Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Phillip Phillips during his performance of “Raging Fire” on the American Idol season finale. (AP Photo)

On Thursday, Billboard will release its latest music charts and we’ll find out how the public reacted to Phillip Phillips’ new album, released last week.

But below I’ve embedded snippets of reviews for “Behind the Light.” Most of which are middling.

You’ll recall that Phillips’ first album, “The World from the Side of the Moon,” was a smash success from the word go.

It sold 169,000 copies in week one, debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and stayed in the Top 10 on that chart for seven weeks.

It ultimately went platinum.

“Raging Fire” is a great first single for the followup album, but hasn’t generated nearly as much buzz as Phillips’ smash hit “Home.”

Anyway, here’s what folks are saying about the new album.

Idolator.com: Gives Phillip 2.5 stars out of 5, writing “Phillips again teams up with producer Gregg Wattenberg, so the 12-track LP unsurprisingly sounds familiar. There’s that whole “If it ain’t broke” thing, of course, but there were hopes that this effort would take Phillips to the next level of his pop-folk singer-songwriter career.”

Billboard: Gives him a mixed review (no rating), writing “(His debut album) worked so well that Phillips and the powers that be seem hesitant to rock the boat on the follow-up. Phillips’ sophomore album, ‘Behind the Light,’ feels more like a collection of big singles as opposed to a coherent album, with ebbs and flows. He mostly adheres to a strict formula: acoustic-based melodies accented by strings, building up to a huge hook and back again.”

Newsday: Gives Phillip a B grade, writing: “Phillips hasn’t abandoned the formula that landed him the smash hit “Home” and made him “American Idol’s” biggest success since Carrie Underwood. His updating of Dave Matthews-like musicianship and rock crooning combined with Mumford & Sons’ driving, thump-oriented folk is as winning as ever.”

Starpulse: Gives Philip 3 stars, writing “Behind the Light has some worthwhile moments. It’s by no means the best or most memorable album of 2014, but to some degree, Phillip Phillips steps up his game on this effort compared to The World From the Side of the Moon. That doesn’t mean that anything supplants “Home” (it doesn’t).”