Album Review: Conor Maynard - Contrast

Posted by Anthony - 21st August 2012

Contrast is the first album by 19 year old Conor Maynard from Brighton. His rise to fame and a recording contract is a very modern story and is representative of the current music scene i.e. first create interest via YouTube and then wait for the offers to flood in.

In 2009 Conor Maynard posted a number of cover versions on YouTube such as Crawl by Chris Brown and Dynamite by Taio Cruz. These videos quickly achieved high ratings. It was Conor's version of Beautiful Monster that brought him to the attention of the original artist Ne-Yo. Subsequently Conor won the Brand New For 2012 award from MTV. Following that he was signed up by EMI and now Contrast has been released under the Parlophone flag.

There is no doubt that the record company has thrown money at this recording. Guest artists are Ne-Yo, Pharrell Williams and Rita Ora. There are 12 producers involved including Pharrell, The Invisible Men, The Arcade and Lucas Secon. The musical sound achieved by all this talent is a very polished electro R&B, much like that heard on the recent album Believe by Justin Bieber.

Indeed, Conor Maynard has been likened to a British Justin Bieber, much to his dismay. In fact judging from this album Conor's obvious influences are Justin Timberlake and Michael Jackson. There are 12 songs on Contrast and Conor Maynard has co-written 9 of them, sometimes with as many as 8 other people. As we have commented before it is usually the case that the greater the number of writers and producers the lower the quality of the end result.

That rule seems to hold here. Conor's voice and style are fine but you do yearn for a spark of originality and some stronger songs. It all has a rather music by numbers approach and lacks passion.

Singles Can't Say No, Vegas Girl and Turn Around are on the album and are probably the best songs, with the Frank Ocean song Pictures being the best of the rest. Ultimately this is a slick and well produced debut, if not a particularly memorable one.