The Eurovision Song Contest is probably one of the year's most important events and all the European countries get ready for it more and more profoundly. Young talents are eager to demonstrate themselves, professional artists confirm their mastery, viewers passionately follow the events and support their countries’ representatives. It is a real ordeal both for experienced performers and the beginners. This year the inner contest called Unser Star für Oslo (‘Our Star For Oslo’) in Germany has been won by the young and brilliant Lena Meyer-Landrut who has not even finished high school yet. Her charisma, nice vocals and ability to present herself on the stage have conquered all the juries, she became the contest’s favorite at once and the audience voted for her more eagerly than for the other show competitors. The days left until Eurovision can be counted and the young talent’s debut album called My Cassette Player has already appeared on the stores shelves.
First, during the selection, Lena performed cover versions of various songs and when she got closer to the final new songs were written especially for the contest and all of them have found themselves on My Cassette Player. The rest of the material has been written by the singer herself and the producer Stefan Raab – these are mostly slow and mid-tempo compositions with very nice lyrics. The record opens with the single Sattelite that has already become a hit and will be performed on the Eurovision – it is a very down-to-earth and easy-going song devoted to a young man, the object of the protagonist’s love. The title track is also not remarkable for a deep thought but pleases with Lena’s purring vocals whereas the song Not Following built upon a nice bass line and similar to Sattelite in its sense. The cover of Adele’s song My Same sounds rather original but perhaps not all the British star’s fans will like Lena’s interpretation. A piano ballad Caterpillar In The Rain is a very beautiful and lyrical number with an unexpected metaphor in the lyrics – the heroine left alone is compared to a little caterpillar in the rain. Lena’s vocal skills are most revealed on the composition Love Me, tougher than the others, and the singer has also managed to render the emotions on the cover of Jason Mraz’ Mr. Curiosity, refined with a splendid guitar solo. At the end of the album two melodious tracks, I Just Want Your Kiss with blues elements, and the romantic Wonderful Dreaming, close the album on a lightly sad note.
Many will agree that sincerity, simplicity and soulfulness are very important in pop music because really outstanding vocals are quite a rare thing and, on the contrary, one can always enjoy beautiful and melodious music. The album My Cassette Player is one of this kind. At the same time one can hardly tell that Lena is not a good vocalist. On some album’s tracks her voice sounds really strong even though the fact that she has never learned to sing formally of course matters. Nevertheless this ambitious and yet extremely simple girl has all chances to charm the viewers at the competition and receive high points. If she fails to win the contest her album is still a nice addition to other pop long-players in your collection, and the single Sattelite will remain popular enough for some time to come. Thus if Fräulein Meyer-Landrut decides to pursuer a singing career (and she has a lot of different plans for the future) it will be very interesting to find out what else she can achieve.
Graffiti 2009
The US R&B and pop singer Chris Brown, notorious for his scandalous break-up with artist Rihanna, recorded his third album Graffiti. The disc is filled with personal revelations and daring experiments
