Lea Michele, better known for her role as Rachel Barry on the hit T.V show Glee, has just released a preview of her first single “Cannonball” off her upcoming album, Louder. Now one thing that I was definitely expecting was something very grand to match her vocals but, that’s not quite what we got from her. This song is a little too simple and a little too generic. She is using a lot of her classical training with very well pronounced vowels that you would have heard from the Musical/Classical backgrounds, but it doesn’t really lend itself to the overall effect of the song. It also sounds very dated and very monotonous with no real build into the chorus.
One would assume that Michele would still be dealing with the late Cory Monteith’s death and that her first song would be something very heartbreaking. Something that would tug on the every string of your heart. A message of hope and love that everything will be fine. Or a message that is saying that she isn’t fine and that the walls that surround her have just caved. Her vocals have always given someone, or at least myself, the emotions in every single syllable that she sang. So, what happened? This song has no emotion in her vocals. No passion. No fire. No energy. No substance. No grit.
“Cannonball”, I feel, is also very reminiscent of the song “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus. The lyrics maybe different but your mind immediately goes there. The difference between the two is that Cyrus, no matter how naked she got on the video, gave so much emotion that upon the first time hearing just the beginning snippet of the track would already make you start to tear up. So much raw emotion. At the end of the day, it is not so much on who has the better vocals because if you were to put the two together and decide who was a better vocalist, Michele would win hands down. But, it’s not about who is the better vocalist, its about how much you can make someone feel just by listening to it. A lot of artists today are hoping that the music videos that they release will help to convey the emotion that you would need in order to buy the song. And with everything being so visual and a good majority of the world being stuck on their computer, smart phones, and tablets it would make a little sense. But Michele is better than this and we all know it.
There has been one thing on my mind as I go to listen to Michele’s renditions of songs from Glee and it makes me wonder. Can Lea Michele produce a good Solo Album with original works? We know that she has been on Broadway for most of her career and she is very used to playing a character and re-invoking emotions that have already been portrayed once before. But can she do the same thing portraying her own emotions the way they need to be? Can she be herself and not another character on her album? This is where Michele is going to need to reinvent herself. Her look on the cover and the single look so edgy, that you are expecting more. I think Michele has an amazing career ahead of her and I have been waiting for her to release her own works, but can she be successful at it? We have yet to hear the rest of the song as it has not yet been officially released on iTunes, so maybe when it is finally ready to be released to the world, she will shock us with the final result. Maybe other tracks from the album will be so much stronger than this. I am definitely hoping for the best!
LIVE, LIFE, LOVE, AND MUSIC
Niko Rivera