signature song") is "Pie Jesu" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem (originally the signature song of – surprise – Sarah Brightman), and Charlotte does it amazingly – probably better than the original version, even. This is the kind of song that makes you think (while you are hearing it) that Andrew Lloyd Webber is the greatest composer of all time – it's a beautiful piece, but let me remind you before you get too far off course that this is the guy who also wrote Starlight Express – a musical on roller skates. Anyway, this is truly a gorgeous performance, and really the only justification for the CD's existence. The rest is either tired ("Danny Boy," "Jerusalem") or badly done (the fake-soulful "Amazing Grace" is a not-even-laughable low point). If she were not backed by a symphony orchestra, this would sound like a better-than-average high school voice recital. The songs are selected for maximum heartstring-pulling, designed to make old Britons misty-eyed for their homeland or something. It's really the kind of CD your grandmother would unironically declare to be "beautiful" while talking about how "they don't make music like that anymore, today it's all the loud rapping and noise." But this is unpleasant noise of an entirely different sort – a very soothing, beautiful type of unpleasant noise that is insidious in its calculativeness. If you like this CD, you're a sucker – though admittedly, I can listen to it straight through without wincing too much. On the surface it's fairly well done, but the more I think about it the worse I think it is. As though Sarah Brightman were something that needed to be cloned, you know?
Review by Roma Downey-Syndrome |