''Live It Up'' is the major-label debut studio album, and third overall, by ''

American Idol ''American Idol'' is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to Ap ...

season nine A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

winner, Lee DeWyze. The album was released on November 16, 2010, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also A ...

Recording

After winning the ninth season of ''

'' on May 27, 2010, DeWyze signed a recording contract with

19 Entertainment 19 Entertainment is a producer of entertainment properties for television with a focus on music. Founded by Simon Fuller in London in 1985, the company co-produced ''Pop Idol'' in the United Kingdom with Thames Television in 2001. The ''Idol serie ...

and

. He started recording soon after and continued during the American Idols LIVE! Tour and completed in early October 2010. He worked with Toby Gad, John Shanks, Espionage, and other producers. DeWyze co-wrote ten of the eleven songs on ''Live It Up''. He explained about the album and work:

"To see my name listed in the credits on each song was really important to me because I’m a songwriter. I also loved working with such talented writers. They all brought so much to the table and really helped me flesh out my sound. I grew up listening to Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas & the Papas, Cat Stevens, and Kris Kristofferson. I love hard-edged vocals over pretty melodies — that’s what I’m about.″

Singles

The first single, "

Sweet Serendipity "Sweet Serendipity" is Lee DeWyze's first single from his post-''American Idol'' debut album ''Live It Up (Lee DeWyze album), Live It Up.'' The song debuted on radio on October 13, 2010 and was released for sale at digital music vendors on Octobe ...

," premiered on ''

On Air with Ryan Seacrest ''On Air with Ryan Seacrest'' is a weekday syndicated radio program hosted by Ryan Seacrest. It was launched in 2004 as a drive time show at the same time on Los Angeles Top 40 station 102.7 KIIS-FM as the television show with the same name, ...

'' on October 13, 2010. The song went for adds on

hot adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet ...

radio stations on October 25, 2010 and became available for download at digital music vendors on October 26, 2010. DeWyze performed "Beautiful Like You", the second single from the album, on the ''American Idol'' Season 10 Top 12 Results show on March 17, 2011.

Critical reception

Upon its release, ''Live It Up'' received generally mixed reviews from most music critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

score of 45, based on 4 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

gave the album a mixed review saying, "DeWyze can wrangle a pleasant melody, particularly when he’s favoring sunswept SoCal folk-pop, but he can’t resist sabotaging his slight charms with a studied hamminess, adopting a gravelly growl whenever he wants to appear soulful and leaning so hard in his phrasing that he stumbles instead of shuffles."

Commercial performance

''Live It Up'' sold 39,000 copies in its first week, debuting at number nineteen on the ''Billboard'' 200. The album spent 10 consecutive weeks on the ''Billboard'' 200 and, after an eight-week absence, returned to the chart at number 96 following DeWyze's performance on the ''American Idol'' Season 10 Top 12 Results show. As of August 12, 2013, the album has sold 153,000 copies in the United States. DeWyze's album is also the second album of an ''American Idol'' winner (after

Kris Allen Kristopher Neil Allen (born June 21, 1985) is an American singer and songwriter from Conway, Arkansas, and the winner of the eighth season of ''American Idol''. Prior to ''Idol'', he self-released a 2007 album, ''Brand New Shoes''. Allen's ' ...

's self-titled debut, which premiered and peaked at number eleven) to not debut in the top ten of the ''Billboard'' 200.

Track listing

Personnel

Adapted from

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

. Vocals *Chris DeStefano – background vocals *Lee DeWyze – background vocals, lead vocals *David Glass – background vocals Musicians *Kenny Aronoff – drums *busbee – bass *David Glass – drums, Fender Rhodes, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboards, percussion,

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

, synthesizer *David Hodges – guitar, percussion, piano *Charlie Judge – keyboards, synthesizer *Shawn Pelton – drums *John Shanks – bass, guitar, keyboards Production *Jeff Aldrich – A&R *Amund Bjørklund –

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

*Dan Chase – programming *Chris DeStefano – engineer, instrumentation, producer, programming *Lars Fox –

Pro Tools Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture ( sound design, audio post-produ ...

*Toby Gad – instrumentation, mixing, producer, programming, vocal engineer *Chris Garcia – vocal producer *Serban Ghenea – mixing *David Glass – producer *David Hodges – engineer, producer *Ted Jensen – mastering *Espen Lind – engineer *Manny Marroquin – mixing *Francis Murray – mastering *Ross Petersen – engineer *Iain Pirie – A&R *Christian Plata – assistant *Tim Roberts – assistant, mixing assistant *Jeff Rothschild – engineer, mixing, programming *John Shanks – producer *Shari Sutcliffe – project coordinator Imagery *Dee Anderson – stylist *Erwin Gorostiza – creative director *Jilan O'Neil – groomer *Christina Rodriguez – art direction *Jiro Schneider – photography

Charts

Chart positions

Sales

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Live It Up (Lee Dewyze Album) 2010 albums 19 Recordings albums Albums produced by Toby Gad Albums produced by John Shanks Lee DeWyze albums RCA Records albums