Album Review: Danielle Bradbery - Danielle Bradbery

With Danielle Bradbery, the 17 year old winner of Spring 2013's season of NBC's "The Voice" enters the market with her 11 track, self-titled album. Does the album have enough to showcase the singer to be the star in the making that everyone who watched the show thought she'd become?

As for the rest of the album, well, it’s very, very strong. The Whitney Duncan, Jaren Johnston and Kylie Sackley-penned“Young In America” feels like a young Sara Evans complete with sing-a-long chorus and relatable verses while “Wild Boy” serves as a nice uptempo ballad. At the release of the album, fans are already familiar with “I Will Never Forget You” and this powerful ballad has a wall-of-sound feel in the introduction before Danielle sings a powerful ballad of loss that is certain to draw comparisons to Carrie Underwood (and make no mistake, Bradbery has the pipes to sing such powerful ballads). 

“Talk About Love” is a Brent Anderson/Jeremy Johnson co-write that is yet another mid-tempo vocal showcase (and potential single) which is entirely a youthful song about young love while “Never Like This” is another powerful vocal showcase (which also allows Bradbery’s natural twang to showcase itself too). “Daughter Of A Working Man” is a sweet song about finding your way, exactly the kind of ballad one would expect a young singer to perform. It’s fiddle and banjo-laced melody is absolutely gorgeous as well. 

As good as these songs mentioned here are, perhaps nothing on the album is better than “Dance Hall” or “My Day.” “Dance Hall” is written by Nicolle Galyon (who also cowrote “Daughter”), April Geesbreght, and Molly Reed and it’s the kind of youthful, contemporary yet still Country song that can and should be played on country radio. Some will call the theme about an open field dancing in the headlights kind of song as cliche and maybe it is but it still feels very youthful and appropriate for something that a young singer would be singing about. Meanwhile, “My Day” is absolutely stunning and powerful. Ross Copperman, Tom Shapiro and Mallary Hope co-wrote this one and it has that powerful vocal precision that we’ve come to know from Martina McBride and it may be the biggest, most showy vocal gymnastics track on the entire record.

It would’ve been easy for Big Machine and Republic Records to take Danielle Bradbery and molded her into the second coming of Taylor Swift or to have left her music in the past with what she did on The Voice” but instead Bradberry’s strong 11 song collection of music showcases a talent that could become the next big vocal powerhouse in Country music. 

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