Coco

Your career starts from your profile

MySpace may become a great tool for a “next big thing” search and labels should definitely appreciate it. It all looks quite tempting. No more live shows combing and demo tapes routine simply feel the audience’s pulse by a number of virtual friends, you don’t even have to count them - information comes automatically. Nice! Now you can dismiss a couple of employees who were responsible for new bands and save some money on salaries. It sounds like a fiction of course but let’s face the truth – MySpace stars are not few and far between already. Their stories are always the same: she (they are mostly females for some reason) uploads her tracks on her page and 6-12 months later is having a record deal from a major label. And as far as MySpace career phenomenon is experiencing its early days we all can be witnesses of the milestone events taking place in this sphere. One doesn’t have to look far for examples. The name of a new network sensation is Colbie Caillat. It is rumored that she became one of the top female artists on MySpace only four months after she uploaded her songs. Her number of friends swelled to more than 100,000. Her profile has been visited over 3 million times, and her tracks have more than l0 million plays. Sounds impressive, right? And of course she also has her debut album Coco ready.

Power of music

Any story of “from rags to riches” type may produce a pretty ambiguous reaction from a common person. And there surely will be comments with a good share of irony and even distrust among all the others opinions concerning this occasion and this is quite normal. However, it is worth admitting that Colbie Caillat’s success depended completely on the power of music behind her. MySpace is undeniably powerful media tool but there exist thousands of other artists who also have profiles and their songs there. So let’s try to depart from discussing Colbie Caillat in terms of popularity and estimate her album in terms of its artistic merits. Coco as such is a pretty light and pleasant record. Colbie sings simple and unpretentious songs in the vein of American folk rock. That are lots of acoustic guitars and backing vocals, a little bit watered down melodies and a soft, pop rock rhythm section. Everything sounds quite familiar and comes in very easily. The album consists mostly of half-ballad songs and has that characteristic romantic atmosphere. All the tracks are played in a pretty slow tempo and Colbie periodically goes down to singing against regular acoustic strumming. For the 40 minutes of the album’s playtime a listener will hardly ever feel neither discomfort nor tension, he would rather feel a desire to find a cozy place somewhere on a summer porch to watch the sunset from there. And perhaps here lies this record’s secret of success. People like listening to those things they are familiar with and if the record was done on a proper level than most likely it will be in demand.

Quality is an important thing

Coco has absolutely no problems with production. The overall sounding fully coincides with the inner context of the album. Every instrument sounds simple and comfortable - according to the standard rules of pop rock music. Let’s put it like this Coco has a very right sound – there is nothing you could add here and there is nothing you could take away. The album has no uneven and unexpected things, everything sounds smoothly and seamlessly. The songs swimmingly flow one after another and this creates a feeling that you listen to one big composition. Nevertheless, it is still possible to point out some certain songs. First of all it concerns Bubbly – the song that initially brought Colbie her network fame. Midnight Bottle reminds rumba a little bit and ballad called Battle features great vocal wails in the vein of The Cranberries. You can pay your attention on The Little Things – this is just a good song. However, all the songs are approximately of the same strength so any of them may become somebody’s favorite. The overall summery is as follows: Colbie Caillat has done a good work. The album doesn’t claim to be the best or innovative record but for a debut disc from the unknown artist the result is definitely good. And the success that she managed to achieve looks fully deserved. She simply used a right tool for self-advertisement. So write good songs and record them on a good level and it is quite possible that you’ll be the next MySpace star.