Hymn:

Sarah Brightman released her latest album a week ago, titled 'Hymn.'  It seems to cleave to modern church music as its theme, which results in poor music relative to what Brightman should be capable of.

Out of the 13 songs, only 3 were worthy of hall of fame recognition -- Sky and Sand, Follow Me and Fly to Paradise.

It's difficult to say what went wrong.  Sarah Brightman is 58 years old, so perhaps she's just getting too old for this shit.  But it's not like she's the composer of these songs, she just sings them.  So it should be possible for her to find a selection of good songs worth singing from people much younger than her.  The fact that she didn't or couldn't indicates either there's no good western composer out there to even choose from, or her advanced age is even affecting her editing and collating skills.

I begged Brightman for another album after I saw how good Dreamchaser was, and I'm glad Hymn was released -- every addition to the hall of fame is valuable -- but I suggest she stops here before she really embarrasses herself.  I doubt any further albums will produce anything of note.  Though I suppose if she makes another, I'm obligated to at least check it out.  I've come this far with Sarah, there's no point stopping now.  In any case, we're clearly in the midst of diminishing marginal returns.

This puts my music hall of fame up to 5341 songs, 12.1 days in continuous play length.  It also means I've added 985 songs to my music hall of fame just this year.  Just fifteen more to cross the magic 1,000 barrier.  It's all up to Ares no Tenbin's ost to come out in time. . .