In that awkward moment when Massachusetts Sen.-elect Scott Brown called his daughter Ayla “available” during his victory speech, maybe what he was really talking about was her just-released record, “Circles.”
Ayla Brown, an aspiring pop singer who was on “American Idol’s” fifth season in 2006, is taking advantage of her family’s newfound political fame by pushing the scheduled April release date of her five-tune EP to this week, making it available on iTunes at 99 cents a song.
At 21, Ayla already had a CD out — her 2006 album, “Forward,” sold only 3,000 copies, but the title track had legs. “Forward” was the disc’s single that earned a slot in the play rotation of adult contemporary radio stations nationally. It reached a respectable No. 34 on Billboard’s AC music charts.
With that kind of success, you can’t blame a girl for taking another shot at pop stardom.
Her new record shows she’s still pretty much the same singer she was when Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul agreed she was a “good” but undistinguished singer. That style she’s held onto sounds akin to Gloria Estefan — without the Miami Sound Machine spice. Her retro attack would have fit in perfectly with the dance-pop movement of the mid-’80s.
Back on “Idol,” acid-tongued Simon Cowell called Brown “robotic and somewhat empty” and on her video for the new EP’s tune “Pick it Up,” she proved his assessment correct.
On that black-and-white video, she projects a lifeless, drained quality that may actually be intentional.
In frumpy duds, Brown mopes through what could be her childhood New England home; her face is wracked with a pained expression. As the song builds, so does her bombast.
As an actress, she neither delivers a convincing boo-hoo, too-bad-for-me performance nor makes you believe she’s a stoic tower of inner strength.
That video is available on YouTube.
WATCH: AYLA BROWN’S “PICK IT UP”
In fact, Brown and her fans have been busy posting several pages of her performances from her early “American Idol” tries to club shows. Where she’s far more successful — and listenable — is in the sugary hip-pop marriage song “I’m So Happy,” where the melody is perky, the beat syncopated, and the orchestration is subdued enough that her middle-tone vocals are in front.
The EP opener is a lite-pop piece called “No More” that has a make-you-sway Broadway feel. She makes a huge mistake including this song because it makes her sound older, killing any youth appeal she establishes with “I’m So Happy.”
“Absolutely Everybody” is Brown’s dance-party, get-loose song. It suits her voice and lets you feel her youth. Since it’s a very succinct collection, “Circles” could have used a couple of known cover songs to be able to really hear what she’s capable of. Her own songs (she co-wrote four of the five pieces here) are limited.
Still, make no mistake, at no point does Ayla Brown embarrass herself with this record; that seems to have been left to Dad in his speeches.