Erin McCarley

Singer-songwriter Erin McCarley is in possession of one of those voices. She's got the kind of persuasive, sweet and breathy pipes that live in and decorate your dreams. You know, the ones you never want to wake up from because they're so happy, lively and better than reality as you know it. She's also a stunning, blue-eyed brunette, but that's beside the point!

You could lay in a hammock and enjoy the entire day with McCarley's voice serving as your only background music! That's probably why her songs have been featured on teen-centric shows like One Tree Hill and Grey’s Anatomy. This girl is all about universal appeal, and she's delightful, inoffensive and oozes talent from every one of her pores. McCarley's closest cousin would be someone like Taylor Swift. She's the kind of gal you want to bring home to mom to meet yet her sweetness never borders on saccharine and "too much" like so many adult contemporary artists of McCarley's ilk can come across as.

On Love, Save the Empty, it's all about the golden voice of Miss McCarley. The title track is essentially a duet between a simple piano melody and McCarley’s voice while the single "Pony" is a semi-ballad dripping with empowering lyrics, plenty of finger snapping and a slightly detectable country twang. That's not a shock, considering that McCarley hails from Nashville, Tennessee. But for most of the album, she digs her heels in alt pop and female singer-songwriter Astroturf.

— Amy Sciarretto
01.20.09

Erin McCarley's debut album Love, Save the Empty finds her singing in a throaty contralto that has a timbre similar to Björk's, albeit without the Icelandic accent and with better breath control. Combined with the work of her musical partner -- Jamie Kenney, who arranged, produced, played, and helped write nine of the 11 songs -- the album was able to achieve placements for songs in the romantic comedy film He's Just Not That into You and on numerous television shows, including Grey's Anatomy, Ghost Whisperer, Privileged, and One Tree Hill. Such exposure is the early 21st century equivalent to getting extensive radio ads back in the 20th century, of course, and it is indicative of the intended audience for Love, Save the Empty: teenage and young adult women likely to respond to the catchy music and to McCarley's repetitious lyrics. Those words read like something scrawled in a dreamy high-school student's composition book, a combination of clichés, declarations of self-empowerment, and romantic turmoil. That makes them appropriate accompaniment to the story lines on those TV shows, of course, and it may help McCarley sell some records, even if, oddly enough, she herself seems less impressive than other aspects of her album. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide