Album Notes

Feisty, speak-her-piece pop star Krysta Youngs is a colorful, creative and complicated character, qualities all perfectly captured on her stunning debut, Stories. Youngs, fresh out of Boston via her native Detroit, is Beantown’s answer to straight-shooting artists like Pink, Madonna, and Avril Lavigne, only without all that superstar baggage.

Krysta possesses a canny gift for storytelling, a delightful penchant for hi-octane, hugely melodic pop, and danceable grooves that just won’t quit. Her performances throughout the album are captivating. Her songs—rockin’, heartfelt, and literate—often pack devastating impact.

On “Leave Me Alone,” for example, one of Stories’ pivotal tracks, Youngs wallops with a big lyric and a rock and roll roundhouse of a hook: “Leave me alone, leave me alone / Don\'t come any closer / I\'ll punch you out, knock you unconscious / Leave me alone, leave me alone / This fight won\'t be over till one of us is dead.” “I needed a release,” she says about the song. She got one again on the take-no-prisoners opener, “It’s Going Down,” in Youngs’ words, “a rock out, pick a fight, speed in your car kind of jam.” Krysta sings, “Well, you thought you knew me, but all my demons are coming out / I\'m breaking the silence, pulling the duct tape off my mouth.” Her lapel-grabbing urgency is fresh, winning, and irresistible.

It might confuse things, or at least go against type, to know that Krysta Youngs has a fetish for the color pink, an infatuation with Top 40 stardom, and a fabulousness that just won’t quit. But it’s the yin of her straight talk and the yang of her girlie girl side that makes her completely unique, and who she most definitely is.

Frankly, you’ve got to see it to believe it.