“American Idol” season 10 runner-up Lauren Alaina has come out with her debut country album, “Wildflower,” coming only a week after the show’s winner, Scotty McCreery, released his debut country album.
Alaina’s first song, “Like My Mother Does,” debuted on the finale of “Idol” with Alaina’s mother in the audience. The message of this song — learning how beneficial life lessons from a mother are — is strong, and this song is one of the few in which Alaina’s singing talents shine through.
“Funny Thing About Love” is another strong showcase of Alaina’s talents. This song is the definition of what country music is supposed to be and could easily be Alaina’s next big post-“Idol” hit. Sung so passionately, this song draws from the sounds of country greats Reba McEntire and “Idol” winner Carrie Underwood.
In “She’s a Wildflower,” Alaina’s voice has its peaks, but the song overall can be filed as mediocre. “Eighteen Inches” sounds like a borrowed song from Taylor Swift’s notebook, but at least in this song, Alaina puts forth a little effort to make the song stand out from the others in the album, which isn’t very hard to do.
“Wildflower” is chock-full of generic country songs, including “Georgia Peaches,” “One of those Boys” and “Tupelo,” to name a few. All of these songs basically serve as filler songs for the few strong songs that are on the album, which leaves the album sounding stale and boring.
The major problem with the majority of the album is that not every song makes an effort to sound entirely different from the others, so it’s difficult to tell when a new song comes up.
Alaina is a wonderful singer that could have easily won “American Idol,” but her debut album isn’t a good showcase of her talents and definitely is a flop in comparison to other “Idol” runners-up like Clay Aiken and Adam Lambert.
Grade: D
