Review - Lea Michele - Louder

Lea Michele has been poised and ready to make a solo album for so many years, it’s almost weird that it’s finally here. Long before any TV show, Michele was a Broadway belter. In fact, she made her first appearance on the hallowed stage at the age of 9 (NINE!), and she won a Grammy before the show started for her role in Spring Awakening (she’d go on to be nominated three more times with the cast of the hit series).

‘Louder’ is such a long time coming and she’s such a phenomenal talent...and that’s what makes this entire thing such a disappointment. Lea can sing circles around all the other silly pop girls, and she has star power to boot. She’s a huge star, and if she had just one real hit, this whole new part of her career could have taken off.

Sadly, ‘Louder’ doesn’t really give us a lot to work with on the radio front. Her true fans and Broadway devotees are sure to flock to the effort, but it doesn’t really feel like it has legs outside that crowd. Half of the album is aiming for the adult contemporary pop crowd while the other feels like a Kelly Clarkson track that didn’t make the album, circa the ‘Breakway’ period.

None of this is bad, and Michele belts belts belts the hell out of everything (but also knows how to ease things up when necessary), but you walk away wondering who she is as an artist and what she was trying to do with this album. While it’s a fair first effort, she may go the way of Idina Menzel (or, if you watched the Oscars, Adele Dazeem) and be a one off career.

Listen to: “Louder”, “You’re Mine”