Bmg
2005
Heart & Soul
About This Album
Although American Idol went on and on, some would say getting even stronger, Pop Idol the original was no more in the UK as Simon Cowell moved on to concentrate on his latest project The X Factor. The show's contestants were divided into three categories, solo performers aged 18-24, aged over 25 and groups with Cowell assigned to mentor the over 25s. The winner of the first show in 2004 was Steve Brookstein, a likeable pub singer with a rough soulful voice not unlike Luther Vandross or Alexander O Neal. Having sung a range of songs on the show including Harold Melvyn's If You Don't Know Me By Now, Jackie Wilson's Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher And Higher, Van Morrison's Have I Told You Lately and Kris Kristofferson's Help Me Make It Through The Night, all of which made it onto the debut album, his first single was chosen as Against All Odds, originally a hit for Phil Collins which he had sung on the live finale of the show and the release was held back so as not to coincide with the Band Aid 20 version of Do They Know It's Christmas. Both the single and subsequent album called Heart & Soul reached no.1 but by the time the album was released in May, word was beginning to spread about disagreements between the X Factor management and Steve Brookstein the artist, over the number and quality of cover versions on the album. Despite claiming to be a reasonably good songwriter, the Brookstein album had 14 tracks, every single one of them a cover version with the five songs he'd sung on the show being joined by soul classics Until You Come Back To Me, Kiss And Say Goodbye, I Don't Want To Talk About It and Hang On In There Baby, the only recent hit being Luther Vandross' Dance With My Father, but none of Brookstein's own creations and apart from his voice, seemingly not much of him personally on the album at all. A very public falling out with BMG and Simon Cowell followed and as reality TV singers should know, the producers are always right and he was unceremoniously dropped from his contract, back to pub and cruise ship singing. ~ Sharon Mawer, All Music Guide
Track List (try tracks 1,4,7,9 and 13)

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