Bebo Norman - Big Blue Sky

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Music reviews of Big Blue Sky

Music Review: A Sophmore Disappointment?
Rating: 2 Stars

With enthusiasm, then, I rushed out to purchase Bebo Norman's sophmore effort, "BigBlueSky." After having listened through a couple of times, my advice is that if you enjoyed Bebo's first album, pass on the second. The charming folk vigor that made songs like "Walk Down this Mountain" and "Selwood Farm" such a delight to listen to has been replaced by a slick, over-synthesized pop sound reminiscent of Duncan Shiek before he faded into obscurity. Most of the songs sound as if they were written in order to get play on Top-40 radio. As a folk singer, Bebo Norman came off as a talented, honest, and refreshingly creative musician; as a pretender to the pop-Christian throne vacated in recent years by fading stars Stephen Chapman and Michael W. Smith, Bebo Norman has failed on all accounts. Norman's second CD is bland, uninteresting, and, downright disappointing. It's not only the music that suffers: the sharp lyrical content of his first album has also been replaced by tired, over-used pop poetry that differs in only in degree from so much of the garbage you hear on MTV's "TRL." From "Break Me Through" Bebo gives us the opening lines: "Today I woke up early, today I woke up sad//It's funny how it hurts me, the love I've never had// But I can feel you breaking through this mess//I can feel you through this loneliness." Is this any better than something we would expect to hear from 98 Degrees? Throughout the album, you keep waiting for Norman to show off some of the talent that made "Ten Thousand Days" such a success. Although he comes close on a few songs ("All that I have Sown"; "Where You Are"), the entire album is a very frustrating listening experience. Even Norman's sometimes powerful voices seems to have been muted, on most songs at least, by all the fancy instrumentation designed to sell so many more records.

For a great Christian CD, go out and buy "Ten Thousand Days." For a below-average pop record that never quite gets its feet off the ground, go out and buy "BigBlueSky"; a BigBlueDisappointment.

Description of Big Blue Sky

Christian & Gospel CDs

• Music > Styles
• Pop