Clay Aiken's new album, "A Thousand Different Ways" (RCA), will sell well. But it's so poorly conceived that Aiken is cheating his fans and himself of any meaningful musical future. He mopes from one soupy power ballad to the next, delivering them all in an oddly phrased, ham-fisted, overreaching style that makes it hard to distinguish his take on Bad English's "When I See You Smile" from his take on Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)." Even the four new songs get mired in the same Celine Dion wanna-be production muck, smothering whatever sweetness and likability Aiken may have given them. Ironically, Dion's "Because You Loved Me" is the one song Aiken undersells, making it the album's most listenable track. Aiken's good voice and a good-natured personality took him far on "American Idol," but both are lost in the robotic blandness of "A Thousand Different Ways." ("A Thousand Different Ways," in stores today; grade: D+)
Listen to "A Thousand Different Ways" here