Soundbite: Crazy Love
By Maryia Krivoruchko
Oct. 12, 2009 9:40 p.m.
If a cozy night on the couch with a glass of wine and some quality feel-good music is what you’re craving, you have found your album. If you want something that pushes the envelope, look for another album.
“Crazy Love” is organized in such a way that the jazzy, more dramatic songs start, and the typical lighthearted ballads ensue.
Though the album was listed under the blues genre, a lot more of it can be attributed to jazz, classic 1950s rock “˜n’ roll and even pop than to blues.
The first track, “Cry Me a River,” is one of my favorite jazz songs of all time.
I was both excited and slightly nervous to hear what Michael Bublé was going to offer to the classic song. The first notes turned out to be a pleasant surprise ““ dramatic, rhythmic and, for lack of a better word, amazing.
The march-like percussion and building anticipation made me love the song even more.
The rest between the instrumental introduction and Bublé crooning “Now you say you’re lonely / you cry the whole night through” was also a great way to begin the song, building suspense before the vocals even began.
The background instrumentation really made the song unique, which is not to underestimate Bublé’s personal addition of the heart-wrenching lyrics, “You said you loved me, but you lied,” delivered in his signature vocal style.
Bublé’s rendition of “Georgia on My Mind” is frankly seductive. The slow, soulful and drawn-out phrases give Bublé an edge missing from the rest of the album.
The song is mellow, and his voice sounds smokier than his usual crystal clear and strong performance. Because the rest of the songs on the album start out beautifully slow and speed up gradually, I was waiting for this to happen in “Georgia” and was glad when it didn’t.
“Haven’t Met You Yet” is a lot lighter and more rhythmic and effortless than his normal jazz renditions.
The lyrics are clever and optimistic and are for those who “work to work it out.” Maybe it is the hopeless romantic in me, but the upbeat ballad made me smile.
If this song made me smile, the beginning of the following track, “All I Do Is Dream of You,” just made me laugh. The deep bass chorus in the beginning, singing “doo-bee-doo-bee-doo,” brought back imagined memories of the 1950s.
Bublé’s scatting on the track was impressive and uncommon compared to the rest of the tracks.
Not being familiar with the song, I expected “Heartache Tonight” to be a slow and wonderfully painful blues track. Instead, it was upbeat with a rock vibe.
It was a bit strange to listen to a song about a heartache waiting to happen in a major key and constant forte, but it somehow worked.
The introduction to “Stardust” featuring Naturally 7, sounded like a score to a Soviet cartoon. The harmony is more interesting here than on the rest of the tracks, with deep bass voices contrasting Bublé’s tenor melody. Differentiated percussion also makes it stand out among the other songs.
The bonus track featuring Ron Sexsmith is perfectly mellow, classy and catchy. It is the type of song you can study to, relax to, have in the background or get a little too into while singing by yourself.
Overall, though much of “Crazy Love” sounds similar, it is another impressive work by Bublé and, if nothing else, it is sure to make the listener smile.
E-mail Krivoruchko at [email protected]
