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Cynthia Erivo Proves She’s a Threat as a Singer-Songwriter, Too, With Subtle but Powerful ‘I Forgive You’: Album Review
Cynthia Erivo takes an often subtle but highly impressive approach to establishing her singer-songwriter chops with 'I Forgive You,' her second album.
The queen of “Defying Gravity” engages in a high level of expectation defiance on “I Forgive You,” her exemplary second album as a singer-songwriter and first release since “ Wicked ” firmly established her as a universal household name. That would explain why “Wicked”-heads may have felt a little let down when she released the first single, “Replay.” Hearing that, listeners may have wondered: If she’s going to pursue a pop career and not give us a cascading series of octave lifts, but instead serve up a singsongy number about anxiety that sounds a little like “Tom’s Diner,” isn’t that like having a Ferrari and not taking it out of third gear? It exists in a rarefied place between pop and modern musical theater, and maybe the highest praise you could give it is to note that if, God forbid, Stephen Schwartz had been taken out before “Wicked: For Good,” you can imagine Erivo and Wells possibly being up to the task of coming up with the requisite new song.
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