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LeAnn Rimes Album Reviews | |
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Blue:
Sounding remarkably like Patsy Cline, LeAnn Rimes's voice slices into each song like a hot knife through butter. At the age of 13, Rimes became country's brightest new star upon the release of this impressive debut. Her balanced blend of traditional and new country owes as much to Cline as it does 1990s' style. "Cattle Call," a duet with the legendary Eddy Arnold, is just one of the many highlights on this album. Attention is focused on Rimes's distinctive booming vocals, as opposed to some snappy chops--musically, it all sounds familiar, like you have heard this before. Still, there are moments where you feel this could not be the voice of a child. As she matures, so will her feelings and presumably her songs.
Unchained Melody: The Early Years
This album consists of material recorded prior to Rimes's best-selling 1996 national debut, Blue. The program includes such time-tested staples of Rimes's live show as "Cowboy's Sweetheart," "I Will Always Love You," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," and "Unchained Melody." As amazing as it is to hear a voice this powerful and polished coming from a 15-year-old girl in 1997, it's even more amazing to consider that she was only 10 or 11 when most of these recordings were done. What's not so amazing are the five contemporary country numbers, which point to the problem Rimes continues to face in finding new material worthy of her once-in-a-generation vocal abilities.
Sittin' On Top Of The World
"El stinko," writes one Amazon.com customer, but to be fair to Rimes, her second album since the surprising debut Blue is more misguided than merely bad. She bites off more than she can chew, and producer Wilbur Rimes (LeAnn's father) tries to force-feed warmed-over Adult Contemporary arrangements and overheated pop fare ("Purple Rain" may be the silliest cover in "country" history), the kind neither Rimes nor the listener can easily swallow.
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Sittin' on Top of the World may be an advance from the truculent You Light Up My Life, but Rimes's talents are being squelched by the superstar machine. Still, with the right production and right songs, Rimes may yet make a consistently strong country album.
LeAnn Rimes
This is a collection of LeAnn Rimes's favorite country standards, plus one newly written hit, "Big Deal." Say what you will about this woman-child--yes, she really needs direction (the 11 remakes couldn't be more obvious choices) and a producer besides her dad. But she's slowly growing into her own style, which here falls somewhere between Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee, and Tammy Wynette. Especially Patsy. Her timing on "Crazy" is quirky enough to offset the ham-fisted arrangement, and she's not bad on "I Fall to Pieces," either; her efforts on "She's Got You," "Leavin' on Your Mind," and "Faded Love" (a Bob Wills song Cline cut) fall short. She also chooses "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "Lovesick Blues," two songs identified with Hank Williams that Cline recorded, and sings the latter like she knows what it means. The wanna-rock "Me and Bobby McGee" is a travesty, but at least she gets to act her age, sort of, on "Big Deal."
Reviews Copyright Amazon.com
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