Crystal Bowersox's Debut Album

Cafe Society
1

Is called ‘Farmer’s Daughter’. It’s an interesting album.
You can hear it in full, streaming audio at AOL.

This is the best album from an Idol Alumni yet. It’s a mix of rock, country, southern rock and folk.

An interesting story about the album: The studio wanted the first single to be the song on the album written by Kara Diaguardi and the guy from Nickelback. Which I think is one of the only two songs Bowersox didn’t write (the other is a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What it’s Worth’). Anyway, Crystal got into a fight with the studio over it, and forced them to change it to ‘Farmer’s Daughter’ - a song Crystal wrote and performed long before she was on American Idol.

I heard an early demo of the title song, and I thought it was awful. It was heavily overproduced and destroyed the entire rhythm and feeling of the song. But on the final album cut, it’s much, much better. All the overproduction was stripped away. I sense that Bowersox is fighting for a lot more content control than 19 entertainment is used to.

Anyway, give it a listen if you’ve got the time. There are a couple of songs on there that could easily be big hits on the country chart at the least.

2

I only listened to the title track and I’m not impressed. The song moves very slowly, and the riff is boring and repetitive. It’s very personal, but I don’t give a shit about her history, because I can’t relate to relinquishing the “farmer’s daughter” persona.

Sorry, Sam. I just don’t think it’s that great, and I was a big fan of hers during Idol.

3

I didn’t hate anything, I always enjoy her voice, but I’m not much for country. I think she’s extremely talented but she can do much better and be much more interesting than this.

I’m also disappointed in her cover of “For What Its Worth” - that’s a brilliant, iconic song that she has made completely generic.

4

I sort of agree about ‘For What it’s worth’. I think the problem is that it’s just one of those songs that’s hard to cover. The original was so unique and distinct that anything you do to it is going to take away something it had.

I still think the album is very good. Some of the faster tracks on it are really well done, and the album has a distinctive voice, unlike most of the generic, overproduced AI albums.