Nicole C. Mullen

Nicole C. Mullen is a household name in Christian circles, but her future seems even brighter considering her unabashed desire to get down on the dance floor. From soul and blues to rock and trance, she’s got a track for most any mood. Winning over the industry (if not every critic) with her gigantic hit single, “Redeemer,” she’s been searching for the next radio-conquering success for a few years. Unfortunately, with A Dream To Believe In, the second volume of a purported musical trilogy, she doesn’t quite manage to scale those heights, but at she keeps her promise to make her audience move their feet.

Opener “I Have a Dream” is something of a prelude, albeit more on the cheesy side rather than the inspiring, to the rest of the album. The 30-second piece—which weaves accents and dialects together, all chiming in succession the track’s title—isn’t any more creative than those lousy commercials for charity organizations, the kind where kids are all lined up to show off their big, toothy grins while a rousing soundtrack accompanies the announcer’s plea to send “a love gift of twenty-five dollars or more.” I hate to go for the jugular so early into a review, but why bother with the sappy? The “everyone is all the same” posturing is old, and history has shown us that this sort of thing doesn’t work. Ergo, it feels unnecessary, both as a musical introduction and as a thematic presentation.

The following tracks range from the exciting, even fist pumping (“Look Like Me,” where soulful rock is the order of the day) to the drab, unoriginal, and melodically flaccid (“Forever You Reign”). Mullen’s voice is the biggest drawing point, and her career attests to her talents, so there’s nothing new here in that department: we get what we expect. Moreover, Mullen’s stylistic approach is pretty much same old, same old. Not that that’s such a bad thing. After all, it’s just as interesting that she’s managed to pull off so many consistently engaging pop albums, without running out of a fair amount of memorable hooks.

This versatility of songwriting will save her in the future from going the way of the dodo. She could very well be the soulful equivalent of Michael W. Smith or Stephen Curtis Chapman in years to come, as the Earth, Wind, and Fire-style “Treat Her Like a Lady” and the delightful “Yo Mama” promise, with smart but fun lyricism and honesty that seems more believable than that of many of her clichéd lady counterparts. Her penchant for soul bearing and hip shaking go hand in hand, though, and she makes spiritual openness more entertaining than it’s been in some time.

The bum note comes when the upbeat “Brainwash” hits the speakers, and I’m left with yet another “Eh?” While I understand that the idea of the track has absolutely nothing to do with actual brainwashing, I’m just not feeling a song that equates purity and a verb usually associated with mind-control techniques. It’s a silly complaint, I’m sure, but what with all the political, ideological, and even fashionable conformity in mainstream Christian culture, the lyrics struck a sour note with me, and I couldn’t bring myself to even bob my head.

Closing out the project with the club-destined “Work With Me (Dance),” Mullen manages to earn reprieve from my earlier complaints with a rousing anthem, a feel-good winner reminiscent of later Madonna, Paula Abdul, or J Lo—essentially with a “nothing but sweat on the dance floor” kind of bounce. It doesn’t have quite the personality of Mullen’s inspirations’ work, but it’s more than a few steps in the right direction, and I’d venture to say that if she could pull off an album with tracks of this caliber, she’d potentially have a classic dance suite on her hands, something Christian music is in dire need of, truth be told. It’s not perfect, but Nicole C. Mullen has managed to prove she’s far from done.

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