Michael Bolton
Songs of Cinema

When you are so successful and has so many awards and recognitions as well as so many sold albums as Michael Bolton, isn’t it a bit lazy and unimaginative to release an album with songs from the silver screen? It can’t be considered very artistic or creative, and it isn’t exactly an own very different take on songs that we all have heard billions of times already – most of them already felt tired and old before Bolton made tired copies of them. Personally this is the first Bolton album I hear and I really think more of the character in the movie Office Space who hates Michael Bolton’s music than the musician Michael Bolton when I hear the name.

Musically it is well produced, Bolton sings okay but not amazing and the styles vary between the songs and it is both pop and rock music albeit nothing really heavy or powerful. The songs themselves are all very familiar and I don’t think you have missed many of them in your life. Dolly Parton makes a guest appearance in the song I Will Always Love You, an appearance that neither add or subtract anything to the album as the song is rather boring and she sings neither good nor bad. The only thing that slightly stand out is the ending Captain Jack Sparrow, a ballad version of The Lonely Island’s song with that name, a song where Bolton sings and that has been a major youtube success with over 160 million views – this version is much better though.

It is okay music all the way through with the ending song being rather great. Still, it is hard to overlook the fact that this release is rather pointless, just another release to a name that sells records just by being written on the cover. And he hardly needs to sell more albums, unless of course he has wasted all the money on pointless things like recording dull movie songs. One would imagine that a man with such success would be able to write something fresh and make something that doesn’t feel like a pointless rehash of something done too many times already.

It is not ready for the bin or a toilet flush but it is not something I think we should spend our money on, there are much more interesting albums out there. When hearing albums like this one it is not really surprising that I am more and more developing this feeling that musicians are very poor creative artists – all they do is copy what others have already done before them, like this album good songs but a pointless and tired release.

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