Blake Lewis - Audio Day Dream
4 Dec 2007
Review by Meghan Kearney

These past couple days I have been letting my friend Meagan stay with me until she moves to Connecticut to work for ESPN, and in return she keeps buying me goodies. This morning she came in my room with Blake Lewis’ (the gorgeous faux-hawked beauty boy runner-up from last years American Idol) album. I kind of laughed because I had a geeky fan crush on him while he was on American Idol, and I’m not the first person to have American Idol star albums rotating my CD player. But secretly, I was excited to listen. So, because of this odd choice of listening material, I’ve decided to give my opinion on the pop star’s first release.

The album is called Audio Day Dream, which already brands it as a Backstreet Boys throwback, and some of the songs include the numerical counterpart of the word “two” in their titles. You’ve just got to love to hate that right off the bat.

If anyone actually watched season 6 of American Idol than you already know Blake’s style consists of beat boxing and Maroon 5. This album starts out as you may have expected. The opener slightly sounds of Aerosmith’s Dream On and transitions into the Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque hip-hop party track Break Anotha. As the album continues, each track’s got its own interesting sound that will absolutely have you bobbing your head no matter how much you may dislike pop music. As expected, Blake doesn’t shy from replicating Adam Levine’s style through his vocals, and many of the background beats and instruments, but he still maintains is own little uniqueness through his sweet beat boxing skills that give fellow former pop star gone hip-hop artist JT a run for his moolah. And despite how computer altered his voice may be, its got that soothing appeal that a good top 40 star needs.

What I love most about this album though, are the quintessential pop-star tracks bundled at the end of the track list, starting with End of the World, which is my favorite track on the album. Although the first 15 seconds of the song may make you feel part of a John Hughes movie, once the bass drum kicks in, so will your tapping foot. This little pop ballad section of songs can only be described by picturing yourself at your middle school dance sitting by the wall watching the classmate you had a crush on giggling in a group of their same sex friends huddled on the other side of the room, while Blake Lewis spins along with the disco ball of course.

So anyway, with a surprising little change on my iPod, I’d say this album is a pretty good listen, and I’d like to see Blake Lewis revive the boy band goodness in my heart, and maybe even in the industry... but that may be the geeky fan crush speaking…