O ye of colossal Faith…
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[3.80]
Jonathan Bradley: The first time I heard Cassadee Pope, her voice had been spaghettified through Auto-Tune — and she still stood out as the best part of “Take My Hand,” a tune on Decaydance Records’s somewhat preposterously Clinton Sparks–hosted mixtape Welcome to the New Administration. Pope’s band, Hey Monday, went on to produce a record that had enough in common with Paramore to be interesting and fell short enough of Hayley Williams’s band to be disappointing. But there were more than a few replayable tracks on Hold on Tight, and following that was “Hangover,” one of the best songs of 2010, and then Pope’s solo “Secondhand,” which disappointingly failed to catch fire last year. And after all this not-quite-fulfilled promise, I discover Pope has starred on — and won — a singing TV talent show I’ve never seen, called The Voice? On one level its terribly disappointing to see such a never-quite-entirely-fulfilled talent reduced to reality contest amateurism, but, on the other hand, her cover of “Cry” is awfully nice, and it nods in a previously unexplored country direction that could prove fruitful for her. Her voice easily makes the transition from post-emo to country-pop and allows her to demonstrate what was palpable even on that Pete Wentz vanity tape: she sure can sing. May her television sojourn be an odd detour in her career, and may “Cry” be the start of success well deserved.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: The Voice is outperforming American Idol because it figured out something that seems scythingly obvious in retrospect: unless you’ve established a (fire)brand like Simon Cowell, you’ll draw more viewers with former major-label acts than randoms. Their contracts may have gone astray, but their fanbases haven’t, it makes for just as inspirational a storyline, and since The Voice is a new entity in the States, it can dodge most of the “plant” griping that plagues Idol or X Factor, who’ve caught on late. And thus we got R&B midlister Javier Colon, Idol-to-Broadway striver Frenchie Davis, bubbly Dia Frampton from Meg & Dia, and now Cassadee Pope: formerly of Hey Monday, subsequently solo with quite serviceable “Call Me Maybe” soundalikes, recently the darling of seemingly every musician on Twitter, now the show’s foregone winner and recipient of a big ol’ Faith Hill cover. It’s a smart move; the overlap between pop-punk and country-pop fans is pretty large, and the one between Voice viewers and Faith Hill fans is larger still. It’s in no way a cool move, nor subtle, but there’s a certain earnest appeal to this mesh of “Don’t Cry Out Loud” as performed in pageants, the ballads at the back of an A*Teens album, and snippets of the coaches’ feedback (“could you cry a little? Pretend that you’re feeling a little more pain?”) But there was more when she’d just sing, rather than proving she can.
[5]
Al Shipley: I always had a soft spot for this song, but honestly, if there’s any artist you shouldn’t have a hard time stepping onto the turf of and outdoing, it’s Faith Hill. How you gonna fuck that up? Javier Colon’s career is rolling in its grave right now.
[1]
Doug Robertson: It’s aiming for the sort of big soaring emotional hook that can make a granite statue weep tears of salty understanding and score a lucrative soundtrack slot on the latest pseudo-indie romance film, no doubt played over a shot of Zooey Deschanel on a bridge in the rain. Cassadee, however, would make a better connection standing on top of a mountain with a broken mobile phone that’s run out of credit than she does here, hitting the notes perfectly well but with all the personal involvement of a background character in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. She could probably do the same trick with a pizza menu if you told her that anguish and anchovies are the same thing.
[4]
Iain Mew: The problem is that there isn’t “just a little” of anything — the constant bellowing and matching overbearing production are too tiring to elicit any sympathy or even to be impressed by any of the technique. The softened drum drop verges on painful.
[2]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: For someone who adores Fall Out Boy, Pete Wentz’s vanity label Decaydance may have been the most frustrating outlet of the noughties. Lookie here: it was home to Gym Class Heroes, Panic At the Disco, and a pre-Young Money Tyga. (In a awesomely “huh?” moment, Wentz signed ’90s hardcore heroes Lifetime to his label for a 2007 LP.) Pop-punk band Hey Monday signed to Decaydance near the end of the label’s ubiquity, and unlike the spotty merits of the artists above, never stumbled on a moment of inconceivable greatness like GYH’s “Viva La White Girl (Remix)” or Panic’s “Pas De Cheval.” They were a generic post-Blink pop-punk group, and that was that. So how’s this for inconceivable – band’s vocalist starts a solo career, goes on to win The Voice and releases a pretty great ten-hankie piece of Nashville balladry? Pope’s hearty vocals may beg her ex to “tell me you’re feeling a little more pain” so she can deal with her own pain, but this feels less like wallowing and more like wisdom.
[8]
Alfred Soto: More like “Bray.” On the verses she sounds capable of subtlety, especially the second set in which she lingers on the pile of lies he left to her, but she glides too quickly past the others.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Faith’s country returns are further reduced to an upper-body shudder to tease out the twangy vibrato. Asinine martial snare points up just how young Pope sounds: in her hands, “cry just a little for me” sounds like the meanest yearbook inscription.
[3]
Ian Mathers: This kind of singing always makes me think of Joe Satriani-style guitar; yes, on a technical level it’s impressive, but personally I can’t get past it to actually hear the song.
[3]
Jer Fairall: History repeats itself, first as melisma, second as karaoke.
[2]