Stronger with Each Tear Review

The instinct to move with the times is not wrong, and she has retooled successfully before. This time the retooling does not suit her. The tracks are built from the brittle synth stabs and processed vocals that ruled radio in 2009, a sound designed to flatter thin voices, and hers is the opposite of thin. I Am, produced by a hitmaker at his commercial peak, is the best of them and still feels like a template she was dropped into.

Stronger has energy. The Trip 2 Bermuda is a rare moment of air. Elsewhere the writing is generic inspirational content, uplift by numbers, the kind of thing that gets used in advertisements rather than sung to yourself in a car. She never sounds bad, she is incapable of that, but she sounds like a guest on her own album. It came and went, and almost nobody has gone back for it.