MUSIC

The Brown boom

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Chris Brown is too much. Quite literally, across the expanse of his two-CD, 45-song, nearly three-hour eighth solo album, Heart Break on a Full Moon, the R&B and EDM vocalist is going for deluge and dare. The news is that, for the most part, Brown's Heartbreak works as a whole. That's tough for a guy who is not necessarily a producer. There's much of Brown's personal life to consider going into Heartbreak. He creamily attacks the yearning romanticism of Nowhere, the sorrowful Enemy, and the almost meditative tune Hurt the Same.

On Everybody Knows and Privacy, Brown's aching tenor pleads for time away from prying eyes in a fashion that's both damnably demanding and woefully tearful.

On the wifty, drifting space-soul of Even, an Auto-Tuned Brown is joined on vocals by the song's Mount Airy songwriter, Julian Blake, but with a smidgen of Michael Jackson's Remember the Time to guide their way.