Anthem Lights Covers Album Review

I recently started listening to more of what I call "Easy Listening." I don't know another way to describe it. It's music like some of Adele's songs or Micheal Buble. I also have begun to discover many great covers of songs that I like more than the original. They're usually acoustic or "easy listening" versions. Two of my recent favorites are this version of "Titanium" or this version of "Holding Out for a Hero."

One day while listening to Pandora and cleaning, I heard a song that caught my attention. It was a mash up of many pop songs. I looked the song up later and found out that it was actually sung by the Christian band, Anthem Lights. This lead me to find that this band actually had an entire covers album where they sang pop songs. I love this album. I bought the whole things on itunes. I recommend it to you as well.

The songs (you can click on the song to listen to listen to it on YouTube):

1. "As Long As You Love Me" (originally sung by Justin Bieber)
You may recall that Justin Bieber songs are a guilty pleasure of mine, so I really do like this song. I love this version. I love the piano parts they added. Their version also doesn't seem as forced as JB's version on the "lo, lo, lo, lo, lo, lo, love me" parts. They even have their own rapper to do Big Sean's part.

2. "We are Never Getting Back Together" (originally sung by Taylor Swift)
You can't help but get this song stuck in your head. It's a fun song. No offense Taylor, but I'm also glad to hear someone who sings well sing this song. All the little aside parts of this song sound better with more than one person singing it.

3. "One Direction Medley" (including "What Makes You Beautiful" "One Thing" and "Gotta Be You")
I'm not familiar with "Gotta Be You." However, I think they do a great job of meshing all of these songs together. Medleys are fun to me. I'm always amazed at the talent of people who can take songs and make them flow effortlessly. While I do enjoy this song, it's not one of my favorites on the album.

4. "Give Your Heart a Break" (originally sung by Demi Lovato)
This is one of my favorite songs. For some reason, I just really like it. From the first time I heard it, I thought it would so much better sung by a guy (or guys). Well, Anthem Lights made my dream come true.

5. "Best of 2012 Mash-Up" (including "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, "Payphone" by Maroon 5, "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry, "Starships" by Nicki Minaj, and "We are Young" by Fun.)
Now, Adam Levine has a very unique voice and when someone can sing a song of his with an equally unique sound, that's impressive. Again, I love mash-ups. As I've already said, I think they're fun. There are a lot of little things to notice in this song when they are transitioning from one song to another. The end of the song was also creative. I especially love their harmonizing during the "We are Young" section.

6. "This I Promise You" (originally sung by NSYNC)
Remember back in the day when you had to buy an entire CD for just a few songs? If you were like me, you ended up listening to the whole CD because what else did you have to do to entertain yourself? So, while listening to my NSYNC CD, I fell in love with this song. It's beautiful! Even my husband says this is their best song ever. Anyway, it's an awesome song and Anthem Light does a great job with it.

7. "Don't You Worry Child" (originally sung by Swedish House Mafia)
This isn't one of my favorite songs to begin with, but I really enjoy the harmonies on this version. Plus this version takes away the techno stuff from the original that I'm not crazy about.

8. "All Around the World" (originally sung by Justin Bieber)
Despite what I said for #1, I wasn't a big fan of this song. It just isn't as catchy as some of his other stuff to me. This isn't my favorite song on this album either. They kept it to poppy and similar to the original. I would have been interested to hear what it would have been sounded like if they'd done it acoustically.

9. "Best Thing" (this is an original song)
 I guess they thought they needed to throw in a song of their own. This song is catchy and fits right in with the previous 8 songs. Because this is a Christian band, I can see where this song could be viewed as a song about God, but you can also view it as a love song.

10. "All I Want for Christmas" (completely random Christmas song)
I LOVE Christmas, but find the choice of having this song on this album to be very odd. I would have preferred another pop cover. Then, maybe they could do a Christmas album. 


I hope you'll check out this album. I'm really hoping they come out with another one. They actually have some other covers on their YouTube channel that aren't on this album. 

What type of music are you loving right now? Do you like covers or acoustic versions of songs?