3.0 out of 5 stars
"Music that you can snap your fingers to.", April 28, 2002
This review is from: Wonder of Love (Audio CD)
Despite its stereotypical "Best of Love songs"-esque cover, Keiko Lee's latest album The Wonder of Love is actually an extremely jazzy CD, mixing in hard rock, R&B and classical in equal measures. Consisting of mainly covers of renowned songs including TLC's "Waterfalls", Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All" and even "Alfie" from the film, Lee has a voice that reminds one of celebrated jazz divas in days gone and revolutionizes the tired, overused songs into fresh recreations. Currently Japan's most successful export to the jazz scene, Lee looks like a stereotypical J-Pop singer, but, like they say, looks can be deceiving. Her raspy rendition of "Almaz" definitely is the highlight of the CD, with her articulation of the lyrics really putting the depressing, yet likeable story across, while the opening title song's "The Wonder of Love" gospel-like feel really wraps around her tone perfectly. However, not every interpretation is wonderful, track 5's "The Bump" sounds like it's straight out of Boogie Nights- and I don't mean the 70's, while performing such a recent song like "Waterfalls" really doesn't suit her 50's jazz sensibilities that well. But worse of all has to be Greatest Love of All, which isn't actually Lee's fault, it being a horrendous song already, and we'd even go as far as saying that Lee does actually add a sense of allure to the track that was lacking when Houston performed it. That said, The Wonder of Love is an extremely entertaining CD for every jazz fiend in the world, and is actually what everyone wants to hear: music that you can snap your fingers to.
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