A quick web search tells you everything you don’t want to know about Lucy Hale. She’s a 24 year-old country-pop-singing reality TV ‘star’ and actress from Memphis, Tennessee, whose acting credits include such pinnacles of television and film as Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream and Scream 4. This is her debut album, and while Hale has a decent country voice with twangs in all the right places, there’s nothing else here but an 11-song collection of such sickly formulaic, Shania Twain-lite drivel that will make you want to violently hurl or throw a punch at the cat. The expected themes are all present and correct, from teen angst (‘Nervous Girl’) and useless boyfriends (the banjo-twangin’ ‘Goodbye Gone’) to pseudo-driving ditties aimed at boneheaded truckers (‘From The Backseat’). “There’s nothing wrong with an itty-bitty white lie,” she sings on ‘Love Tonight’, and that’s about as deep as it gets. At this point you realise how little input Hale must have had on her own album, such is the artificial vibe seeping from every note, and while her sole writing credit appears on final track ‘Just Another Song’, by that stage, that’s all it is. It’s a formula that has been proven to work, and it probably will for Hale, but having to listen to this guff is an excruciating experience from start to finish. Until a few days ago I had never heard of Lucy Hale; how I look back on that time with longing. (Universal)