Just to prove this column doesn't flinch from critical challenges, here's an assessment of the first music product from our own Idol franchise. Remember that all-New-Zealand-songs show from late March? Here's the recording studio version produced by show musical director Eddie Rayner.
Evidently it was done abit fast, eh? That would explain some of the song titles not being quite right - it's Time Makes "A" Wine (not "the"); Don't Dream It's Over not ("Its") and Sittin' Inside My Head, (not "Sitting").
But there are greater flaws within the ensemble vocal tag team of Mark Williams' formerly perky disco-pop hit Yesterday Was Just the Beginning of My Life, which seems to last well into tomorrow as it drags on. Oh well, it was written by a couple of Australians.
Most of the rest induces a queasy feeling at hearing a great Kiwi hit single turned into something that sounds like it might help to sell plumbing supplies on a provincial radio station.
Though interestingly, the best offerings are the most recent - "Big Dave" Houma's version of Brooke Fraser's Better is inspired for the distance it manages from the original, and Filipo Sipani's take on Adeaze's A Life Without You sounds, as they say, an honest attempt.
Not a lot else does, especially the overwrought interpretations that the three songs from the Finn songbook seem to inspire.
More a curio than an album really, to be filed, quickly, next to - or perhaps behind - that TrueBliss CD.
