Clay Aiken - The Way / Solitaire

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Free Music Notes for The Way / Solitaire

Free Music Review: At last !!
Hit: 5 Stars

Someone at American Idol looks at the weekly practice performances and decides who has the two best songs of the night - and schedules them for the two last performances. That way the audience goes away thinking that the whole show was good, whereas some performers are clearly amateurish. Being billed last happened to Clay in the last American Idol TV saga, a lot. The three really big covers that they featured him on were "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Unchained Melody", and "Solitaire". All three were marvelous, with that clear and powerful voice - and persona so wrong for teen pop music - turning the covers into the highlight vocal performance of any show that week.

"Bridge" was on Clay's first singles release, and fueled an unprecedented number of sales for him. "Unchained Melody" couldn't be included anywhere because Justin Guarini's handlers had already commissioned the use of the song for him. A small tragedy. "Solitaire", actually the best of the three by Clay was missing in action from every recording, but was planned to be utilized for his tour, based on unprecedented fan response, wondering "where it was???" "Solitaire" is the result of someone getting wise to the complaints from fans about "Measure of a Man". Trying to meet the pop market of the 18-34 year old demographics, Clive Davis chose a number of homogeneous songs for"Measure" and overproduced them, resulting in a less than 5 star effort.

Clay's ability to let his voice grow and grow, the purity and power of his singing, accompanied by the same type of streamlined background music and well-played percussion bring "Solitaire" to life again. It's a long version of the song that makes you forget Karen Carpenter (who was singing a man's song off-gender, after all!) Sedaka's song of heartbreak is lyrically lovely, unlike many of his silly songs, and Clay makes you believe he's lost love and can't find it again.

"...and every road that takes him
takes him down.

...while life goes on around him everywhere
he's playing solitaire."

The "A" side of the disc is the sound, slightly latin-tinged "The Way" that I covered in my prior review as one of my personal favorite tracks on "Measure". Aiken is all over the airwaves with this song, but it is "Solitaire" that is selling the disc, and probably out of demographic...for more aging boomers like me!

Bravo!

The Way / Solitaire Poster

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