Ed note: This is one of the things that I intended with this blog all along--informal music 'reviews,' where I share my thoughts about the music I'm listening to. Away we go.
I imagine that just about everyone's heard of Paul Potts--he was last year's Britain's Got Talent winner, and the YouTube video of his version of Nessun Dorma seemed to show up everywhere. In case you haven't seen it, you can see the first performance here at YouTube. I've included this one rather than the performance on the 'final' show because I *love* the reaction of the judges--first the eye-rolling, 'oh great, screechy bum' attitudes, gradually turning into something completely different. I mean, really, how often do you see Simon Cowell applaud someone's performance?
The CD was kind of an impulse buy for me; I'd intended to buy it whenever it came out in the US, but by the time I finally saw it in stores, it took actually *seeing* it sitting out on a rack that I remembered I wanted to pick it up. I finally got a good listen today on the way to work, and his voice is everything that I remembered.
Nessun Dorma is the opening track for the CD, and interestingly, I found that I preferred his BGT performance over this one. His rendition of Con Te Partiro (my favorite) is lovely, and to hear REM's Everybody Hurts translated into Italian and done sort of opera style was actually rather a lot more beautiful than I was expecting.
Voice-wise, there are a few rough patches here and there, and there are a couple of mix issues on the CD itself, but nothing too terribly bad. It distracts me some that, even when he sings in English, he rolls his Rs a lot--I'm sure that sounds really weird, but there it is.
While I can't admit to the same level of spine tingling that some of Amazon's reviewers make mention of, there's no denying that the man has a gift. Hopefully, he'll have the opportunity to share that gift again--I'd certainly look for it.
More information:
Paul Potts official website
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