31 Minutes to Take Off

Mike Posner’s first big steps

The new generation of listeners must be already used to those performers who managed to surface to the big stage, reach out for the mass audience and find good labels via Internet and channels it provides. A Detroit-native, Mike Posner, is a typical example of a person who exploited efficiently social networks and a computer-based music studio to promote his musical career. This young man, actually never leaving his college dormitory, cooperated with his enthusiastic friends to record a number of worthy demos which soon were posted on-line to be listened to and seen by anyone willing to do so. Within a short period of time, this guy made contacts with a major label and released in 2010 a debut album with an intriguingly sounding title 31 Minutes To Takeoff. Probably, this is the stardom orbit Mike Posner is going to take off for already. Any way, this CD will help him.

31 Minutes To Takeoff: following the best

If you just take a quick look at the cover of the new CD, you will immediately have a streak of comparisons, recollections and associations flying through your mind. Indeed, Mike Posner, looking at you from this picture, resembles heavily Justine Timberlake. We can not know for sure if he wanted to look like that, but this is only the beginning of the parallels we will draw. We are now welcoming a young R&B and dance pop-music performer who is vividly encouraged by Timberlake’s glorious experience. The difference is that Posner, unlike his older and more successful fellow, does not apply orchestral arrangements, but relies widely on keyboard accompanying, which adds more melancholy to his music. You will believe this after tasting Save Your Good Bye, and Falling, where piano and synthesized keys are used. Posner’s vocal parts and heavy exploitation of drums leave no doubt that is primarily an R&B album, but it is enhanced with very sweet, albeit simple, pop-tunes, like in Bow Chicka Bow Wow, and Gone In September. This is cool and nice to listen to, but we have already tried this.

Definitely, a great potential

Posner’s singing is not only very good, but also highly similar to what and how many other performers sing. This is why, if you do not know whom or what you are now listening to, you have great chances to mistake Posner for another singer. Apparently, well aware of that, Mike makes efforts to bring some originality and novelty into his style with the help of lyrics. There are moments when he does disclose interesting images and connect them with proficient rhymes; but there are some songs where he goes too far attempting to make a bold statement. In the single Cooler Than Me, and a track called Cheated (both, by the way, being powerful candidates to have lots of air-play) the singer affords himself too much by speaking too harsh to the opposite sex. In the contemporary democratic society, such gestures may be easily seen as misogyny, a stigma that may be costly to a young performer. On the other hand, we can take it as an effort to show off a strong character or to earn a reputation of a frank and honest companion. What do we have then? As an end product, we have a very nice album without big flaws, but with a number of hits, made by professionals who know what the contemporary listener wants. Mike Posner is rather copying someone, than is the one whose style someone will copy, but this young man surely has everything required to take the reigns very soon.