Today's spur of the moment purchase

This may seem hypocritical since I've already stated my opinion on Il Divo but today I bought a CD by the group with the catchy name "The ten tenors." I immediately thought of the Irish Tenors, whose choice of reportoire I can't stand, but from the cover photo they seemed a bit more mainstream than that. After a quick look at the tracklist, which included versions of several songs I quite like, I decided to risk it.

Fortunately, their sound isn't as heavy and quite as sentimental as that of Il Divo. It doesn't sound like a competition of who can sing the loudest - quite the contrary actually, as some "solo" parts of the songs are sung by two or three of them in unison. This, among other things, makes them sound more like a men's choir than a group (as the name states, there are after all ten of them.) Their individual voices aren't that grand and impressive, but they're all reasonably good pop/musical vocalists and not trying to be something that they're not. And they're not acting like they think they're God's gift to women.

It's true that some tracks are a little over the top, but it's more pleasing to the ear because it's the orchestra that turns up the volume, while the vocals aren't quite as loud. The songs are in general arranged more like pop songs/ballads than operatic songs. A suprising gem is their rendition of "Les Choristes", or "Vois Sur Ton Chemin" as it was called in the French Oscar nominated film - they've actually turned it into an up-tempo pop track and though the idea sounds intimidating, the result is refreshingly catchy.
Another surprisingly good cover is "Who wants to live forever", one of Sarah Brightman’s biggest hits. There’s not much of Sarah Brightman left in this version, and that pleased me.

Conclusion – today’s spur of the moment purchase was, fortunately, well worth the money.