Back in 1985, Aaron Neville offered fans a glimpse of his love of doo wop with the EP Orchid in the Storm. Over a quarter-century later, he returns to it on My True Story. Doo wop pre-dates rock & roll. Its reliance on the human voice in group harmony communicates not only melody but rhythm, and influenced the sounds of Motown, Stax, and early rock & roll. Even Frank Zappa claimed it as a prime influence. Co-produced by Keith Richards and Blue Note label boss Don Was, the dozen tunes here make prime use of Neville's voice, placing his high, smooth, vulnerable tenor way up front; he is backed by vintage-era doo wop singers and an all-star band that includes Richards and Greg Leisz on guitars, Benmont Tench on keyboards, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer George R. Receli. Lenny Pickett helps out on horns and winds on a number of tracks as well. The production is clean, the musical backing used more as texture and color than as real support -- Neville and his vocalists offer all the impetus needed to pull this off (indeed one wonders what this set might have sounded like a cappella). The tunes are all classics. Standouts include Lieber & Stoller's "Ruby Baby," a medley of Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman's "This Magic Moment" and "True Love," Hank Ballard's "Work with Me Annie" (featuring a guest appearance from Art Neville on B-3), Sylvester Bradford's and Al Lewis' "Tears on My Pillow," and Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman." The latter marries doo wop to early Chicago soul, and Neville celebrates this in his reading. "Be My Baby," which will forever be associated with the Ronettes and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, is stripped back to the source music that inspired its authors, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and Spector -- even when adding a Pickett flute solo to the chart. Ultimately, My True Story is a smooth, mostly laid-back, and soulful recording by Neville. He provides a healthy -- sometimes overly -- reverential respect for the original material. Coupled with his vocals, these restrained yet imaginative arrangements offer some surprising twists and turns.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

A few months before he released his seventh album, Based on a True Story..., Blake Shelton weathered a minor storm over comments he made to GAC's Backstory, where he claimed "nobody wants to listen to their grandpa's music." Shelton further explained "old farts" "don't buy records anymore...the kids do, and they don't want to buy the music that you were buying." At 36 years old, Shelton isn't exactly a kid but he sure has his finger on the pulse of what America is all about in 2013, a perspective that informs every cut on Based on a True Story.... Not so coincidentally in terms of attitude, this is the first album Shelton has made since turning into a genuine crossover star thanks to his role on the televised competition The Voice -- Red River Blue, his last album, appeared just a month after the first season of The Voice wrapped -- and it reflects his newfound popularity via its reliance on rocking rhythms, woolly mammoth hooks, red state swagger, and pristine power ballads, all protected in a high-gloss coat of studio varnish. Some of that varnish includes a dose of heavy Auto-Tune on Blake's voice, a bit of trickery he doesn't need -- there's a reason why he's a judge on a singing competition; he has an easy, natural grace to his delivery -- but its artificially correct sound is simply another indication of the thoroughly modern Shelton: few other country albums of 2012-2013 are as unabashedly of the moment as this, celebrating all the tacky oversized glory of the U.S.A. from the fame-hungry Sunset Strip to parties in the boondocks. By playing to both the high and low brow, Shelton consolidates the entire spectrum of his audience, from the country to the coasts. Both audiences buy into his increasingly macho strut, where he tosses out casual profanities, brags that he's "Still Got a Finger" (to flip you the bird, of course), and salutes his redneck brothers via the vaguely embarrassing rapped "chew tobacco/chew tobacco/chew tobacco/spit" chorus of "Boys 'Round Here." That Shelton can pull off this big, swinging bravado isn't much of a surprise -- when his voice trills electronically on "Small Town Big Time" he makes it sound like a joke -- but there's just a little bit too much of the schtick; individually the cuts work fine but they overwhelm not only the gentler moments ("Sure Be Cool If You Did," "Do You Remember") but cancel each other out over the long run. Still, the very sense that more is more is essential to the appeal of Based on a True Story...: every song is bigger, brighter, bolder than the next, super-sized country for a super-sized time.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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Back in 1985, Aaron Neville offered fans a glimpse of his love of doo wop with the EP Orchid in the Storm. Over a quarter-century later, he returns to it on My True Story. Doo wop pre-dates rock & roll. Its reliance on the human voice in group harmony communicates not only melody but rhythm, and influenced the sounds of Motown, Stax, and early rock & roll. Even Frank Zappa claimed it as a prime influence. Co-produced by Keith Richards and Blue Note label boss Don Was, the dozen tunes here make prime use of Neville's voice, placing his high, smooth, vulnerable tenor way up front; he is backed by vintage-era doo wop singers and an all-star band that includes Richards and Greg Leisz on guitars, Benmont Tench on keyboards, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer George R. Receli. Lenny Pickett helps out on horns and winds on a number of tracks as well. The production is clean, the musical backing used more as texture and color than as real support -- Neville and his vocalists offer all the impetus needed to pull this off (indeed one wonders what this set might have sounded like a cappella). The tunes are all classics. Standouts include Lieber & Stoller's "Ruby Baby," a medley of Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman's "This Magic Moment" and "True Love," Hank Ballard's "Work with Me Annie" (featuring a guest appearance from Art Neville on B-3), Sylvester Bradford's and Al Lewis' "Tears on My Pillow," and Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman." The latter marries doo wop to early Chicago soul, and Neville celebrates this in his reading. "Be My Baby," which will forever be associated with the Ronettes and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, is stripped back to the source music that inspired its authors, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and Spector -- even when adding a Pickett flute solo to the chart. Ultimately, My True Story is a smooth, mostly laid-back, and soulful recording by Neville. He provides a healthy -- sometimes overly -- reverential respect for the original material. Coupled with his vocals, these restrained yet imaginative arrangements offer some surprising twists and turns.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Back in 1985, Aaron Neville offered fans a glimpse of his love of doo wop with the EP Orchid in the Storm. Over a quarter-century later, he returns to it on My True Story. Doo wop pre-dates rock & roll. Its reliance on the human voice in group harmony communicates not only melody but rhythm, and influenced the sounds of Motown, Stax, and early rock & roll. Even Frank Zappa claimed it as a prime influence. Co-produced by Keith Richards and Blue Note label boss Don Was, the dozen tunes here make prime use of Neville's voice, placing his high, smooth, vulnerable tenor way up front; he is backed by vintage-era doo wop singers and an all-star band that includes Richards and Greg Leisz on guitars, Benmont Tench on keyboards, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer George R. Receli. Lenny Pickett helps out on horns and winds on a number of tracks as well. The production is clean, the musical backing used more as texture and color than as real support -- Neville and his vocalists offer all the impetus needed to pull this off (indeed one wonders what this set might have sounded like a cappella). The tunes are all classics. Standouts include Lieber & Stoller's "Ruby Baby," a medley of Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman's "This Magic Moment" and "True Love," Hank Ballard's "Work with Me Annie" (featuring a guest appearance from Art Neville on B-3), Sylvester Bradford's and Al Lewis' "Tears on My Pillow," and Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman." The latter marries doo wop to early Chicago soul, and Neville celebrates this in his reading. "Be My Baby," which will forever be associated with the Ronettes and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, is stripped back to the source music that inspired its authors, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and Spector -- even when adding a Pickett flute solo to the chart. Ultimately, My True Story is a smooth, mostly laid-back, and soulful recording by Neville. He provides a healthy -- sometimes overly -- reverential respect for the original material. Coupled with his vocals, these restrained yet imaginative arrangements offer some surprising twists and turns.© Thom Jurek /TiVo