With so much being made of sophomore slumps lately (yeah, Brandon Flowers, I'm talking to you), worries about John Legend's follow-up to his Grammy-winning debut, "Get Lifted," make sense. Well, fear not, Legend fans. "Once Again" (G.O.O.D./ Sony) is a quantum leap ahead for the singer, packed with enough sweet soul ballads to melt even the coldest heart.
Like the first single "Save Room," most of "Once Again" - from the Sade-flecked "Heaven" to the gorgeous "Each Day" - sounds like Legend has absorbed Smokey Robinson smoothness and Stevie Wonder energy and applied them to timeless Hal David-Burt Bacharach classics to create something new. He updates the sound with '80s handclaps and a Santana-like guitar solo to make "PDA (We Just Don't Care)" a bit more current, while the passing references to the Iraq war in "Tonight I Wanna Dance" are the only giveaway that the stunning soul ballad is his and not Robinson and the Miracles. ("Once Again," in stores today; Grade: A-)
LIsten to "Once Again" here