Title - 'CoCo' (Universal Republic)
Artist - Colbie Caillat
For the past year, several songs from what is now her debut album "Coco" (her nickname) could be heard on her My Space page. "Bubbly" became the big hit - "the single" as it is known in the industry. "Battle" was always my personal favorite and I still think it's by far the stand-out in the batch of 12 tracks. "The Little Things" and "Magic" have been big faves with her My Space fans as well and they are sweet tunes which wisely put Colbie's sunny voice in the spotlight.
Whoever have been the caretakers of her My Space page this past year or two chose to tease the growing fanbase to the point where it was borderline sadistic. Everyone would desperately ask in the comment space on her page "When is your album coming out??!!" and yet it was not until this month that it was finally released. This strategy could have easily backfired: her fans are overwhelmingly teenage girls and twentysomething women and like most young 21st century consumers, they will often lose patience and move on to the the next "hot" thing. However, her fans have proved to be loyal so far - the result is that "Bubbly" shot to the top of iTunes this week and the album followed suit. Her My Space page gets about 50.000 plays - a day - and her total is past 10 million, going back to 2005!
My personal taste in music is unusally eclectic - I will listen to almost anything or at least give it a fair chance. And I love a lot of new music that "old" people like me (I'm 42) wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole - lots of snobbish babyboomers out there!
However, I have to say that the record ultimately felt like an anti-climax after all the teasing. I had hoped for more songs of the "Battle" caliber, more variety, more strongly defined melodies. I'm not asking for heavy duty lyrics - after all, Colbie is just 22 and thankfully not pretending to be singing "the blues" by way of blue eyed soul music. (Joss Stone and Amy Winehouse - are you listening?) But a little more surprises would have gone a long way.
But ultimately, this is a sunny breezy summer album which is what many people supposedly want and need at this point, with our world going to the dogs in so many scary ways.