During Grace VanderWaal's season-winning run on America's Got Talent in 2016, Simon Cowell famously referred to her as "the next Taylor Swift." She's hoping to cement that comparison with her debut full-length album.
The 13-year-old has more than successfully avoided the post-win burnout that has sunk the careers of many other reality-show winners in the year since she won season 11 of the reality competition last September. VanderWaal has signed with IMG Models, became the face of Fender guitars, and performed on red carpets and awards events with her fresh-faced companions Millie Bobby Brown and Maddie Ziegler just in the last few months.
But VanderWaal was always a musician first, and her full-length debut, Just the Beginning, is aptly named (out Friday). The album's 12 tracks have much broader musical goals than VanderWaal's uke-strumming may have initially suggested, with flashes of vintage Swift shining through.
Throughout Just the Beginning, the little vocalist demonstrates that she has the ability to channel pop stars twice her age. Swift's high-drama orchestrations are reminiscent of Burned. Down to the difficult subject matter, Insane Sometimes is a dead ringer for a Halsey song. VanderWaal evokes Florence Welch and Miley Cyrus in her big-throated performance on A Better Life. Florets' oddly tropical-house production seems tailor-made for pop radio.
VanderWaal's voice has a chirp that reminds us of Swift, but her vocals are considerably closer to Sia's in terms of full-voiced belting and careless pronunciations, as evidenced by her stomping performance on the fiery So Much More Than This. Vowels are twisted and mashed together like Play-Doh in VanderWaal's musical language, and consonants are handled as a suggestion.
VanderWaal, on the other hand, sounds like a 13-year-old in her songs, in the best possible way, while many pop singers seem to skip their tweenage years, leaping from child-star status to full-grown adulthood. She launches herself at massive choruses with a total lack of restraint in a voice that sounds delightfully green, and it's lovely to hear.
Beyond the album's sleek pop production, VanderWaal's distinctive ukulele strums can be heard on the album's single Moonlight, as well as highlights Just a Crush and Escape My Mind, to please her original admirers.
But it's A Better Life, the song that so deftly channels several of pop's biggest voices, that best combines VanderWaal's two moods, beginning with her modest finger-picking before launching into one of the album's most exquisitely sung melodies.
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