As we all know full well, TV ‘talent’ shows are no such thing – they’re popularity contests, in which talent is a bonus but not a requirement. Thus cheeky Scot David Sneddon won the first season of “Fame Academy” before disappearing from the public eye, while third-placed Lemar slowly grew into one of the country’s most competent and self-assured musical exports. Will’s winning of “Pop Idol” was due in part to his standing up to Simon Cowell and simply not being Gareth Gates, while in Michelle McManus’ case the nation took Cowell’s bait and voted for the ‘unconventionally attractive’ option.
In “The X-Factor”, Steve Brookstein successfully courted the housewife electorate with his ‘Who, me?’ shtick, while G4’s borderline ludicrous performances split the remaining vote. Come their respective album releases, however, the tables turned, with the opera quartet vastly outselling the club singer-made-good, both bagging Number One in the process with a collection of cover versions. Yet on the blandly-entitled “Heart & Soul” there’s actually a relatively inspired selection of songs. Aside from the crappy Phil Collins ballad already foisted on us, ‘in aid of the Tsunami appeal’, it’s a choice of nu and old soul classics from recent Luther Vandross to vintage Jackie Wilson. Having had a false-start career recording faux Northern Soul with Take That producer Ian Levine, Brookstein (or his ‘advisors’) clearly knows what suits his voice.
For whatever you may think of him as a person, he’s capable of some lovely sung moments – when he can suppress the urge to do too-many-notes poperatics. At best, his voice is a shallow version of Vandross’ glorious croon (at worst, it’s try-hard Karaoke King). The quality of his performance seems indelibly linked to the nature of the original he’s covering, or rather replicating – the arrangements are sterile studio approximations of the source material with programmed drums and bland backing. On the understated tracks (the exquisitely sad “Dance With My Father”, “I Don’t Want To Talk About It”), he follows suit and acquits himself beautifully. On the belters (“Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher and Higher)”), it’s impossible to understand how he got that second audition.
Sincerity is in short supply, however, and the inclusion of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” with its David Brent connotations would seem to be a joke at Brookstein’s expense. The sleeve pics add insult to injury – on the front he looks chubby and sleazy, on the back he looks retarded. As with Will and Lemar, a second album will be the true indicator of talent beyond the short-term memory and residual affection of a primetime TV audience.
With no live dates booked beyond in-store appearances, it’s impossible to know if there’s a really a soul survivor inside Steve Brookstein or just a ‘nice guy’ who got lucky – “Heart & Soul” offers no clues beyond the credible contents of his iPod.
