Andreas Scholl can almost do no wrong in my opinion but I admit to being pretty dubious about the oft-mentioned pop songs, having heard a few snippets here and there of his pop efforts. It's something he's been interested in his entire life but of course is a genre far removed from his other fifty-odd CDs - and there's the problem. I would never normally buy a CD of pop music (and whether it is actually pop music at all I discuss below) but I'm buying it because it's Andreas Scholl and I love his CDs. Probably most of the people looking to buy this CD are Scholl fans, not pop fans; we're probably not the people he wants to buy this CD, we're the wrong market, and reviews like this from lovers-of-baroque may not serve him well. Still, this is a foray into reviewing a genre in which I don't usually review and a CD that's not going on any of my current Scholl playlists, mainly because it doesn't fit. He's an utter master at baroque singing but I'm afraid for me he doesn't work as a pop singer, although the quality of the singing, instrumentation and some of the songwriting means I give it four stars.

Firstly I think the title of this CD is a misnomer. This isn't pop as I know it - I would place it much more in the 'Easy Listening' genre. It is easy to listen to, it works well as background music but it isn't the full, brash, in-yer-face type of bouncy music that I think of when I hear 'pop'. Perhaps this is because pop is more of a British thing and few Germans seem to have been able to crack it (or at least crack the British and American pop charts) and I'm a Brit so coloured by this, but for me this would be better titled "Scholl Goes Easy Listening" - but it'd probably find itself stuck in the discount bins of music shops almost immediately if it were.

Anyway, the album is a live recording from a concert including a large orchestra (the Nürnberger Symphoniker) and Orlando (Roland Kunz), another baroque countertenor who also releases music with his band Die Unerlösten. Scholl has worked with them before on a DVD and many of the songs that featured on that DVD have already been available elsewhere with slightly different arrangements. There's no doubt that all the contributors are excellent musicians/singers but somehow the overall feel is slightly disengaged - the rawness that I expect in pop isn't there.