The worst album of the year?
The Curmudgeon | Latveria | 04/08/2009
(1 out of 5 stars)
"With the news that 2 out of the 3 finalists in 2007's X Factor have been dropped by their record labels, it's time for the first of 2008's performing monkeys to move a musical bowel before they too get relegated to the Scrapheap of Life.
This time around it's "loveable" (read; infinitely punchable) Irish teenager Eoghan (that's pronounced "Owen" - don't bother trying to remember it, he'll probably be dropped by the time you read this), with an album that, even though we're only four months into 2009, will almost certainly top Worst Album of the Year polls everywhere.
I'll give Simon Cowell this rare praise - he knows a dud when he sees one. Wisely dropping his offer of a record deal, Quigg was instead signed up by RCA records, who rush-released this excrement with all the thought and care of someone picking their nose. Basically, it's Eoghan Quigg: The Songs He Sang on the X-Factor - The Album. So we get freshly murdered tracks like Does Your Mother Know and Never Forget (with the hilarious blooper that didn't even get edited out, "Never Forget Where You've Coming From", hoo-wee that's quality control right there, guys), and you've never heard a cheaper, more low-quality sound.
The other cover versions here are all of similarly laughable value. Quigg's fairly awful voice can't convey emotion or any hint of depth; it's the sort of music you often hear in supermarkets who won't pay for the rights to play the original version, with the added difference being that there will be a small army of mentally challenged simpleton fans describing this album as "OMG amazzzinng lol" as I write this.
The one song of any note, however, has to be the lead (only?) single, 28,000 Friends, in that its the only original song on here. Tacked on to somehow suggest Quigg is an artist of any relevance or worth, it's a torturous rock-lite dirge about people on Myspace, Bebo etc. At least the other cover versions are well written pop songs ruined by a sub-standard moron and a production company with no interest or knowledge of how good pop music actually works; 28,000 Friends is just garbage on every conceivable level.
It's an insulting collection of poorly performed songs by an "artist" that the record company have obviously little faith in and for an audience they have clearly little respect for. And why should they? There'll be another Quigg just around the corner as the next X-Factor spews out even more hopeless hairbrush-in-the-mirror chancers and Quigg will soon be dropped like a hot rock, and the drooling, half-witted fans will fall in love with whoever sings nicely this year. In short - these people deserve no better than this.
Albums produced by these creatures are always terrible, that's no surprise. But this is an almost breathtakingly bad record; an album and a singer that both cling onto the past while having no future for themselves. Wretched. Simply wretched."
Track Listings (11) - Disc #1