美国乡村歌后Faith Hill,在近两年接连囊获全美各大音乐奖项后,终于在歌迷期待下推出个人第五张专辑《CRY》,选择回归自己的福音音乐根源,添加更多的新鲜音乐元素,堪称出道至今最佳表现,主打曲“CRY”写下其个人在美国乡村电台初进榜及今年新歌纪录。
by Robert L. Doerschuk
Lavishly produced and packaged, Cry marks the continued ascent of Faith Hill from the lowlands of down-home authenticity to the heights of pop superstardom. Though plenty of Nashville A-team players back her up, the sound they churn out has almost nothing to do with country music. Riding a tide of massed synthesizer textures, sweeping orchestral strings, thundering drums, rock guitar licks, and melodramatic dynamics, Hill strives for the biggest possible gestures in her performance. The result is the kind of glitzy fireworks normally associated with Star Search or American Idol, in which the lyric takes a distant backseat to raw exhibitionism and only the most cursory nod is made toward country lyrical convention. (The nod is particularly schizoid in &This Is Me,& as Hill proclaims, &I try to love Jesus and myself...yeah, yeah.&) Beyond the general issue of taste, this approach raises twofold problems for Hill in particular, in that her established skills as a song interpreter are lost in all this sturm und drang and her voice, while undeniably powerful at its peak, doesn't have the range that allows most singers in this style, from proto-diva Barbra Streisand to flameout icon Mariah Carey, to at least milk the material at some superficial level. With all this in mind, it may be significant that Tim McGraw, a guest on previous Hill albums, makes no appearance here. Perhaps there's no room for country credibility, or even for a spouse, when one's career trajectory is as hot as Hill's.