Album Review: The Wanted - Battleground

Posted by Anthony - 3rd January 2012

Battleground is the second album from the boy band The Wanted. It follows on from the first album, The Wanted, which reached No. 4 in the UK charts and spawned 3 hit singles. Since its release Battleground has sold well and has so far reached No. 5 in the charts.

The Wanted comprise 5 members: Max George, Tom Parker, Nathan Sykes, Jay McGuiness and Siva Kaneswaran, who all live in London. Since their début single, All Time Low, was released in July 2010 the band has had enormous success. The 3 hit singles from the first album were followed by 3 more hits from Battleground i.e. Gold Forever, Glad You Came and Lightning. A new single from the album is Warzone.

The band display some distinctive voices and share out the lead vocal duties. This is very democratic but not always a good thing. I would like to see them match the strongest voices to each song. The music is bang-up-to-date contemporary electro pop with other influences such as dubstep here and there. The album is a mixture of dance floor ravers and slower ballads. The songs are catchy and the production is good.

The first 3 album tracks are the singles so that is a strong and familiar start. Fortunately things do not go down hill from there. Track 6, I'll Be Your Strength, is interesting in that it starts as an attractive ballad with nice piano backing and then gradually develops into a dance track. Later we come to I Want It All, a guitar backed ballad which would not disgrace Westlife or one of the other top boy bands. The album closes with Gold Forever which was the Comic Relief song for 2011.

This is an excellent second album and will establish The Wanted as one of our better bands. With an upcoming tour to promote it I am sure it will eventually outsell the first album.