Soulo - Blender

Review

Soulo

(Universal)
Release Date: 11/11/2003 12:00

After six successful years of cheesy harmonizing in America’s third-favorite boy band, Nick Lachey has left 98 Degrees for that rocky road toward musical maturity. The dreadfully titled Soulo (he is both solo and soulful, see?) is produced by the teams behind Michael Jackson and Avril Lavigne but suffers greatly under the weight of wind-swept love songs that recall not George Michael, which would be fine, but ’80s balladeer Richard Marx. “You’re the Only Place,” for example, might just be the most over-earnest smoocher of all time. Occasionally, he does find a pulse — “Shut Up” is slick and rhythmic — but the gap between Lachey and, say, Justin Timberlake remains as vast as the Atlantic Ocean.

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