Faded celebrities turn to Dancing with the Stars with the intent of reviving their careers, so it’s only appropriate that Julianne Hough, one of the show’s professional dancers, attempts to reverse engineer that logic by using Dancing to launch a career as a singer. Logic learned from American Idol dictates that any pretty wholesome girl or guy with all-American good looks is automatically a country singer, and so Utah native Hough is packaged as a spunky, irrepressibly chipper country-pop thrush, the kind of country-pop that fits Hough even when she’s singing songs of heartbreak. Hough’s producer, David Malloy, casts the bubbly blonde as the love-struck girl next door or the faithful confidant who offers sensible advice to her wayward best friend, as heard across nearly the entire second half of the album on tracks like “Hello,” “Help Me, Help You,” and “Love Yourself.” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine