A Look at Norway Idol Kurt Nilsen’s Album, “I”

During the World Idol competition, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the singing of Norway’s Idol, Kurt Nilsen. His voice was rich and he was able to sing a song made famous by U2 without doing a complete impersonation of Bono’s sailing tenor voice. I recalled them saying in his introduction that his debut album had sold over 75 thousand copies (which is impressive for a smallish nation like Norway) and decided after hearing him that I would make it 75 thousand and one sold. The next day I went out on the web shopping. No luck, although I was able to download several songs by his regular band, Fenrik Lane, at their official website. I also had to hit several of my favorite “we can find anything” music shops before I finally managed to secure a copy. Apparently, record company ineptitude isn’t limited to American Idol champs. If I owned the label where one of my singers was about to make a premiere in front of a global audience, you can bet the ranch that I’d have his CD available on Amazon, eBay, his website, hell I’d be hawking the thing on Clay’s and Ruben’s official sites! As soon as we can find a reputable website selling this CD, we’ll let you know because this is not one to be missed. With that said, here is what to the best of our knowledge is the very first American review of Kurt Nilsen’s debut album, I.

Track 1. Here She Comes

As I visited the various Norwegian websites that feature Kurt, one of the things I learned is that he normally plays guitar in addition to singing. This led me to hope a bit for something more electrically driven than we normally get from Idol champs and the first track is a good start. Although the background production is somewhat plodding and the song has a tendency to drift into an almost James Bond Movie theme style, Kurt’s vocals are strong. Lyrically the song has some nicely conversational turns beginning with the very first line, “Have you ever met my friend? Her name is June. She’s a solid piece of work…” His voice soars into the chorus and makes the sappy background strings completely unnecessary. Grade B+

Track 2. All You Have to Offer

More power chord guitars reminiscent of the hair bands of the ‘80s punctuate the song along with a solid rhythm section in which you can almost feel the drummer’s kit shaking through the speakers. There is a rather boring one-note guitar solo (think Matchbox 20’s “Real World”) but the steady rocking rhythm section makes it tolerable. Kurt sounds like he’s having fun in the song and stretches his vocals a bit up into the upper register, sliding up and down the scale with ease. Grade B+

Track 3. Breathe

At first I feared that somehow Faith Hill’s recent country hit had found its way across the Atlantic, but I needn’t have worried. The song drips with strings but this time they punctuate rather than compete with the vocals. Once again there are some unique lyrical turns in what should have been a very pedestrian love song. “Blow the horns, I need attention. I’ve got something I want to say. I breathe you in, you ease my pain when you come falling down from grace just like summer rain…” This one has hit single written all over it. Grade A

Track 4. Last Day of Summer

A pet peeve of mine in music is when the sound engineer creates multiple dubs of a lead singer in order to beef up the vocals and make it seem as if there is more than one person singing. It used to be a sure warning that the singer couldn’t carry the song and had to resort to studio trickery to sound good, but in recent years it has become a mainstay of modern pop. This track suffers greatly from it in parts and I think it would come over much better with some of Kurt’s cronies from Fenrik Lane backing him. That said, there is liveliness to this song that simply cannot be found on anything recorded thus far by any of the American Idols. The drummer lets loose with a particularly tasty bridge riff toward the end and the entire song feels more like a band than just a faceless session tossed together to back a vocalist. Musically the song harkens back to the best moments of Canadian rocker Brian Adams, although he never possessed a voice of this quality. Grade B

Track 5. Lost in Despair

Ballad alert! Ballad alert! This song positively reeks of American Idol production standards. It exists solely to showcase Kurt’s rather amazing voice. There is a soft female vocalist (see, they can spend the extra money for background vocalists when they want to!) singing counterpoint as he croons forth in a mixture of Bono and American country music star Gary Allen. The music is almost entirely synthesized and even though it’s one of the shorter tracks on the CD, it seems to be one of the longest. Grade C-