Product Description

'Dear Frustrated Superstar' is the debut album by the British singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot. The songs included on this release have been inspired by the music of Crowded House,Joni Mitchell and Diamanda Galas. The single 'Patience' is included.

Track Listing

1. If I Know You - Gavyn Wright, London Session Orchestra, Nerina Pallot
2. Patience
3. Someday Soon
4. Watch Out Billie
5. Daily Bread
6. Rainbow
7. Alien
8. Jump
9. Very Good Sir
10. Dear Frustrated Superstar
11. Blood Is Blood
12. God - Gavyn Wright, London Session Orchestra, Nerina Pallot
13. My Last Tango - Gavyn Wright, London Session Orchestra, Nerina Pallot
14. Daphne And Apollo

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7646 in Music
• Released on: 2007-03-19
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 65 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Nerina Pallot is probably one of a handful of new artists of 2001 guaranteed to send your pop-socks flying sky-high. Nerina's debut, Dear Frustrated Superstar is full of beautiful melodies, intelligent lyrics and a sweet, sweet voice. Various issues are tackled by the album including fear, headache, birth and death, and with titles such as "Daily Bread", "Blood Is Blood" and "God", religion also gets a thorough critiquing too. The applicability of Nerina's work for everyday life is further highlighted by the track "Patience" which is the ideal tune to hum when assembling an IKEA flat-pack or while stuck in a traffic jam ("...I need a little patience..."). Equally accessible and just as catchy is "Alien", which is a personal favourite of Nerina and described by her as her "special ginger-haired child". The best cut is saved almost until last with "My Last Tango" which soars and swings along with the help of a 50 piece orchestra. Plenty of comparisons have been drawn between Nerina and Alanis but Dear Frustrated Superstar is probably more comparable to a tidied-up Tori Amos. --John Galilee

Customer Reviews

Great album
I bought Fires first, then saw Nerina live on her UK tour earlier this year. She played some songs from this album, which I liked, so I bought this one too. It's not as musically developed as Fires, but for anyone interested in Nerina's music, it's a must have. It's interesting to compare the two albums and see the development. If you've not got Fires yet, buy Fires first (or buy the two together) - but if you liked Fires, this is definitely up your street too. The best tracks are 'Dear Frustrated Superstar', 'Patience' and 'Rainbow'. The lyrics are very well written, with Nerina's dry sense of humour shining through.

A promising debut
I have to admit, I didn't come to Nerina's work straightaway. Although I haven't got her second album, FIRES, reviews of it suggest that it could be as good, if not better than DEAR FRUSTRATED SUPERSTAR. What finally made me decide to buy her debut album was that someone said she created great acoustic piano tracks. In a sense, this is not what you get on DEAR FRUSTRATED SUPERSTAR. The songs have more orchestration than I was expecting, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

There is no doubt that Nerina has the potential to become a huge star. Although, it would be interesting to know why, after this debut, her record company dropped her. I understand this happened? After listening to the album, I cannot understand why they would do this.

Others have compared Nerina to Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow etc. While I can see where some of these come from (Tori plays piano, so does Nerina!), I think people reading the reviews should not get too concerned with these comparisons - to a large extent, they are going to be relative to the people making them.
Something that perhaps draws Nerina into such pools of comparison is the range of themes that are examined within her songs. Love in all its many faces is, of course, included but there is a fair bit of religion thrown in for good measure. With tracks like "Daily Bread", "Blood is Blood" and "God" being the obvious ones.

For myself, the best of the songs are "God" (please do not compare this to Tori Amos's song by the same name - Tori's is vastly different, in my opinion), "Jump" (which is a greatly cynical song about relationships and how far some are willing to go for the other), "Blood is Blood", "My Last Tango" and "Daphne and Apollo".

This album is one which requires repeated listens before the greatness of it hits you. It shows great promise for her second album . . . In fact, it will probably not be long before I go off and get that too.

Great promise
Nerina Pallot was loved by Radio 2 and this was the album of the week on that station but she was still dropped by her recording label - the question must be why?

Could they not see the obvious promise of her songs?

Did they want this very pretty lady to sell out and become more poppy?

I believe it was the latter and she had some integrity as her follow up album shows. Under the normal girl angst there are some deep lyrics looking amongst other things at the human condition "God" or falling for the wrong type of man "Jump" and many others. I do not believe it is the job of a reviewer to rate each song but just to say that I found some worth in all of them.

Well worth a listen.