'A Wonderful' Album (A Wonderful Life - Lara Fabian)

Member Name: sirg0508

Product:	A Wonderful Life - Lara Fabian
Date:	03/03/05 (466 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A wonderful album

Disadvantages: A couple i'm not so keen on

‘A Wonderful Life’ is the 2004 English language album from Lara Fabian. I was given this CD as a Christmas present and it hasn’t yet been out of my CD player! This is a 12 track CD featuring original material as well as English versions of a couple of her French tracks and one previously released track by Black which became the title for this album.

Lara’s previous releases have all been mainly French language except from a 2000 world-wide release called Lara Fabian which was her debut and only other English album. Lara is multi-lingual so there are also Italian tracks to be found in her albums as well as French and English although to my knowledge, there has not been a full Italian album release. Lara was born in Belgium in 1970 and began her singing career at the age of 14 (although she knew she wanted to sing from the age of 5). At the age of 18, she entered the Eurovision Song Contest singing 'Croire' (To Believe) and came in 4th place. She was selling well and went to Canada to promote her songs but fell in love with the place so she decided to break America and moved to Canada. She released a French language self-titled album in 1991 that went gold in 1993 and Platinum the next year. Her later releases were again French language based but in 1999 Lara released another self-titled album breaking new markets as it was in English.

After doing a little digging I found Lara has performed in several different music performances and you will find songs on the Final Fantasy soundtrack, A. I. Soundtrack, Dawsons Creek Vol. 2 and one in the film De-Lovely as well as others. Keep a look out for ‘9’ released in March 2005 but this is only a French language album.

This album explores love and life as well as the distinctive multifacets and paradoxes each bring. The title of the album brings these feeling to life – people are searching for ‘A Wonderful Life’ but use different ways of trying to achieve it.

I hadn’t heard any of the tracks before I received the CD and when I first put it on, I wasn’t so keen on it – it seemed slow and didn’t have much ‘oomph’ about it but on listening to it over and over it seemed to gather more speed. I wasn’t sure what sort of style it had but now I realise it is more acoustic. Some tracks only have Lara and a guitar but it sounds brilliant. As with Lara’s first English album, this one is still pop music but more acoustic pop. She sounds a lot more like Faith Hill than Celine Dion in this album (a huge compliment) but Faith in her more modern pop style rather than country. ‘The Last Goodbye’ sounds very like Faith Hill at the start.

Track listing:

1. No Big Deal
2. I Am
3. The Last Goodbye
4. I Guess I Loved You
5. Conquered
6. Review My Kisses
7. Unbreakable
8. Wonderful Life
9. Intoxicated
10. I’ve Cried Enough
11. Silence
12. Walk Away

The tracks were mostly written and produced by Lara her self with Rick Allison but some are also by Gary Barlow as well. For those of you unfamiliar with him, he was the lead singer in Take That. That should be something to put you off (I did when I read it!) but after hearing the tracks i. e. Tracks 1, 5 and 9 – they are actually rather good. He also mentioned several times in ‘All other instruments’.

My favourite tracks on the album are No Big Deal, Silence and Walk Away while Lara’s are Intoxicated, Review My Kisses and I Guess I Loved You. Silence is an English version of the French track (same name but pronounced ‘seelance’). It sounded very strange to hear Silence as it didn’t seem to fit as well as the French title but the lyrics are rather good – they slightly differ from the French lyrics. In the short of it, Silence is your best friend and helps you through life. If you do have the chance to listen to the French version, you will hear it is much more upbeat while this one seems a lot more mellow and acoustic. It is still upbeat but not as much as the French version. Walk Away compared to Silence is a lot slower and gives more of a heart broken feeling to it. ‘I could have sworn that you were a man that would never betray’… but he did. Almost moving to the opposite end of the musical spectrum is No Big Deal. It is a confession by Lara of feelings she has been hiding but this one seems like a person has lost all control of her life and her feelings to the point where nothing is felt – ‘But I don’t feel nothing, It’s alright, No Big deal’. I’d say we have all been there at some point but Lara brings these situations to life and does make you think about them.

There are a couple of tracks I was not so keen on when I received this CD and still do not particularly like them. These are surprisingly track 5 (the title track), track 6 ‘Review My Kisses’ and track 2, ‘I Am’. I have only just listened to the full Wonderful Life track and I say it is surprising, as it is one track that many of you will recognise. I recall hearing it on an advert many years ago but can’t for the life of me remember the name of it. C. Veamcombe wrote it if that jogs anyone’s memories. The lyrics go ‘It’s a Wonderful, Wonderful Life’. Thanks to some people knowing what I was talking about, I discovered this was a track by Black who also named their album ‘Wonderful Life’. I can’t really remember how the original goes so can’t compare them at the moment. ‘Review My Kisses’ seems a very slow track and very girlie in my opinion. I like to sing along but even though this song has some good parts it still doesn’t grab me.

One of the bad things I noticed about the CD, well actually the booklet inside, was the lyrics. These are not perfect and contain added verses (repeats of previous verses) that do not appear in the songs. There are also some mistakes in the lyrics (the wrong words) as well as missed punctuation. The booklet is also one that that you have to open out fully as the lyrics appear on 5 pages which are side by side which means having a long length of paper or folding it the wrong way which makes it rip apart easier. The text is quite small and in white on a grey background leading up to a black background – sometimes it can be a little hard to read depending on the light. There is a nice picture of Lara at the darkest end and turning the sheet over, there is a stone coloured background with more pictures of Lara – the front cover and another two of her posing. There is a lovely ‘Thank You’ to everyone she works with on the album, her parents and finally her fans.

True North at True North Studios in Cheshire produced a lot of the songs.

Comparing this album to her previous album is quite simple – they are very different. While her 2000 release was very strong vocally this one is far from weak but Lara gives this one a different feeling by almost whispering the words very softly and almost talking. In her last English album, Lara belted out the songs with everything she had but this one would not have sounded right if she did as before there were strong instrumentals whereas here they may only be a guitar in the background and sometimes it is just Lara on her own.

I would highly recommend this CD even if there are tracks I am not so keen on – I don’t hate them so don’t mind listening to them. If you like (pop not country) Faith Hill but with a more acoustic style, this album will be perfect for you. The reason I like it is the fact I can listen to it over and over and never tire of hearing any track. I have found with some artists, I get bored of hearing a track but as this is not continuously on the TV or on the radio, I’m sure I’ll still love it in years to come. I received mine as a gift from a friend Switzerland (not sure where he got it from) but this is available in Amazon.co.uk for £11.99 or you can find it at play.com for £10.99 (not available at the time of writing this).


More info on this album can be found at www.LaraFabian.com but the site may change to hold info on the new album soon.

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