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KATHARINE MCPHEE Katharine McPhee RCA
Katharine McPhee is over the rainbow -- way over it. In fact, she even has a song on her debut CD titled Over It.
Fans of last year's American Idol runner-up might be surprised at Kat '07: a sexed-up, urbanized siren programmed to do battle with Ciara, Christina and Beyonce. While her soaring version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow was credited by many with catapulting her into the finals of the nationwide competition, there's much less of that kind of singing here. It might disappoint fans who liked the good-girl image she displayed on the show.
Her producers and handlers meticulously calculated everything on this disc to appeal to the widest possible range of listeners and broadcast formats, from hip-hop to pop to R&B to adult contemporary (I kept waiting for heavy metal and polka tracks to surface, just to cover every possible combination). Sometimes it works, like on the opening track, Love Story, featuring McPhee's trademark ``ooh-oohs'' that evoke her (repeated) performances of Black Horse and the Cherry Tree on the show last year.
And sometimes it doesn't, like on Open Toes, a hip-hop ode to shoe shopping where she sounds quite out of her element. Do What You Do has somewhat more street credibility, fitting in easily on urban stations or BET.
Not Ur Girl is the closest thing to a mainstream pop song for the teeny-bopper audience, with a catchy melody over a standard rock beat that makes it the most accessible song on the album.
But it's on the power ballads Home and Ordinary World that McPhee shows she really can sing, with a voice that is at once sultry and breathy in the lower registers, and strong when it needs to be in the higher ranges. These two tracks, destined for dentist offices and supermarkets around the world, will remind listeners why they voted for her in the first place.
-- Wayne Parry
Associated Press
Katharine McPhee fans around the world