Without Regret
| Without Regret | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Kimberly Caldwell | ||||
| Released | April 19, 2011 | |||
| Recorded | 2009 - 2010 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length |
40:21 (Original) 39:58 (Offical release) | |||
| Label | ||||
| Producer |
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| Kimberly Caldwell chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Without Regret | ||||
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| Alternative cover | ||||
 Original 2010 cover |
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |    [1] |
| Slant Magazine | [2] |
Without Regret is the first major-label (and second overall) album from American Idol season two seventh place finalist, Kimberly Caldwell. The album was released on April 19, 2011.
Background
On May 21, 2009, Caldwell announced she had just signed a record deal with Vanguard Records and Capitol Records, and her debut album Without Regret would hit stores on April 6, 2010, but according to Caldwell's website and YouTube channel, she later announced that the album would be delayed and that the album will be pushed back to a July 2010 release date due to the addition of 3 new songs: the single "Desperate Girls & Stupid Boys", "Naked" and "Hotter Without You", which replaced the songs "Cost of Love", "When I'm Not Around" and "Sleep While I Drive" that were originally in the album's tracklist.
In December 2009, she released her first single "Mess of You" and in December 2010 she released "Desperate Girls & Stupid Boys". The video for "Desperate Girls & Stupid Boys" premiered on January 18, 2011 on VEVO.[3]
It was later announced that Without Regret would be delayed yet again with the release date being set for December 31. After a fourth delay, the album was finally released on April 19, 2011, over a year after the original release date.[4]
Release
After the album was released, it charted at number 7 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart for one week, selling 3,000 copies on it's debut week.
Reception
The album received generally negative reviews. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave a rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars, writing: "Usually, American Idol also-rans deliver their post-show album immediately, because if they don’t, they run the risk of being forgotten. Not Kimberly Caldwell. She took a whopping seven years to deliver her debut, Without Regret, staying in the pop culture spotlight for that three-quarters of a decade by appearing on TV and modeling campaigns, spending so much time at the fringes of the mass-market mainstream that it became easy to forget precisely why she was famous. Without Regret is designed as a reminder -- a full-blown, air-brushed, impeccably manicured collection of power ballads and updated arena rock designed to showcase Caldwell’s strut. Frequently, all these machinations just wind up playing like a straitjacketed, tempered-down Kelly Clarkson, retaining the oversized production but lacking the gargantuan hooks or personality, for that matter. Caldwell is not a bad singer -- she’s nicely throaty and gamely throws herself into all the songs, including pro forma Diane Warren and rather horrible Chad Kroeger -- but she’s so eager to play by the rules that she never winds up injecting these purely professional tunes with much firepower. Then again, Without Regret is designed as pure product -- and on that level it does succeed, since it’s pleasurable background music that never calls attention to itself. But that in itself poses a question: why wait this long to deliver a record that could have been released at any point in the last seven years to a similar amount of attention?"
Jonathan Keefe of Slant Magazine gave the album's rating a 1.5 out of 5 stars, writing: "The conventional wisdom with American Idol contestants has been that, lest they be forgotten, they should try to stake their claims in the pop market before the next cycle of hopefuls make it to the show’s live weekly broadcasts. Kimberly Caldwell, who finished in the middle of the show’s second-season pack (which included Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard) has taken a decidedly different approach. Between occasional modeling shoots, a short-lived romance with American Idol winner David Cook, hosting gigs for TV Guide channel, and even—spoiler alert—getting axed in half by cannibal hillbilly mutants, Caldwell has worked hard to keep herself on the periphery of the public radar. She’s not a household name by any means, but she’s retained a greater media presence than fellow castoffs like Lindsay Cardinale and Carmen Rasmussen.
That junior-varsity level of celebrity has afforded Caldwell the opportunity to wait a full eight years since her American Idol bid to release her debut album, Without Regret. The problem with the album, more than anything else, is that it does absolutely nothing to justify that long delay. It’s ultimately no better than the tepid debut albums from Aiken or Kellie Pickler, and it does nothing to establish Caldwell as a distinctive pop artist. If she has learned anything of value from the seven years since she last attempted to make it as a recording artist, it’s hard to tell.
Something that Caldwell struggled with during her time on American Idol was with song selections, and Without Regret is undone by some frankly awful songwriting. “Heart Like Mine” is yet more evidence that Kara DioGuardi and Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger are grossly overpaid for what they do. They take a grade-school attempt at writing a complex declarative sentence (“It’s not all right/You took what’s mine/I want it back/As fast as you packed up and left my life”) and try to shoehorn it into the song’s chorus.
Caldwell’s own attempts at co-writing, unfortunately, aren’t much better. The chorus on “Human After All” makes tiring use of repetition and has a weak melody, while “Say Love” is mired by overwrought lines like, “Who is this demon taking your place?/I don’t even know you anymore.” The remainder consists of songs that were largely written by committees of hired professionals and, as a result, use only the broadest of strokes and never incorporate a single first-person detail to make them distinctive. Whatever angle Caldwell may have been going for, and whatever point of view she may have attempted to convey, are lost in the poor writing.
Still, Caldwell does her damndest to sell the terrible material with conviction and sincerity. Her voice is actually interesting: Her husky alto has a heavy rasp, and she displays quite a bit of power in her lower register. A cover of Melissa Etheridge’s “You Can Sleep While I Drive” that appeared on early press copies of the album demonstrated Caldwell’s intuitive sense of phrasing, which might someday serve her well if she applies that intuition to stronger material with an actual edge.
Instead, songs like “Going Going Gone” and “Mess of You” position Caldwell as a poor man’s Pink. Producer Marshall Altman leans too heavily on the style made popular by both Pink and Kelly Clarkson. Few American Idol albums have shown any meaningful innovation or originality, but Without Regret is an especially weak debut, squandering Caldwell’s strong voice and outsized personality with its desperate, middle-of-the-road approach."
Singles
- "Mess of You" was released as the first single on Caldwell's official website and MySpace page on December 17, 2009.
- "Desperate Girls & Stupid Boys" was the second single released on December 3, 2010, which led to Caldwell to push back the release of the album to its current release date. The song debuted at number 30 on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play Chart.[5]
- "Naked" was released as the third single on 2011.
Tracklist
| Original | ||
|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length |
| 1. | "Heart Like Mine" | 4:01 |
| 2. | "Going Going Gone" | 3:50 |
| 3. | "Mess of You" | 3:10 |
| 4. | "Say Love" | 4:22 |
| 5. | "Human After All" | 3:32 |
| 6. | "Taking Back My Life" | 3:15 |
| 7. | "Cost of Love" | 5:00 |
| 8. | "Frozen" | 4:01 |
| 9. | "If You're Gonna Fall" | 3:43 |
| 10. | "When I'm Not Around" | 3:40 |
| 11. | "Sleep While I Drive" | 3:07 |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Producer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Desperate Girls & Stupid Boys" | Tommy Henriksen, BC Jean, Zac Maloy | Tommy Henriksen | 3:26 |
| 2. | "Heart Like Mine" | Kara DioGuardi, Chad Kroeger, Joey Moi | Marshall Altman | 4:01 |
| 3. | "Naked" | Espen Lind, Amund Bjørkland, Jean, Maloy | Henriksen | 3:03 |
| 4. | "Hotter Without You" | John-Mark Baxter Seltzer | Henriksen, Seltzer, MachoPsycho | 3:39 |
| 5. | "Say Love" | Kimberly Caldwell, Sean Michael Kelly, Andrew Thompson | Altman | 4:42 |
| 6. | "Mess of You" | Alana Grace, Michael Ochs | Altman | 3:10 |
| 7. | "If You're Gonna Fall" | Lucie Silvas, Jon Green, Dennis Matkosky | Altman | 3:43 |
| 8. | "Taking Back My Life" | Brett Epstein, Caldwell | Altman | 3:15 |
| 9. | "Going Going Gone" | Wayne Rodrigues, Eric Schermerhorn, Delisha Thomas | Altman | 3:50 |
| 10. | "Frozen" | Caldwell, Marshall Altman, Jason Gaviatti, Ryan White | Altman | 3:32 |
| 11. | "Human After All" | Caldwell, Altman, Kelly | Altman | 3:£2 |
Total length: |
39:58 | |||
Personnel
Credits for Without Regret adapted from Allmusic.[6]
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Charts
| Chart (2011) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Top Heatseekers | 7 |
References
- ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Review: Without Regret". Allmusic. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
- ↑ Keefe, Jonathan. "Kimberly Caldwell: Without Regret". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 25 July 2010.
- ↑ "Kimberly Caldwell Premieres Desperate Girls & Stupid Boys Video". hotzoneonline.com. Retrieved January 18, 2011.
- ↑ http://mmusicmag.com/m/2011/08/kimberly-caldwell/
- ↑ http://www.americanidol.com/news/view/pid/4331/
- ↑ http://www.allmusic.com/album/without-regret-mw0001965455/credits Without Regret Album credits.