Low Price I Dreamed A Dream

As everyone now knows, Ms. Boyle became a household word overnight with her turn on "Britain's Got Talent" and the rest, as they say, is history. I find it difficult to separate her from her album because it took incredible courage to get up and sing in front of a critical audience, particularly for a woman who has spent her life in obscurity and fading dreams. I purchased the album because of my admiration for that courage when she reached out and grabbed the brass ring, but I didn't know what to expect. First I want to say "Well done Susan on releasing your first album!" But......my major criticism of this album is the song selections. Although some of the songs are reflections of her personal history and very suitable for her voice (e.g. I Dreamed a Dream, You'll See, and Who I Was Born To Be), others do not take advantage of the room-filling depth of her voice and she ends up sounding weak or saccharine (Wild Horses, How Great Thou Art, Daydream Believer, The End of the World). I don't like having Christmas songs mixed into a regular album because, let's face it, by the end of Christmas we are all ready to ditch the Christmas songs for the next year. While I think that an eclectic mix makes an album interesting, the mix of songs on this album is a bit schizoid. The old fashioned religious songs like How Great Thou Art and Amazing Grace seem out of place here, and How Great Thou Art is pale and uninteresting when compared to Cry Me A River and Madonna's "You'll See" and will bore her younger fans, while the covers borrowed from more modern pop/rock will not be enjoyable to the older members of her audience. Other songs, like DayDream Believer, are dragging and have lost the rhythm and flow in the original recorded by the Monkees and instead of sounding sweet sound depressed. Overall, it is a sampler, I suspect, of Ms. Boyle's favourite songs and some which the producers wanted her to do. As a sampler it is fine, but I came away wishing for more songs with strength and power, such as Celine Dion sings. Hopefully, she will be able to do further albums which take advantage of her love for traditional Christian songs and she can do specialty albums such as church songs and Christmas songs in dedicated albums which will satisfy those niche audiences. All-in-all I enjoyed this album, but I put the songs I liked on a CD to listen to in my car so I don't have to keep skipping the songs I found boring.Get more detail about I Dreamed A Dream.