Brooke White - Songs From the Attic

Songs From The Attic I admit it, I'm a fan of the screechers. I love Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey, and Celine Dion. I love the way their voices soar and they can take a note and turn it into a work of wonder.

The problem is that few singers can do this well. And those that do can lose the ability. Mariah hasn't made an album I've really enjoyed since 1995's Daydream, choosing instead of singing to intersperse her voice amongst a lot of rappers on following albums. Whitney has lost her clear voice because of wild living, and Celine went the route of turning every song into a rock opera although in her earlier albums she had several nice rock songs amid the wailing ballads.

American Idol is known for bringing out the Houston/Carey/Dion wannabes. Their voices soar - painfully. They take every other note and try and see how often they can go up and down the scales with it. The champs know you can't do it too often without sounding tedious, but it became a staple of American Idol singing. As it turns out, only a handful of the Idols could do it well. Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Jennifer Hudson come to mind, and they all know you don't do it all the time.

And then Brooke White comes along. She readily admits that she doesn't have the multi-octave voice and doesn't do vocal gymnastics.

But she doesn't need it. Her voice is pure and clean with a touch of huskiness. She brings us back to a time when people sang songs, not just notes. She's been compared to Carly Simon and Carole King and I would add Karen Carpenter to that list, a singer who has been hugely underrated. They sang the songs and let the emotions come through, so well that even mistakes get translated into something real.

Brooke recorded "Songs From the Attic" a couple of years before her idol experience. She also did a music video for the first cut "Free". The album did not take off then. But failure is not necessarily because the material is bad. There's a lot of things that can prevent an album from doing well.

As it turns out this work written mostly by Brooke (9 out of 11 songs) is a really enjoyable listen. Mellow and yet exciting songs are interspersed with some fun ones, all of them well sung and written and in spite of having little money, it is a well executed album. Even the cover songs, Aerosmith's Dream On, and Coldplay's Yellow, Brooke has made her own.

Brooke was my favorite idol this year, and although I knew she wouldn't win, I suspect that she's going to have a long career in the music world. She would attract the fan that would stick with her. I also think that if the idols were allowed to sing their own material she might have gone even further than fifth place (which is not a bad placing anyway).

This album is being redistributed again, taking advantage of Brookes success on the show.

Highlights: Free, The Way Things Used To Be, Dream On, Come To My Rescue, In Love, Follow Me