Artist: Valerie Nicole
Title: From the Heart
Website: http://www.valerienicole.net
Style: Singer Songwriter/ Pop
Rating: 7.9 out of 10
By C.W. Ross

Valerie Nicole started out singing in the choir at age-6, by age-7 she was playing the piano and by age-8 the flute. With that kind of a background you might think that she got started early with her music career, but it wasn’t until she entered college that she picked up a guitar and started writing her own songs. Valerie earned a Bachelor’s of Music Education degree from Elizabethtown College in 2005.

Besides writing her own songs and singing the lead vocals, she also plays acoustic guitar and keyboard on her songs. So when you hear her music you’re getting a really good look at what she’s all about.

In 2007 Valerie Nicole released, Soul Searching, and now she’s back with her latest album, From the Heart. This latest release is a little bit disjointed though with the first three songs found on it dealing with love and relationships, then out of the blue comes the title track, “From the Heart,” an all out protest song calling people to wake up to the troubles of this world before it’s too late. The song mentions everything from, hungry babies with nothing to eat, homeless people, obesity, and our destruction of the environment, to TV’s exploitation of people.

The release then switches back to three more love, relationship based songs with the most powerful one being, “His Love,” a song that deals with an abusive relationship. The song makes good use of the cello part found on it to set a dark mood. The song does end on an up note with the woman finding the strength to get out of the abusive relationship.

The release takes another turn again with its last two tracks. Track-9,”Live Your Dreams,” is an upbeat peppy school-spirit type of song that encourages its listeners to live their dreams, not letting any nay-sayers dampen their drive. The song’s main theme is that no dream is impossible if you truly believe and don’t give up.

Track-10, “Demons,” is a really dark, moody, song that is about as far away from the upbeat light happy music that’s found on track-9 as you can get. The track deals with death, tragic situations and people getting even. The song talks about if you do something wrong and think that you got away with it, just wait, that justice will eventually catch up with you one way or another and what happens to you isn’t going to be pretty. This song once again makes good use of a cello part to add a dramatic element to it.

From the Heart is definitely a unique release that will get your mind working as you listen to it. It’s also a tough album to review because of its wild mood swings. Are they inventive and refreshing or just a bad producing job? I haven’t decided yet which side of the fence I come down on but I can tell you that I did enjoy Valerie Nicole’s vocals that worked best for me on the several more up-tempo songs that are found on From the Heart.