CARLY RAE JEPSEN: TUG OF WAR (2008)
1) Bucket; 2) Tug Of War; 3)
Money And The Ego; 4) Tell Me; 5) Heavy Lifting; 6) Sunshine On My Shoulders;
7) Worldly Matters; 8) Sweet Talker; 9) Hotel Shampoos; 10) Sour Candy.
Okay, one for the kids here. After all, now
that we are in 2017 and Carly Rae Jepsen seems to have turned into one of the
decade's flashier symbols, for better or for so much worse, it is fully
legitimate to come out and ask — what's wrong with a bit of sweet, innocent,
starry-eyed pop today? After all, simplistic teen entertainment is only as old
as Buddy Holly, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys, and it's also cool to love all
sorts of «twee» stuff nowadays, isn't it?..
There were, in fact, plenty of things to like
about Carly Rae Jepsen in 2008, once you'd gotten over the fact that she came
into the world out of the bowels of Canadian
Idol. She was young, she was pretty, she had a nice voice, she knew
(barely) how to play guitar, she wrote her own songs, and, perhaps most
importantly, she did not try to present herself as the new Queen of Broken
Hearts — as the title of the John Denver cover here suggests, she goes for
sunshine rather than darkness, which is a good thing, because she looks like a
person who prefers to live in the sunshine, and this makes the music more
honest.
This is probably where the good things end,
because I cannot see Carly Rae Jepsen as a good songwriter. The catchiest song
is the opening number, ʽBucketʼ, a bumpy piece of acoustic ska with a good
party-time chorus, but even that probably took thirty seconds to «write», apart
from finding all the sand-related words. Everything else is totally mediocre
folk-pop, livelied up with dance-oriented rhythm section work but never really
getting out of the formula that was already well in action on Britney Spears'
first album. Producer Ryan Stewart loyally sees to it that nothing and nobody
gets in the way of the singer, and the singer gets by more on the strength of
the little crispy rasp in her voice — sexy! — than anything else.
With records like these, there is usually no
talk of being «impressive» — the choice is between dumb-annoying and tolerable,
and, fortunately, Jepsen falls in the latter category. Her lyrics are just one
notch above generic teen romance (she is careful enough to put up a few
quasi-offensive lines from time to time, like "don't go out with the girls
tonight / I will turn to drink / Wondering who you're screwing"), but one
notch below the level where this crap becomes overwhelmingly pretentious — and
her vocal attitude avoids excessive sex-doll posturing, staying at a
comfortable angle where there's a good balance between sex and spirit. In fact,
when she proclaims that "I've got to be sure there's more / Than the money
and the ego" on one of the tracks, it's an almost believable
proclamation, hard as it is to take it from the mouth of a former Idol participant.
Considering how much of a folk-pop /
country-pop slant this album has, comparisons with Taylor Swift would be
inevitable — Jepsen would undergo the same transformation into an even glitzier
electro-pop star even faster than Taylor — and there's really not that much
difference, except that Jepsen's material seems a wee bit less calculated. The
main problem with all this stuff is that, even with all the starry-eyed
innocence, it still sounds as if the
album doesn't really want to know if it wants to be a simple collection of
dance-pop grooves or if it wants to be a «from-the-heart» type of statement.
Jepsen herself has said that she is influenced by Cyndi Lauper and Joni Mitchell — I mean, no shit,
girl, but you really have to choose whose side you're on, because you still
lack both the eccentricity of the former and the depth and musical talent of
the latter. The result is... well, I'd say that the album's «good intentions»
are really the only thing that saves it from being a total catastrophe. That
and the fact that this is the first and last time you're gonna see and hear C.
R. J. as a human being and not a cyborg, prior to, uhm, «assimilation». Also,
stealing an album title from Paul McCartney? Not a cool move in my book.
Britney Spears I get. Avril Lavigne I get. If you're not dead by that point, Taylor Swift I get -- all very popular. As far as I know CRJ had one (noxious) hit and then disappeared; what made you decide to review her?
ReplyDeleteShe disappeared in the mainstream, but her last two releases have been indie darlings of sorts, so I'm betting that's why George is reviewing her.
DeleteHoping to read a review of Cat Stevens soon.
ReplyDeleteMe too, especially since his first two, more baroque-pop style albums tend to be unfairly overlooked.
DeleteOnly the beginning...only just the start...
ReplyDelete