We have been giving the Joe McElderry album a 'spin' over the last few days.
Some of it is quite bad but lots of it — we'd say a solid two thirds of the album — is pretty good.
We have 'expertly selected' five songs to discuss and play you clips of and these are they.
1. 'Ambitions'
{audio}sotd/ambitions.mp3{/audio}
This is the Top 5 (probably) launch single for the whole thing. We loved the original and we love the new version. And that is what we have to say about that. (Other than that the Diskjokke remix of Donkeyboy's original is really amazing.)
2. 'Real Late Starter'
This, meanwhile, was yesterday's Popjustice Song Of The Day. In our writeup we noted that as this is a cover of Nerina Pallot's 'Real Late Starter' and the lead single is a cover of 'Ambitions', perhaps Joe's entire career could be based around covers of overlooked 2009 singles that should have done better than they did. The fact that he kicked everything off with a cover of 'The Climb' would certainly add some further substance to this career plan. We really like Joe's version of this track and hope it will be a single.
3. 'Someone Wake Me Up'
This is based around an extended-but-not-very driving metaphor involving "stop signs" and "red lights" and being "driven crazy". It is upbeat and uneventful but the "someone wake me up someone wake me up" bit is v nice. Mind you, you can hear that from the audio clip.
4. 'Until The Stars Run Out'
In which Joe McElderry offers his take on Katy Perry's 'Firework'. This is one of various instances of overenthusiastic Auto Tune.
5. 'Fahrenheit'
It is fair to say that this one sounds a bit like the Scissor Sisters. Awful lyrics but all rather jolly.
Also on the album: a lot more Auto Tune that bizarrely gets in the way of the fact that Joe actually has a quite nice voice, some ballads that sound exactly like the sort of ballads you always expected to find on the Joe McElderry album, an Uncle Kracker cover (?!), the world's worst pastiche of Alphabeat's 'Fascination' (with a bit of Joe Jackson's 'Steppin' Out' chucked in for good/bad measure), a song called 'Someone Wake Me Up' which we like very much, etc etc etc.
We're going to give this album a 7/10 — we were hoping it might take a few more cues from Gareth Gates' second (overlong but underappreciated) album 'Go Your Own Way' but when 'Wide Awake' works it does its job rather well.