Soulo

While boy bands are hallmarks of the pop world, it's easy to forget that their music echoes the soul music of the past decades, a connection that 98 Degrees member Nick Lachey alludes to in the coy pun title of his solo debut, SOULO. 98 Degrees followed the Backstreet Boys and N Sync in the Orlando boy-band outbreak of the late-1990s, but they still garnered their share of hits. Lachey, who gained notoriety in 2003 for his appearance on the reality show NEWLYWEDS with wife Jessica Simpson, is the first of the 98 boys to emerge with a solo outing. Befitting Lachey's past and his album's title, the music on SOULO is exactly the sort of smoothed-out, poppy R&B one would expect.
SOULO opens with a blast of horns and a touch of electronica, before launching into George Michael-esque blue-eyed disco-soul on the affable "Shut Up". On the other end of the spectrum lies "This I Swear", a countrified mournful ballad. Somewhere in the middle, there are tracks like the languorously funky "Could You Love". SOULO provides a heady mix of the tearful and the pulse-driven, a balance that should appeal to both his longtime fans and ones brought in by his TV role as the foil to his wife's wacky antics.|