Melanie Amaro's Pepsi SuperBowl commercial

[My Alter Ego]

New Top Comment for the Amaro video:

I love Melanie Amaro and I believe she has an excellent voice, but I have that they have taken such a classic song and gave it this basic ass techno music and autotuned it like they do all the music today! LA REID DONT YOU RUIN THIS ARTIST! Save this mess for Rihanna and her crappy dance records. But Melanie deserves more than this.
amrpriss 5 hours ago 12

In comments to the press after Amaro won (here) Simon responds to a reporters question as to how he sees her first album looking like, he replied (4:35) "Well she's a different kind of singer, so you don't want to be doing what everybody else is doing at the moment. There's a lot of dance at the moment, you know a lot of people voted for her, they want a different kind of record...we need to do her justice ...fortunately a lot of good producers want to work with her now...." Well, promo or whatever Melanie's first release is techno dance music, not something different. Of course, she hardly had time to consider it.

Melanie has signed with Epic Records (LA Reid) and this Pepsi Promo related single was produced by Stargate, who have done a lot with Rhianna and other big names. One of the most recent being J-Lo. This:

Stargate’s work is almost entirely ‘in the box’, but they keep a few rackmounting synths and samplers around. From top: Furman power conditioner, Digidesign 96I/O interface, Roland JV1010 synth, Yamaha Motif Rack synth, Emu Proteus 2000 synth, Yamaha Motif Rack XS, Digidesign MIDI interface, Apple G5 Power Mac and Akai S3000XL sampler.(link)

Melanie let them do this to her music; it not her style, but it is now part of her catalog. I'm confident that Haley won't let that happen, although I'm sure she has had to do a lot of push back. These kinds of producers are a danger. And if the words "a retro, Motown sound from the ‘60s that has some hip-hop drum beats mixed in" and "a modern twist" don't ring a bell (and I know they do for many), I was quoting Haley.

Oh dear -- Melanie's got her work cut out for her! I agree with the comment left by amrpriss. Melanie does have a wonderful voice and she deserves much better than this. And, as you pointed out, John, she hasn't had time to consider what direction she might want to go in and what would be best suited to her voice.

But I think the worst part for Melanie is that she is young, inexperienced, lacks confidence and doesn't have the built-in support system of a family immersed in music and all that that entails to help guide her in making good career choices (in her music making). Plus she may feel that she's responsible to make her family's life more comfortable. None of which bodes particularly well for her, given this very poor version of an classic song.