Some Buzz Today

American Idol alumni David Archuleta returns with his second studio outing of new material, The Other Side Of Down, which contains a solid collection of original songs. Unlike his first album, Archuleta had a hand in writing every song on the album, which is not only a pleasant surprise, but provides a much need personal approach to the music.

The fairly upbeat album is a solid collection of pop songs and showcases why the young singer was so popular on the American talent show. His voice is beyond his years and gives the lyrics more maturity than they were probably written to have. He shines a bit more on his ballads like Falling Stars, Things Are Gonna Get Better and My Kind Of Perfect.

If the album suffers from anything, it’s the similarity of the beats in the first half of the album, which hits on a good pop beat and continues until nearly half way through when it’s finally broken up by Falling Stars. From that point on the album takes a few more creative and much needed twists and turns to round out a more fulfilling release.

There are quite a few tracks that will be radio singles from this release, but my favourite is Parachutes And Airplanes, an exciting song with a nice chorus and great beat. It has enough depth that it could have be sung by Michael Bolton.

David Archuleta has shown an incredible growth with this album. Maybe it’s because of his greater input or maybe it’s because it’s his third release (including 2009’s Christmas From The Heart). Whatever the case may be, it’s nice to see Archuleta as a singer and as a songwriter.

Rock Star Weekly

Latinos invaded reality television this year in a big way! Five of ten finalists on FOX’s hit show So You Think You Can Dance were Latin, boricua Roberto Martinez won Ali’s heart on ABC’s The Bachelorette, J-Lo became the first Latina to judge American Idol, and season 21 of the CBS ratings giant, Survivor, was set in Nicaragua. As if that’s not enough, Mondo Guerra has been dominating the competition over on Project Runway’s 8th season and he’s expected to be crowned the winner in tonight's finale (airing at 9PM on Lifetime). All of this unscripted Latin love got us thinking about our reality stars who have made a splash.

Here are our all-time favorite Latino reality stars:

We fell in love with AI contestant David Archuleta the moment the part-Honduran started singing John Mayer’s Waiting on the World to Change during his very first audition. And clearly we weren’t the only ones! His flawless renditions of Robbie Williams’ “Angels,” John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and The Miracles dance tune “Shop Around,” led Archie all the way to the AI finals where he came in second. David’s incredible voice and infectious smile had us at hello.

Latina

Also, here's an Amazon code to get $3 worth of mp3 downloads! Use the code STUDENT1 towards maybe TOSOD or CFTH? More info here