Starting up Voice of the Week: Demi Lovato

New Year means new ideas for the blog! For one thing, there's an all-new Who Am I? page, because I was never quite happy with the old one. Now I hope it's more interesting and informative – but not too informative, this is the Internet after all. In addition to that, I made a New Year's resolution to explore and find more new singers/bands to listen to, and I'm going to use my blog to help it happen. Every week, I'm going to make a post about an artist, saying what I think of them and sharing a couple of songs by them. I'll be concentrating on recent discoveries (starting off with a couple of singers that I "found" late last year), but if it happens that some weeks I don't have time to properly research a new singer, I'll feature one of my "old" favourites. I'll try to do "Voice of the Week" every Wednesday, but if some Wednesdays turn out to be inconvenient for blogging, I'll make the posts happen some other day of the week.

Please note that I'm just expressing my own, subjective opinions here, and not all of the singers I'm featuring will be my absolute favourites. So I might feel completely indifferent about an artist that you are an enthusiastic fan of. This doesn't mean I disrespect your taste in music or think everyone should hate this artist. I'm not going to use any hate language in these commentaries and offending anyone's taste is the last thing I want to do!

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This week's voice: Demi Lovato


How I found out

Of course I knew she existed ever since Camp Rock trailers went all over the place, but the first time I actually checked up any of Lovato's songs was after I heard Warrior at a family friend's confirmation party.

Commentary

I was very positively surprised that Lovato actually has a really strong, "belty" voice. She's definitely improved since Camp Rock times. However, the songs themselves are hardly memorable in my opinion, with a few exceptions. The faster songs are mainly lots of beat with melodies that I can't remember five seconds afterwards, and the ballads are mainly lots of emotional belting with cliché lyrics. Lovato's songs tend to stick to the themes We broke up and now you've ruined me or We broke up, but I'm so much better off without you and I'm a super strong person now. I admit though that there are a couple of refreshing exceptions to this, but even then... the way the themes are expressed in the lyrics is extremely predictable and, like I said already, cliché. I guess I'm just a little too old for this kind of music.

Favourite song(s) 

Nightingale

Something That We're Not

Both of these songs are from Lovato's newest album, Demi. Nightingale is her best ballad in my opinion, I like the melody and even the lyrics too, mostly. Something That We're Not is a sort of song that makes you move, and I actually added it to my Spotify playlist of "running songs" – I'm really trying to make running a regular habit and it's so much easier when you take up-tempo music with you!

I would listen to this music when...

I'm running or cleaning my apartment.

Random lyric sample

I took that dirty jacket 
From the trash right where you left it 
'Cos I couldn't stand to see it go to waste
I know one day eventually 
Yeah I know one day I'll have to let it all go
But I keep it just in case
Yeah I keep it just in case
(In Case, album Demi)

Stars ★★

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What do you think about my "Voice of the Week" idea? Any suggestions of singers that I should check out? Ideas are welcome at any time!