Tom Odell
Long Way Down

Tom Odell's story is a bit of the usual one: a guy who loves music, tries to make it, falls and gets back up (losing count of the times), and in the end - after a period of waiting tables - achieves something.

Without a doubt, he is very young and lacks experience, factors that heavily influence the success of the album, but he also has potential. Unfortunately, this potential is decidedly untapped, at least in this work, and I'm not quite sure if it's an issue with the singer himself or the production.

The album is absolutely inoffensive, and I find myself agreeing with NME (which rated the work as terrible) rather than with the sales figures or other very positive reviews.

In my opinion, only two tracks are salvageable, Another Love and Hold Me. The former because, being a catchy piece, tending towards a classic Britpop, it’s a good single, and the latter because it brings a bit of liveliness to an atmosphere that is too suffering.

Evidently, Another Love was also very pleasing to Odell, so much so that he filled the rest of the album with clone-songs, which, after this track, is a "long road downward", just to reinterpret the title.

Excluding the aforementioned tracks, the rest could be one long song, where all the possible imaginations of musical clichés regarding love suffering are thrown in (fate wanted that Odell could not find a moment of serenity, it seems).

The fact remains that the album sells and that Odell is making a myriad of appearances on various TV shows (including the Italian version of X-Factor, with a moving candle-lit set spelling his name, I read).

In short, it's a commercial album that will be very popular with teenagers during breaks between Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus, just to have the impression of changing genre.

Maybe next time, along with a single, he'll have the diligence to prepare a real album.