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Review Summary: Pop-R&B can be better. Let the artist make the kind of music he really wants to make. Taylor Swift is free to prefer pop to country, Joe Jonas is free to prefer a mix of pop and R&B to rock. But is this mix right for Joe Jonas? That’s the question that comes to mind after the first listen of “Fastlife”, his first solo album. Forget about the way Jonas used to sing at the top of his voice in the latest Jonas Brothers’ albums, now he’s a crooner, and demands his place among Jason Derulo, Chris Brown (who is credited here) and the others. I smiled when I read in another review that he sounded “like one of those High School Musical kids trying to sing R&B ”.
The real problem in “Fastlife” isn’t his change of musical style, somehow hardly accepted by people like me who are still waiting for a worthy follow-up to the great pop-rock record “A Little Bit Longer”, the Jonas Brothers’ album that got a place in the Rolling Stone’s list of best albums of 2008. The problem is the fact that there are 12 songs here and only one climax, somewhere around the middle of the album. The album is very well produced, and I like the fact that the production is more R&B than techno unlike many recent pop-R&B records. But it seriously lacks great, catchy hooks.
The superb title track, the only standout here, is the only exception. It’s a lush club song with wild synths, a killer drumline and an explosive chorus. Perfectly arranged, amazing from the beginning to the synth improvisation at the end, this track‘s got the best pop-R&B beat of the year, and is even better than Justin Timberlake’s “My Love”. “All This Time” and “Take It And Run” are some of the other few tracks you’ll remember, but from the ballads “See No More”, ”Sorry” and “Lighthouse” to the upbeat “Kleptomaniac” and “Love Slayer”, there is hardly a song here better than listenable.
Simply said, this album doesn’t rock, and that’s disappointing, given Mr. Jonas’ background. When you compare “Sorry”, the sumptuous, powerful ballad in “A Little Bit Longer” with the utterly forgettable “Sorry” present in this album, you just wish he had remixed the former with some sparse R&B arrangements and included it instead. Perhaps that’s the key to the future success of Joe Jonas as a pop-R&B act: if he uses his rock roots in his new musical style just as Taylor Swift uses her country roots to create great pop songs, he could make at worst interesting music, at best hits outdoing Ryan Tedder’s productions. For now, with one good song and eleven fillers, his pop-R&B debut does not succeed in revealing a musical personality and this album would have sounded the same with a High School Musical kid as singer.
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"Joe Jonas is free to prefer a mix of pop and R&B to rock. But is this mix right for Joe? That’s the question that comes
to mind after the first listen of “Fastlife”, his first solo album. Forget about the way Joe Jonas used to sing at the top
of his voice in the latest Jonas Brothers’ albums, now he’s a crooner"
Until you referred to him as Mr. Jonas, I'm not even sure you called him anything other than joe, joe jonas, or the
jonas brothers. it just reads awkwardly.
"The real problem in “Fastlife” isn’t his change of musical style, ***which is way hardly accepted by those who***, like
me, are still waiting for a worthy follow-up to the great pop-rock record “A Little Bit Longer”, the Jonas Brothers’
album that got a place in the Rolling Stone’s list of best albums of 2008."
firstly, this shouldn't be one sentence. secondly, the starred section needs to be reworked.
"The problem is the fact that there are 12 songs here and only one climax"
tell me about it, amiright?
"But it seriously lacks great, catchy hooks."
mention this earlier in that paragraph, and maybe a clause or two explaining what isn't great or catchy? it's just a
bad way to end a section
"The superb title track, the only standout here, is the only exception, a lush club song with wild synths, a killer
drumline and an explosive chorus."
if you read this like a poem, using the commas as line breaks, it's actually... no it's bad either way. comma use is bad
all over, just look up purdueowl and read.
other than that, i know i skipped some comma gripes. i hope you'll go through and find them. i guess if i heard one
decent song with 11 tracks of shit i would rate it a lot lower than 2.5.. (skrillex?) but opinions, opinions.
this isn't a good review, but i'm not gonna neg.
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still waiting for a worthy follow-up to the great pop-rock record “A Little Bit Longer”, the Jonas Brothers’ album
me too omg
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love Slayer
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Simply said, this album doesn’t rock, and that’s disappointing, given Mr. Jonas’ background.
True. This guy practically embodies what it means to rock!
*rolly eyes*
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He looks like a sex offender
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he offended me during sex
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It's hilarious how these pop singers have 14 million writers and producers involved on every song, yet their music still
sucks. The monkeys at a typewriter analogy applies very much.
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you know escalator that's a god damn valid point right there. hmm.
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This review sucks, but was it really necessary anyways?
| | | Album Rating: 2.5
Tyrannic, thanks for your crits, English ain't my mother tongue, in French commas are used this way... Working on the new version of the review
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