Customer Reviews

Wonderful Life (Chi)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Only the 2nd English speaking album from this beautiful chanteuse. I was captivated by her 1st English speaking album & `Adagio' got a lot of air-play in my home. So we had to wait a few years for this next one. I hadn't heard anything about this release to be honest until I idly wondered one day `Whatever happened to that `Lara Fabian?' & found that she had this release as well as a couple of Live Performance CD's & a French language CD `9' - all of which I subsequently purchased. Anyway for this CD you have some beautifully arranged songs. There are obvious comparisons to `Celine Dion' vocal-wise & that's really no bad thing. I think I would say that Lara Fabian sings on a lower register than Celine. Celine has an admittedly great voice. You just have to forgive her, her Vegas goody two-shoes trappings and at times slightly wearing persona. This CD starts of with 2 big tracks straight away. `No Big Deal' is a little bit of energized vocal-pop histrionics while the next track `I Am' is highly romanticized & orchestral, augmented by Lara's highly sensual vocals. Very sexy stuff to my ears I have to admit. I believe she has in the past done Musical's & it seems to show as she's very emotive & soul-searching on many of her songs. She really acts them out & pours her passions into every line, especially when she hits those higher registers & hangs her lush voice on a single note to really let you know that this girl can sing. As you would expect the back up music is very Symphonic in places. Much piano tinkling, harps, flutes & symphonic accompaniment - check `I guess I loved you'. Many of the songs on this album are Slow/Mid-Tempo and that's fine for Lara. She knows what she's good at and excels. It took me a couple of takes to recognize `Wonderful Life' redo but it fits nicely into this CD. All in all a very great pleasure to listen to. I gave it 4 stars as it didn't quite blow my socks off. But I'd say at least ½ the tracks are truly excellent and worthy of 5 stars. I'm a sucker for Lara's voice & if you are too you will not be disappointed with the CD.

This CD is the kind that takes you from refreshing to intense emotions... It embraces a wide variety of elements that make it very versatile. I have every single CD she has released; the French ones, the English/Spanish one and the previous English one. I've also got all her DVD/Video concerts and I can say she always surprises me with something new/original. She dares to go to wide ranges of music and always does it absolutely perfect; from opera to pop music.
Although this CD is very enjoyable, I consider her previous English one more enchanting and contagious. Also, in terms of songwriting the previous one is better accomplished and is more romantic full of heavy hearted/passionate songs. The pop-like tendency of this CD could be, to some extend, as a result of the lack of attention the American audience gave to the 1st one. I personally believe that she should stick to her initial inclination since her powerful voice can be appreciated better. She "may" hopefully & finally be noticed in the US. I think once she captures America's attention she can go from one extreme to the other music wise; just like she has done in her other language-albums.

Excellent artist and entertainer! Genuine talent!
Jhan G.

Lara Fabian has done it again. Her follow-up to her first all english album is "simply the best". I have read other reviews that have made claims to her "trying being the next Celine" or "if she wants to attain stardom, she must learn to speak better english", hmmmmmm? Lara Fabian has proven before and now she is a magnificent singer both in English and any other language she chooses to sing. This is a singer who SINGS. Are we that ethnocentric to believe for a singer to be STAR they must speak excellent english (ABBA who?) and must be a success in the U.S. Fabain transcends to a new level of existence on this album. Her voice is as clear and pristine as ever on the songs; No Big Deal, Review My Kisses and I've Cried Enough. The self-empowering ballad - "I Am" - stakes her claim in the world of Divadom. I recommend to album to all who "listen" and "demand" musical perfection.

Laura Fabian is truly a european treasure that hopefully becomes and American one. The clarity of her voice, the octaves she is able to reach along with the incredible singles on this album qualify her for a diva.

In an era when so many performers lip sync or simply can't sing, Laura Fabian's Wonderful Life is powerful, crisp, well written and the vocals are amazing. This woman can sing!!! My only wish is that one day, I get to see her Live.

The only advice would be to BUY this album.

We've been waiting for 5 long years, but finally she did it! After her first english recording dated 1999, canadian artist Lara Fabian released this new album called "A wonderful life", which is a confirm of her magnificent talent and good taste for music. 12 amazing tracks full of class and style. The album opens with "No big deal" and "I am", good examples of how an up-tempo song can be so nice without beeing too commercial.
First single "The last goodbye" is simply amazing: beautiful lyrics, powerful and positive.
But Lara gives the best of herself in tracks like "I guess I loved you", really a masterpeace of beauty..so intense, emotional, touching..
Lara's cover of "Wonderful life" is the other higher peak of the album: arranged and sung with so much class, it will become for sure a true gold classic of Lara's discography. The album features also english versions of two songs previously released in her last french album "Nue": J'y crois encore becomes "I've cried enough", while Silence keeps the same title, but receives a new arrangment, more acoustic (fantastic the chorus singing "silence, silence!!!", vraiment genial Lara!).
If you want to spend a full hour of absolutely pure emotions, relax and good melody, just buy this album and play it.. you'll fall in love with it immediatly! Everytime Lara Fabian releases a new recording, it doesn't matter if she sings in english, french, spanish or italian, her incredible power of love brings her higher and higher..

I love Lara's CD. It is a shame it hasn't been released in America. The more I listen to it, the better it gets. She deserves more recognition. My favorites right now are I AM and Unbreakable. Try it, you'll like it.

First, this is the most personal of Lara's albums. Regardless of whether she wrote the song or not, each of these songs is a direct comment on her concerns and philosophy, her psychological state if you will. In that sense, it is a true "Singer/Songwriter" album, and extremely coherent thematically (ironically, because the music is more variegated). She was approaching this on Nue, but I think at that time her pain was too fresh. A number of the songs on Nue brushed what was concerning her, or tried to put a brave face on it (does one really think she felt, as in "S'en Aller", that it was 'good' that he went away?). Here she is blunt and honest, and more "naked" than on Nue. It's great to see one really facing oneself.

As for the themes, I believe there are three. Because it's all about her life, there is a natural overlap among them, and some songs that would seem to be about one theme are really about another. Here's my view of what they are (with some help from Lara's own words), and which songs fit, for the most part, in which category.

THEME 1: This is in response to the bashing she has taken in the French (and to some extent Canadian) press for being too aggressive. Lara has certainly gone through hell in response to this bashing, and a number of these songs show her response. "I Am" shows she has gained much more humility than it's counterpart "I Am Who I Am" on the first English album. Now she has 'empty hands' and asks to be accepted for who she is, rather than proudly proclaiming who she is. "Unbreakable" is telling the world that for all her apparent strength she is not unbreakable, and these things hurt her. "Conquered" shows a desire to have someone else take control of her life, so she won't have to fight anymore. And "No Big Deal", actually a transition song between this theme and the third one, confesses to having 'made a mess of things', but, you know, it's really no big deal. The songs in this category are generally the up-tempo songs, almost as if the bashing she received was like the striking of percussion instruments.

THEME 2: This is the final coming to terms of the end of her love affair with Patrick Fiori, although not without sadness. On NUE it was just too soon; now she can take a breath and put it in better perspective. [Although 'I Am" is not really about this theme, the overlap is apparent in that song because even there she says 'Now I can dream again'.] The songs in this category are the most passionate on the album, and some would say the best. "Intoxicated" is the saddest of these - it implies she will never really recover in this life. In "I guessed I Loved You" she blames herself, perhaps if she loved him more the break-up wouldn't have happened - another very sad thought. "Review My Kisses" is more detached - she acknowledges the pain, and doesn't want to be in a position in which that can happen again. And by "I've Cried Enough", although she's not 100% sure she really has, the progress has been sufficient that she can even play around with it a bit, as she does at the end of that song. Her lingering bitterness is apparent in the last song, and purposely the last song, "Walk Away", in which she seems to take special relish in the last lines "I could have sworn you were a man that would never betray." I don't think we as fans can truly appreciate the severe psychic shock she went through, made so much worse by having it so public; it's a testament to her strength that she survived as well as she has. She's a model for the rest of us.

THEME 3: Whereas both of the earlier themes were about the harsh travails she has suffered in the past few years, this theme is about the response. As Lara says so brilliantly in the bio on the Sony website, the way to get through it all is to live in the moment. Otherwise one is left regretting the past, or crying over a vanished future. On the web site she describes how "A Wonderful Life" is about transcending the need to laugh or cry, each moment being magical if, as she says, we only have eyes to see it. The Last Goodbye is literally about savoring each moment with a beloved (after all, as she knows very well, it may soon be gone). And "Silence", in this case perfectly in harmony with its Nue equivalent, acknowledges that the way to get into the moment is to stop thinking - Silence "is the best friend you have in the world" precisely because it takes you out of the world of troubles and allows you to experience the moment. In Lara's website interview she says that sensations - music, food, love - get you to more easily live in the moment, and that's certainly true. The goal of many disciplines (Zen, for example), is to get you to live in the moment without the need for external stimulus. And "No Big Deal" takes a bow to this concept - really, if you don't think about it, so what if people criticize you - it really is no big deal.

This is a great album, thematically the best she's ever produced, because her pain has provided her the greatest incentive to search for answers. This album is about the pain and the answers. It's a gift to all of us, and can perhaps help those when their 'great incentive' comes around.

Myself, I am not a big pop fan, but this girl has some of the most incredible vocals i have ever heard. Lara Fabian's voice just shines on all of the tracks, which makes each one incredible, no matter how poppy it is. This album possesses a lot of different ideas compared to her other albums, but don't get me wrong, it is still an astounding work. She just went more to the pop side rather than the power ballads, like her first english album. I personally love it when Lara uses her full voice and examplifies a great deal of emotion. My personal favorites on the CD are -

I Guess I Loved You - The power in her voice is amazing! If you liked "Adagio" you will love this.
Intoxicated - Another slow and powerful diddy
The Last Goodbye - A little too poppish, but her voice just soars
Walk Away & Wonderful Life - I love it when she goes acoustic style. Reminded me of "En Toute Intimite"
So everyone needs to buy this album if for nothing esle but to recognize her amazing vocal technique. She can litterally send chills down your spine!

"A Wonderful Life" is the second English Language CD from the Belgian Born, Montreal Resident, Lara Fabian. A Superstar in Canada, France and other French Speaking Countries, she is still relatively unknown in the English speaking world, despite a big U.S Dance Hit "I Will Love Again" (courtesy of CHER's "Believe" songwriting/production team). This time around Fabian's CD is Pure Adult Contemporary POP and completely "sans" Uptempo Tracks! If you are a fan of the genre this is as good as it gets! To balance Lara's POP effort and for variety, I recommend the edgier (and darker) but no less Adult, Pop/Rock of AMBER's "My Kind of World". This CD is packed with Pop/Rock gems including the Pat Benatar-esque "Just Like That", the Whitney Houston Meets Pat Benatar Power Ballad "Sacrificial Lamb, the Eighties Influenced "City of Pain", the Jazzy "Don't Follow Me Home", and the insightful "Your Kind of World". Amber is poised for a Mainstream Breakthrough. Billboard Magazine said in it's glowing review that "Amber deserves a spot in the Mainstream." One of the Best CDs of 2004. Variety is the spice of life - get BOTH Lara Fabian - "A Wonderful Life" and AMBER - "My Kind of World"

Lara's sophomore Eglish-language album may not have a single as successful as "I Will Love Again", however, "Wonderful Life" far exceeds my excepations. There is not a unpleasant song here. Her vocals are on point and the lryics suite her voice. The first single "The Last Goodbye" has wrongly been overlooked by radio, but is one of the many stellar proformances of this album. This is a vertually flawless album which is perfect for any Adult Contemporary fan. Other tracks worth mentioning are "No Big Deal", "Conquered", "Intoxicated", "I Am", "Walk Away" and "I Guess I Loved You." If you are a fan of this style of music, get this album!