In Korea, she's advertised as the next Mariah Carey. I found this so irritating, I had to go out and get the album; and true to my "drooling Mariah Carey fan" form, I'm smug to admit that Jordan Hill won't be stimulating any digestive glands save that for the ulcer-responsible.
Save a couple of tracks, there is nothing special about the album. Her squishy-husky vocal technique is similar to Toni Braxton's, save the fact that it seems to be devoid of all emotion (at least with Braxton, her voice's mood changes in every song). It's downright overdramatic ... in a bad way.
Everyone from Whitney Houston (high notes) to Roberta Flack
(pianissimo) to, yes, La Carey Mariah (note attack and
improvisation), is imitated shamelessly; this lack of originality
is fatal in today's Divadom. Many people sing along to divas (trust
me, heheh) and Jordan Hill is simply another karaoke mike bearer.
Only luckier.
When I first heard "Unbreak My Heart", my head rang with a very similar song, "I Don't Wanna Cry". But it was different enough for me to eventually accept it. Similar didn't-I-hear-that-song-before situations occur frequently; "I Just Had To Hear Your Voice" is very close to Celine Dion's "Next Plane Out." However, Hill's blatant pretending does not measure up to Dion's emotion-well performance. It's so boring, I can almost believe that it doesn't have a bridge section at all.
All the midtempo tracks are completely without character. Even after five listenings, I can't distinguish one from the other; they all sound like "For The Love Of You". Except the very last track, a dance remix of the first track, there are no all-out dance numbers; ballads and midtempo all the way, each artfully cloned from the previous. With six different producers, I can't imagine where they got this excess coherence; it's almost impossible. Then again, "almost" isn't absolute.
But there are exactly two good tracks which are single releaseable. "Remember Me This Way" sounds like something David Foster wrote for Whitney Houston, but since Hill's primary template is Houston, it works out. The other track is the aforementioned dance remix, a spirited "For The Love Of You". Like a respectable 90's diva, she has re-recorded the main vocals and added appropriate power choruses to add that shmaltz atmosphere Europeans are always producing. My advice: dump the LP version.
Now, I love divas. If the artist is female, has at least three octaves and has sold a couple of million LPs, I tend to fall for it. But Hill sounds more like a demo singer than a goddess; you get used to the tunes and even hum along, but she will never get to do the requisite Hot Shot Debuts, pack in Tokyo Dome, and sell promos without some major revamps and artistic responsibility. In other words, be the first Jordan Hill; not the next Mariah Carey.