MANILA, Philippines?There are songs that become your guilty pleasure, the kind that you don?t admit you like, because they?re too pop or just cheesy. Many albums get pushed to the back of the closet, a little secret you keep, even when you?ve thoroughly memorized every track.

This is what ?A.K.A Cassandra,? KC Concepcion?s debut CD, is like. Truth to tell, there is nothing spectacular about it. It?s mostly remakes of foreign hits (save for Joey Ayala?s ?Haring Ibon?) and originals that are everything but and ... yes, cheesy (?An Updated Version of Me?).

Many of the songs here are about love or about the universal notions of happiness and going with the flow. Every single one is pop, easy to listen to.

Eclectic

And yet ?A.K.A Cassandra? is far from a run-of-the-mill. Which means, primarily, that it?s unlike the usual CDs churned out for singers of Concepcion?s age?collections of love ballads and nothing else.

This album allows Concepcion to play around with various genres: from rock in ?Imposible? to new wave in ?Melt With You,? from danceable music such us ?DooBeeDoo? to a little techno in ?Breathe.? Concepcion?s vocals are well-highlighted, moving as she does from some belting (?Imposible,? ?Haring Ibon?) to a stable falsetto in several numbers (like ?Umbrella,? ?An Updated Version of Me?).

Vocal histrionics are obviously not the point here. In fact, Concepcion proves her versatility without screaming her lungs out. She allows her singing voice to render specific emotions ?from sad (?It Must Have Been Love?) to hopeful (?Haring Ibon?) or judgmental (?Imagine?); from happy (?Melt With You?) to lighter-than-air (?Breathe?). She even does some chanting a la Bayang Barrios in ?Haring Ibon.?

Thin line

This is possible also because of the eclectic song choices which, apparently, Concepcion could take credit for. Of course there is a thin line between eclectic and all-over-the-place. But as debut albums go, eclectic is better than timid. At best, Concepcion didn?t bow to formula, upping other artists? revivals by her song choices?how many would dare cover songs by Roxette, Joey Ayala, Modern English, Ryan Cayabyab, and Raimund Marasigan in a single album?

At a time when albums are created for artists instead of artists creating their own, at least Concepcion can claim that her producers neither expected her to be a puppet, nor treated her like one.