Daughtry: Baptized (2013) Review

If Daughtry’s fourth record teaches us one valuable lesson, it’s that you can indeed have too much of a good thing.

After their decision to dial down their post-grunge heaviness in favour of Bon Jovi-style choruses on superb third LP Break The Spell was met with widespread praise, the US rockers have gone one step further by delivering a fully-fledged pop album.

No, that’s not a typo.

Unfortunately for Chris & Co., the end result isn’t anywhere near as satisfying this time around.

For while Break The Spell retained enough “oomph” to ensure they walked the fine line between accessibility and legitimacy, Baptized does no such thing, and just comes across as a cold attempt at cracking the charts.

Of course, it would be remiss of us to say that there aren’t any great songs here.

Let’s face it, Chris Daughtry is – and always has been – a very gifted songwriter.

He flexes these skills several times throughout the album, and there’s no doubt that he still retains the skills which made us all follow his journey to begin with.

The best example of those skills here is Waiting For Superman.

Featuring a well-crafted rhythm section and a chorus which truly soars, this excellent lead single plays to all of their biggest strengths, and it fully deserved the praise which it garnered in becoming the Daughtry’s tenth (TENTH?!) single to climb into the coveted Billboard Hot 100.

Other standout moments include the hair-riaising Broken Arrows and Witness.

On each of these tracks, it is to Chris Daughtry’s credit that he’s able to evoke such emotion without the usual heavy guitars and thunderous drums of their previous albums.

It’s also impressive to hear the way he transforms his vocal delivery to suit the music, moving away from the wounded growl of older songs like You Don’t Belong and Crashed to more of a sombre storytelling style which feels just as effective at times.

"The best of intentions,
I lay at your feet.
I just need you to see past,
The worst parts of me."

BROKEN ARROWS

Interestingly, Chris Daughtry chose not to write any of the new material with his bandmates.

After ending the band’s longstanding relationship with producer Howard Benson, the frontman decided to write the material one-on-one with a range of different producers from different musical genres (Martin Johnson, Scott Stevens, Kara DiGuardi, Matthew Thiessen, and more).

This is perhaps indicative of an artist looking to broaden his musical horizons, as it’s the polar opposite of his approach on previous releases Leave This Town (2009) and Break The Spell (2011), albums which he insisted would only be made if A) the record label would allow the five-piece to operate as a proper band and not a Chris Daughtry solo project, and B) the albums would feature contributions from every single member.

This is also the first Daughtry album which won’t feature any of the band members on the artwork.

Instead it uses an abstract painting by artist Jose Enrique Montes Hernandes. Chris Daughtry felt that his abstract painting of a flower in bloom did a fine job of bookmarking the thematic shift in tone between Baptized and their earlier output, believing it would be a good way to prepare the listener for “something a little different” on an album which he has described as “a musical rebirth for the band”.

“I enjoy pop music, and I’ve wanted to make a pop record for years. I kept stalling on it, you know? It wasn’t until I heard Bon Jovi‘s Lost Highway, and I thought, “Well if one of the biggest rock acts of all time have the balls the switch things up, then I can also try something new!” Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re gonna start making dance music (laughs), but it’s been fun inserting elements of pop into our usual sound.”

– Chris Daughtry

“I enjoy pop music, and I’ve wanted to make a pop record for years. I kept stalling on it, you know?

It wasn’t until I heard Bon Jovi‘s Lost Highway, and I thought, “Well if one of the biggest rock acts of all time have the balls the switch things up, then I can also try something new!”

Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re gonna start making dance music (laughs), but it’s been fun inserting elements of pop into our usual sound.”

– Chris Daughtry

NOTE: In recent years Chris Daughtry has told a very different story about this creative process, revealing that he considers Baptized a “low point” in the band’s career. Daughtry admits that the sudden pivot to pop was the record label’s decision, in a bid to capitalize on the earlier success of chart-orientated singles like Home.

Despite giving us a handful of noteworthy moments, the lack of “crunch” is deafening.

This seems to rob many of the new songs of their true potential, and pushes Chris Daughtry’s usually very capable songwriting skills into shaky territory.

Cringeworthy lyrics like “The only thing worse than a hater is a traitor” (Traitor) sound like they were written for a teen TV drama, and the cheese overload of lines like“Let me drown in your honey, honey” (Baptized) will have you choking back your own vomit. Oh, and don’t even get us started on the chorus of Battleships, which really does go “Boom-boo-boom-boom Boo-boom-boom-boom”.

Yikes!

However, just when it begins to feel like they’ve jumped the shark, Daughtry reel you back in with another stone-wall classic in the form of Long Live Rock & Roll.

This is three minutes and thirty six seconds of awesomeness.

Sure it’s odd that a track which remenisces about the glory of rock n’ roll is actually a pop/country stompalong being sung by a band who seem hell-bent on playing anything but rock, but it’s undeniably catchy as a motherfucker. Listening to Chris Daughtry muse over “whether Guns N’ Roses were better than Motley Crue“ (spoiler: they were), and admitting that he “still wonders if Kurt really wrote all the songs she sang in Hole“ (spoiler: he almost certainly did) is a whole lot of fun, and we can only wish that more of Baptized sounded this good.

"We still argue about who's better,
Motley Crue or GN'R.
And we still can't believe Van Halen,
Turned into Van Hagar."

LONG LIVE ROCK & ROLL

Sadly even that’s not enough to save Baptized.

Because by covering their material in thick pop gloss, Daughtry have unintentionally managed to dilute many of the ingredients which helped them to attract such a keen rock fanbase over the last five or six years.

As such, this album can’t help but feel like anything but a backward step.

Interestingly, their long-time touring buddies Bon Jovi faced similar backlash six months earlier when they dropped the disappointingly edgeless What About Now.

Hey, perhaps there was something in the water circa 2013…