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For those who aren’t familiar with Tyler James, he was a runner up behind Leanne Mitchell on this year’s reality flop talent show, The Voice. Her winning single failed to even chart and the post show tour was cancelled, perhaps not the greatest launch pad for any singer’s career. However, Tyler was in fact one of the more exciting contestants on the BBC’s answer to the X Factor.
He released his debut album ‘The Unlikely Lad’ through Island Records back in 2005, which enjoyed a short-lived bout of success, but he quickly slipped off the radar soon after.
The London based soul man was best mates with the late Amy Winehouse, which does add a rather alluring string to his bow, along with his undeniably strong voice. He has been marketed as the new Justin Timberlake, because he can do that really high falsetto thing and is partial to wearing sharp suits and being slick and charismatic.
Lead single ‘Single Tear’ peaked at #28 in the UK, and is a polished, ‘Cry Me A River’ type song. The video features him getting hot and heavy with a number of ladies in the back of a cab. It’s a bit much, and the saying ‘sex sells’ sprung to mind, but in this case, it didn’t sell all that well.
‘A Place I Go’ has been released at an opportune time, with RnB creeping back into our view, good RnB though, which has, for the most part become almost vacant from the charts in the last few years.
There is nothing wrong with the album, but there is nothing particularly right about it either. His cover of ‘Higher Love’ is a highlight, but the rest of the tracks seem to blend into one another. Tyler has all the credentials of a pop star, but seems to lack the fluency and variety to instate himself as anything more than that guy who was a runner up on The Voice.
