★★★★★
You know your music is in trouble when Barry Manilow has more flavor. Please pass this memo to the producers of Vanessa Williams' latest sleeper: mature music need not be dead or colorless to appeal to people over 30 or those eligible for Social Security, for that matter. Smooth jazz, toothless soul pop, and bland big band material that is adequate to a fault. Even a duet with Javier Colon on his one-time gem, "October Sky," gets a chilly reception under Ms. Williams' restrained treatment...
- www.soultracks.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
Despite the feeling following her first single, "The Right Stuff," that she was a promising young R&B/dance vocalist, Vanessa Williams has spent the majority of her singing career as an adult contemporary star, more comfortably positioned alongside the likes of Celine Dion than Chaka Khan. And after an eight year absence (save last year's holiday album Silver and Gold), Williams again aims straight toward her light pop/soul audience with Everlasting Love...
- www.soultracks.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
Two years in the making and recorded during filming for the fourth season of Ugly Betty, The Real Thing shows little sign of its protracted birth. Quite the contrary. It's as glossy, well-manicured and smooth as an air-brushed cover of Vogue magazine with no visible joins between its easily worn blend of 'breezy Latin rhythms, sultry jazz standards and dreamy pop sketches'...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Vanessa Williams, "The Real Thing"...
- www.billboard.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
An unfailingly sensitive set of romantic ballads (some familiar,
some fresh), Vanessa Williams' latest release functions as a kind
of corrective against her tough-cookie character on TV's "Ugly
Betty": This breathy-voiced babe wouldn't harm a fly, let alone an
ungainly office mate...
- www.billboard.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
No text for this review; see http://robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
With 14 longishsongs, beautifully sequenced and warmly sung, The Comfort Zone isless a pop record than the soundtrack to a giddy, heartfelt R&B; stagemusical about love ? minus the man. While not possessed of the moststerling vocal gifts in the biz, former Miss America Williamsnonetheless puts on a fine show...
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
Vanessa Williams has a talentfor turning steamy pop cliches into platinum records, so itcomes as no great surprise that her fourth pop studio release, Next, ispacked with lots of radio-friendly love, longing, and loss. Theup-tempo assertiveness of "Happiness" and the bittersweet "StartAgain" (written and produced by R. Kelly) should especiallyplease fans of her come-hither style. B-
- ew.com
2009-06-12
★★★★★
I.GIFt's telling that two of Vanessa Williams's last three studio albums were Christmas-themed. Recording pop music has always seemed like just another thing for the multi-hyphenate to add to her list of accomplishments, and it's been almost eight years since her last album of original material. That's not to say Williams isn't passionate about music?her latest release, a collection of '70s love songs titled Everlasting Love, is a true labor of love, but it won't do much to bolster her canon of...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2009-06-08