Album Review: Guy Sebastian – 100 Times Around the Sun
2 min read
I had never caught onto Guy Sebastian’s music much—maybe it’s because I grew up away from Australian Idol culture—but with 100 Times Around the Sun (released through Sony), it’s clear he’s aiming to continuously evolve. This marks Guy’s tenth studio album, pouring four years into crafting what is meant to be a deeply personal project, so let’s dive right in and see what this Guy is all about!!!
Starting off with one of the stronger tracks on the album, Maybe is a good soulful commercial pop track – interesting lyrics and Guy has a good voice… the track clearly is curated to show off his vocals and is well polished. Pop ballad No Reason to Stay swiftly follows, again showing off a good voice in a very mainstream friendly format, as is the more acoustic Strangers. Title track returns us to soulful pop, and 100 Times Around the Sun is clearly formatted to be a release on the radio. Returning to ballads, but this time in the truest sense, Write One is a solid track, whilst The Keys is more of the same, except with more synth/less analogue input, and an increase in tempo/more of a crescendo in the latter part of the track.
The album continues the flow between very chart friendly Soulful pop tracks and ballads, returning to the soulful tracks All Yours Again and Cupid – the best example of soulful pop on the album is next, and I Chose Good is probably my second favourite track on the album – great tempo and over emphasised beat, with a ‘gospel-lite’ feel with the choral backing, but the following track Get It Done is a bit generic soul pop (even within this album). Next up we have two duets, the first Antidote with Sam Fischer, is an ok ballad (but vocally they’re very similar), but the second See You There (with Riley Biederer) is the best track on the album by a mile – a ballad where there are clear roles, with a great waltz-y tempo and fantastic contrast of vocals. Finally, we round off the album with Afterlife, which is a well-polished homage to late 70’s funky soulful chart music – a high point to finish proceedings.
100 Times Around the Sun is a solid pop album from a singer with a great voice. It’s very much a manufactured, polished pop album in the vein of 100s of other ‘pop idol’ albums, and to be honest it’s not really my thing – I can see why Guy won and also why he didn’t become more of a global name. I’m sure his fans will love it, but to be honest there was nothing much in there that I couldn’t get from 100 other generic pop artists – for me there was no edge to elevate it above the masses.
