Pia Toscano Heads Out On Her Own "This Time"

After her shock early elimination, Pia Toscano has joined her fellow former season 10 'American Idol' contestants, runner-up Lauren Alaina and winner Scotty McCreery, in dropping debut music videos this week, premiering the simple-yet-sexy video for her debut single, "This Time," a belty ballad that showcases just why Toscano's early "Idol" dismissal outraged so many viewers.
The sultry raven-hared balladeer may have finished in ninth place on American Idol last season, but with the amount of promotion she's gotten since the show wrapped, you would almost think she'd won the whole contest. Considered to be a frontrunner in the competition, some viewers and media outlets described Toscano's departure as one of the most shocking eliminations in American Idol history. 'Idol' observers praised the 22-year-old's star power, and she needs every ounce of it for this video because, aside from a few distant figures in the background, she's the only person who appears in it.
The lack of bells and whistles puts the attention on the lyrics and on Toscano's powerful voice. The song has received positive to mixed reviews by critics. Entertainment Weekly says "it's the kind of song we can expect to hear Rachel Berry singing the next time Finn screws up: sad, relatable, and a touch awe-inspiring. Los Angeles Times gave the song a more negative review, saying Pia "sings the hell out of it, of course;" he calls the song itself "a compendium of comeback cliches that almost reads like a parody of the whole I-will-survive genre." Billboard say "Lyrically, Toscano finds her strength - from what sounds to be an emotionally or even physically abusive relationship - on the midtempo pop ballad."
Toscano looks graceful and slightly angelic in the her debut video for "This Time." As she nurses her shattered heart, and is determined not to let it get in her way to find a true happiness since the song is about breaking away from a guy who plays too many games and heading out to live life on her own. The music video for the song — like most Idol videos that are shot while the kids are on tour — is pretty straightforward. It features Toscano singing her song in a series of unrelated locations: a car, a field, the beach, a meadow, a beach, a convertible, and a city street. The lighting is a major focus of the video, with sunlight, sunsets and street lights in most of the shots.