Winner of season eight of Deutschland Sucht den Superstar, Germany's answer to Pop Idol, 19-year old
Pietro Lombardi's debut album
Jackpot bears all the hallmarks of the brand's usual spin-off releases, with half of its 12 tracks consisting of cover versions, and the other half tentatively making steps away from the talent show with six brand new compositions. Like debut efforts from previous winners
Mark Medlock,
Daniel Schuhmacher, and
Alexander Klaus, former
Modern Talking vocalist and series judge
Dieter Bohlen jumps on board for production duties, a situation which prevents the baseball cap-wearer from ever really differentiating himself from his predecessors. Indeed, while it's clear from the faithful renditions of
Gary Jules' interpretation of "Mad World," and
Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," that
Lombardi possesses a pleasant if slightly unremarkable set of lungs, (although his English pronunciation needs some drastic improvement if he's going to continue singing in English), there's very little here to justify his victory over runner-up Sarah Engels who, incidentally, completely overshadows him on their acoustic R&B duet "I Need You." His covers of
Doris Day's "Que Sera Sera" and
Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy" (inspired by the
Hermes House Band versions), transforms the joyous pop classics into cheap and tinny beerfest singalongs;
Jay Sean's "Down" starts out as an interesting candlelight mix before it disappointingly turns into a pure karaoke affair, while "Don't Cry These Tears" is a dated slice of schlager pop which would be lucky to get any points at all at Eurovision. And while "Call My Name" is, admittedly, a fairly decent offering compared to most of Deutschland's winners, its chiming guitar hooks and euphoric chorus sound suspiciously like
OneRepublic's "Marchin' On," a slight plagiarizing tendency which also seems to apply to the
LMFAO-aping electro of "Holiday" and the
Madcon-esque ska-pop of "Crazy Like Me."
Jackpot is by no means a disgrace, but
Lombardi will have to work much harder if he wants to stand out from the growing army of Superstars next time round. ~ Jon O'Brien