She Hides in the Melody

What better way for a teenage girl to reintroduce herself than with a soliloquy from footballer Vinnie Jones. Um, yeah, okay. Of course we Americans would call him a soccer player best known for his hilarious turn in Eurotrip. Joss Sone named her latest album the Introducing of Joss Stone because as she says the album is the first that is “truly her,” granted I though she was saying pretty much the same thing about her last album after debuting with an album of cover songs. But anyways.

Even though the album is supposed to reintroduce us to Joss Stone, the album doesn’t sound that different from her past album with Joss goring through neo-soul and Motown era R&B tracks with Aretha Franklin type vocal gymnastics. The biggest changes happened behind the scene. First, unlike her last album that sported seven different producers, there are only two credited on the latest outing, Stone and Raphael Saadiq.

With Saadiq being a master of neo-soul (some credit him as starting the trend), the blame most likely fall on the shoulders of Stone herself as the songs tend too far into the hip-hop genre making the songs sound like all the other bland pop songs littering the radio these days. Maybe a little worse as some of the song fall flat in places. The hip-hop flavor is sometime saved by masters of the genre like Common on Tell Me What We’re Gonna Do Now and Lauryn Hill even comes out of hiding for Music, giving a much more inspired verse than the much ignored Fugees reunion song.

The other big change is that Joss took complete reigns of writing the songs, which in this case is not a good thing. Joss is an incredible singer but much like the karaokers on American Idol, her strength is not creating melodies on her own and does a much better job when she has a template to work off of. So much like post-Idol albums where the karaokers have to sing their own songs, Introducing Joss Stone fall flat, albeit Joss’s voice does save thing a little unlike the karaokers who are unable to get a record contract without appearing on a reality show. Maybe it time too think about hooking up with ?uestlove for a second Soul Session.

Song to Download - Arms of My Baby

Introducing Joss Stone gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.