August 23rd, 2009 11:19 am

Jordin Sparks: “Battlefield”

‘American Idol’ 2007 winner Jordin Sparks proves she’s a solid upcoming artist with her second album, ‘Battlefield’.

Jordin Sparks has already proved she’s one of the ones to watch out for from ‘American Idol’, arguably the only other Pop/R&B winner of the program to have continued success in the international market alongside Kelly Clarkson. Her debut album sported hits such as ‘Tattoo’, ‘One Step At A Time’, and thewWorldwide smash duet with Chris Brown in 2008, ‘No Air’.

Now she’s back with her second album, ‘Battlefield’, and it’s a really solid album, surprisingly so for this reviewer, not many albums are that easy to listen to from start to finish, sometimes you have to be in the groove not to skip certain tracks, but Battlefield has such a good flow, from Pop/ one moment to a string of lighter R&B numbers that still pack a punch and don’t descend too much into monotonous balladeering, which is a pitfall some R&B artists fall into quite often.

The lead single ‘Battlefield’ is a pretty multilayered and epic sounding song and a great choice as first single. Written by OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder (Who has been swanning around quite a bit lately, also behind Beyonce’s ‘Halo’ and Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Already Gone’) it has had the critics raving. One reviewer, ‘Popjustice’ writes, “to start with you think ‘this isn’t up to much’ then by the end of it you think ‘this is going to be number one for precisely 2.5 months’. There is a brilliant middle eight where everything falls out and it’s just Jordin bellowing “like a battlefield! Like a battlefield!” and then it all crashes back in and then it all falls out again and then it all goes back in again and it’s all jolly good.”

The second single has been confirmed as ‘SOS (Let The Music Play)’ which is a pretty boppy R&B song laced with some great sound effects.

With so many great songs, Wikipedia notes it has been praised for having so many solid songs that any one of them could work well as singles.

General consensus on the TVAus forums is that ‘Don’t Let It Go To Your Head’ is amongst their top picks for a future Single. This reviewer if he had to pick his top most picks from the album other than ‘Battlefield’ would probably choose ‘Watch You Go’, ‘Let It Rain’, and ‘No Parade’. The first two have really good power in their beats, and the latter is a great dynamic R&B ballad sounding track.

I could also see ‘Emergency (911)’ becoming a radio favorite.

Overall a great effort by Jordin and if she keeps it up on future releases, she’s going to become quite an artist in my opinion.

A great, solid album.

Get the album on iTunes.