Album Review: Louder – Lea Michele

Lea Michele’s debut album Louder sees her ‘cannonball’ straight into the pop-diva market with a selection of songs which ultimately fall disappointingly flat. Despite all the emotion and experience you might expect to be communicated on some level following a year of tragic upheaval (including the untimely death of her boyfriend, Cory Monteith), the songwriting is fairly shallow and fails to convey any real sense of personality. This is most likely due to the bit-part role Michele played in the writing. Sia Furler and Christina Perri are among those who contributed to the album but many songs suffer from unoriginal, over-produced backing tracks while the song titles, and their lyrical content, are generic and hollow and could belong to any mainstream pop artist.

‘Cannonball’, the first single from the album, is an overly repetitive and underwhelming opener despite the carpe diem sentiment it is meant to convey. It is too mid-tempo to be anthemic and the vocals lack personality and force. ‘On My Way’ is catchy and dance-floor ready, playing on the familiar pop-motif of the person you can’t resist. (‘When my head tells me ‘no’ / My heart tells me ‘yes’… /… I know my heart’s too drunk to drive but I’m on my way to you’). In ‘Burn With You’ a more recognisable Lea shines through – there are glimpses of what she can do with the right emotional power ballad. Sadly the song loses direction after the first minute despite profiting from more restraint than some of the others. ‘Battlefield’ is similarly over indulgent on the cheese factor, but the piano accompaniment works much better with Lea’s voice. Strip away the electro beats and ‘You’re Mine’ could be Broadway-ready but fails to impact as it is, while ‘Thousand Needles’ is something a little different with its haunting production. Club anthem ‘Louder’ exudes Glee vibes – championing uniqueness and standing ‘out from the crowd’, which ironically is something Michele fails to do with this album. ‘Cue the Rain’ and ‘Don’t Let Go’ are both fairly forgettable and over-indulgent with some really corny lyrics but at least it sounds like Michele’s enjoying herself on the latter.

The final two songs redeem the album to some extent. ‘Empty Handed’ is Christina Perri’s contribution and I kept imagining her voice singing it, though Lea’s still works well. It is an easy-listening love song. The final song, ‘If You Say So’ is one Michele co-wrote following Monteith’s passing and certainly feels the most personal and quietly devastating yet. This song feels less like a performance and much more resigned and earnest. The lyrics are heartbreakingly poignant as Michele sings ‘it’s been seven whole days / without your embrace…/…‘was just a week ago / you said, ‘I love you girl’’ and recalls her final conversation with Monteith.

There is little of the strong theatricality Miss Michele shows in her performances as Rachel Berry on Glee and in her past stage career which inhibits even further the emotion and vulnerability she could have brought to a couple of these songs. It’s hard to tell who she really is – and that’s partly credit to her acting ability – but it makes it hard to connect with anything on this disappointingly hollow album. It never seems like she is controlling the tracks. The songs are often repetitive and over reliant on standard loops and it is hard not to feel that this album is a waste of her musical chops.