Nicky Spence - My First Love (CD)

All Music Guide

Universal Classics and Jazz have made a habit of releasing albums by unknown young, classically trained singers and placing them in the pop charts, albeit in the most cases, not very high. Then again, they were one of the only record companies doing this on such a scale, and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. One such singer was Scottish tenor Nicky Spence, his debut album produced by Chris Hazell who had previously worked with Aled Jones and Bryn Terfel, two other successful crossover singers, called My First Love, which presumably referred to singing. And he does it very well, at least as well as one might expect from a release on the UCJ label. My First Love was a combination (weren't most of them) of traditional Scottish songs, My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose, The Skye Boat Song and Ay Fond Kiss and just for good measure, he stuck the song Maria from West Side Story in the middle, maybe because it's just a good song, and classical works, Santa Lucia, Every Valley, an aria fro...m Handel's Messiah, L'Ultima Canzone and Brindisi from Verdi's La Traviata on which he was joined by one of the more successful singers in this genre, Lesley Garrett who had also recently signed for the label. So Nicky Spence was a good singer, he had a human interest story as he used to be twice his size and worked in a chip shop, but the marketing department of UCJ would know it takes more than that to make a star, somehow there has to be a connection with the masses and on the evidence of My First Love, it didn't happen. - Sharon Mawer, All Music Guide Read more Less