Carla Bruni Issue #33

No Promises (Naïve)

By Sonia Pereira Murphy
Published: September 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

It’s a universally known truth that if you’re a former ’90s supermodel and decide to put out an album in which you sing well-known poems amid original music, you’d better make damn sure those songs are worthy of the poems they inspired. Or if it isn’t a universally known truth, it very well should be. For not only will critics criticize said model for being a “model who thinks she can sing” but they’ll use her messy affair with Mick Jagger as proof that she really should have known better.

While Carla Bruni’s scratchy, sultry voice on No Promises isn’t really all that unpleasant to listen to, its range is frighteningly limited and at times she seems so bored as to be apathetic. On “Those Dancing Days are Gone” (a Yeats poem) she might as well be singing about Anna Wintour’s sock lint. A monotonous array of acoustic guitars further emphasizes the languidly dull vibe. Often the only interesting aspects of the songs are the lyrics, which, again, are famous poems by the likes of W.H. Auden, Dotty Parker, Rossetti, and Dickinson, so they don’t really count. The only redeemable tracks are the strong-voiced “Lady Weeping at the Crossroads” and the more upbeat “If you were Coming in the Fall.” Other than that, Bruni’s temperament and skills fall as flat as Naomi on a Vivienne Westwood catwalk.