First off, I think Bryan stole all of my jokes, but he denies it. I KNOW THE TRUTH
For the first review, we got quite the pick: the soundtrack from the new Hannah Montana movie. Now, going into this, I knew EXACTLY what to expect. I was planning for an endless barrage of sappy, needlessly happy, pop songs that cater to children, and never go outside of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. What I got out of this cd is exactly that, and I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything more.
I'll start this review with an analysis of the non-important parts of this album: the drums, guitar, and the bass. The drumming is standard 4/4 time signature with not a single interesting drum beat throughout the entire cd. The guitar on the Hannah Montana songs was primarily just power chords strummed in eighth notes for a measure, then changing to the next chord. The chord structures are painfully generic, following the standard I-IV-V progression. Obviously in a genre like this, the bass is unimportant, and just follows the guitar in everything that it does. Instruments are just not the focus in this album, and it's painfully obvious that there wasn't a lot of work put into them.
In this vocal-centric, catch-focused, hook-centered musical world we live in, the singer needs to be able to sing and / or have a unique enough voice to stand out. Miley definitely has the latter, and she has enough talent in the former that the auto tuner didn't have a lot of work to do. Of course, the performance she puts on is par for the course. Nothing is done spectacularly well, but nothing is really bad either. The lyrics, on the other hand, are either of the cheesy uplifting variety (songs such as “The Climb” and “You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home”) or of the Sesame Street variety (“Hoedown Throwdown”). Okay, so there's only one Sesame Street song, but that's one too many in my book. These lyrics I'm sure are supposed to make me feel good and uplifted, but they just make me realize that we live in such a depressing world that we need to force ourselves to be happy just to live in it. NOTE: I'M NOT EMO. Again, it's obviously for kids, but I know when I was a kid I didn't get off on mind-numbingly perky things, and kids today should have more than just this garbage. I'm not even going to go into the lyrics for the Rascal Flatts song about the country songs played backwards. I don't think anybody has laughed at that joke for ten years at the very least. However, I can't not mention the horrible, horrible vocalist from Rascal Flatts. If you took every stereotypical country voice and put them together into one person, it would be this guy, and that is definitely not a good thing. Every time he started singing, I imagined diarrhea going into my ears, never coming out, and getting all moldy and eventually rotting my brain down into a huge pile of stinky moldy poop. Steve Rushton suffers from the same problem. Take every pop punk stereotype you can think of, and that's him. Even in the reggae-ish song he sounds like every pop punk vocalist ever. The other two guest acts, Billy Ray Cyrus and Taylor Swift, were mostly uneventful. They are both good vocalists, and their songs follow the same formula listed above for Miley's songs: nothing good, nothing bad.
For the record, I know I'm not in the targeted demographic of the music (see 12 year old screaming girls) but I can tell you for a fact that I did not enjoy listening to this cd, and I hope that kids today don't either. Most everything wrong with the music industry today is embodied in this release. First off, music and TV should never be combined, EVER. I'm nitpicking, but in the mainstream, there has been very little variation of style since around the turn of the century, and this album does absolutely nothing to change that. Is it really so much to ask that even pop music does something different once in a while? The number one problem I have with this album is the Disney hype machine. They created Mile...err...HANNAH MONTANA only for pandering to little girls and stealing their parent's money. As soon as she does something risque or goes out on her own, she will magically lose popularity and disappear, much like Lindsay Lohan back in the day. Soon after, yet another youngster will take the throne and be the king (wait....queen) of the little girls.
SCORE: 3/10 and it's only that high because Miley's vocals are not horribly generic.
NP: Cynic – Traced In Air
BRYAN
The only thing I can say is I hope that week one of this blog isn't typical. This week's review topic is the soundtrack from the Hannah Montana Movie, but don't let the title confuse you: there are multiple other acts on the album including Rascal Flats, Steve Rushton (I'd never even heard of him before this album), Taylor Swift, Billy Ray Cyrus, and it even guest stars Miley Cyrus or some such garbage (I certainly did get the best of both worlds). I didn't even realize that there was more than just Hannah Montana's act on the album until halfway through the fourth song when I noticed that suddenly Hannah had gotten a lot more masculine. Somehow this album gained the number one spot on the Billboard's top 200 selling albums. Apparently all of the ten year old girls from around the country spent their allowance on this album. Way to go Hannah, you've won over your demographic: pre-teen girls.
Basically the entire album was the same, old, overused pop structure (intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, followed by a more powerful chorus) with a different singer or singers warbling along on top. The music itself was bland: the standard issue 4/4 time signature with a drummer pounding out the basic rhythm and a bass a guitar strumming along. Exactly what is expected from a top 200 album these days. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Hannah's style is her slightly distinctive voice and perhaps her attempt at innovation by way of country influences (Not a good thing by any stretch of the imagination). Fortunately Hannah Montana is somewhat talented vocally so the superfluous Auto-tune that is blatantly obvious in most pop albums is absent.
Despite the fact that I had never heard of Steve Rushton before, I got down to hating him right away. His almost Nickleback (shudder) style of singing sent spasms of pain down my spine, and of course he couldn't just leave it at that. The music itself was some sort reggae (More like regGAY) and punk fusion. The offbeat twanging of distorted guitars added absolutely nothing to this abomination of an song. Even by pop standards, this song is by far the worst on the album.
If you've ever listened to this album, there are two Rascal Flats songs that served as little more than a brief interlude or transition between Hannah and Miley. Rascal Flats... oh sorry, FlaTTs (that's about as far as their innovation goes) has been number one in my book of garbage since I first heard their single “Life is a Highway” or whatever that driving song was called. I was hoping that their two songs on the album would at least live up to the standards(?!?) set by “Life is a Highway” but alas, no cigar. The first Pascal very-Flat song on the album is based on a joke about country singers that hasn't been funny since before I first heard it when I was seven. It's great that these guys can laugh at themselves and all, but if them laughing at themselves sounds anything like Raskol Fault's singer, I weep for the future.
Again, I hope against all hopes that this week is not typical. I beg the music gods to allow us to review something with a little promise that perhaps allows us to make mention of creative music... and lyrics. All in all, this album is a generic, mind-numbing, lack-luster, repetitive pile of festering garbage that reminds me of every other album of this genre I've ever heard. I'm pretty sure I've heard at least all of these songs somewhere... oh I remember, it's been playing non-stop on the radio since before I stopped listening to it five years ago. Also, I just want to warn anyone who plans on thinking any kind of non-Hannah thoughts soon. After listening to this album, the sludge caked on my brain was so thick, I could hardly string together an intelligent sentence for this review, which probably explains a lot.SCORE: 2.5/10 as with Jess, simply because Miley has some vocal talent.
NP: Gorod – Leading Vision
Stay tuned for next week's review of Last.fm's most hyped tracks!
