Susan Boyle – I Dreamed a Dream (a J!-ENT World Groove Album Review)

December 9, 2009 by Dennis Amith 

A solid album showcasing Susan Boyle’s vocals.  An album consisting primarily of cover songs but an arrangement that compliments Boyle’s vocals.  Overall, a safe but yet fantastic debut!

ARTIST: Susan Boyle

ALBUM: I Dreamed a Dream (Digital Version)

LABEL: Syco Music/Columbia Records

DURATION: 43:00

RELEASE DATE: November 23, 2009

1. Wild Horses
2. I Dreamed a Dream
3. Cry Me a River
4. How Great Thou Art
5. You’ll See
6. Daytime Believer
7. Up to the Mountain
8. Amazing Grace
9. Who I was Born to Be
10. Proud
11. The End of the World
12. Silent Night

Susan Boyle, a singer who came from a village in the UK and came on the first episode of this year’s “Britain’s Got Talent” to a crowd of disbelievers.  Many saw this 47-year-old woman come on stage and tell Simon Cowell that she wants to become a professional singer and said that she has never been given a chance and would like be like Elaine Page.  Of course, the crowd looked at Boyle with their eyes rolling up thinking that she would go nowhere.  But once she started singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables”, that is when the crowd, Simon Cowell and the judges were just amazed by her beautiful voice.

After the performance, the video of her performance went viral online and even featured on various news sites around the world attracting millions of people worldwide and introducing people to this talent and reminding people that you can’t judge a book by its cover and in this case, Susan Boyle proved the naysayers wrong.

And now here she is with her first album “I Dreamed a Dream” and again, she has proved the naysayer’s wrong as vocalist has debuted #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts beating out new album releases from Rihanna and Adam Lambert.  Boyle has since sold over a million records.

I’ve listed to Boyle’s “I Dreamed a Dream” several times already and I’m really impressed by her vocals.  The arrangements chosen for several of the tracks compliment her vocals which most of the tracks comprise of piano and strings.  With some songs such as her wonderful rendition of “Cry Me a River” featuring a great touch of jazz, her “Les Miserables” cover of “I Dreamed a Dream” is just as fantastic as her performance on television, to the organ version of “Amazing Grace”, the acoustic guitar driven cover of the Skeeter Davis song “The End of the World”, a piano driven version of the Monkee’s “Daydream Believer”,  to the choir-backed “Who I Was Born to Be” and ending with a Christmas song with “Silent Night”.

But this is literally a solid album with each track sung very well.   Most of the songs featured on the album are covers but there is one original track “Who I Was Born to Be” which is wonderfully sung.  Seriously, this whole album showcases Boyle’s vocals and I do believe that working with cover songs worked well for the release of this album.  Sure, it’s playing a bit safe but at the same time, it reminds us once again that Boyle has been blessed with a remarkable voice.