Sparks Flew. Like, a year ago. Whoops?

[Note: I wrote this review, like, 11 months ago and kept forgetting to post it. But I've been in a tween girl music frenzy the past week or so, so I dusted it off, just for you!]

I really like Miranda Cosgrove. It helps, of course, that I've been watching her grow up since she was a tiny little thing on Drake and Josh, but she just seems to be a sweet girl with her head on straight, and I'm very fond of her.

This is why it's so sad that she projects awkwardness and discomfort, like, all the time. She's not a bad actress, and she's incredibly pretty, but she looks like she's dying of self-consciousness every time I see her. I want to tell her to stand up straight, take her hands off her hips, and take several deep breaths. Case in point. (Though if I were wearing that jacket, I'd be shrugging awkwardly too.)

But the good thing is, this is an entirely visual issue, and so while listening to her first full-length album, Sparks Fly, I can just enjoy her lovely voice and my positive feelings towards her, and don't have to worry about how twitchy I get while watching her.

Speaking of her voice, I was pleasantly surprised! After hearing her (very enjoyable) contributions to the iCarly soundtrack, I had mentally categorized her - a little dismissively - in the "somewhat squeaky, thin-voiced soprano" group with Aly and AJ, Emily Osment, and Selena Gomez. As one of the better ones, to be sure, but nothing to write home about. And I still wouldn't say she has a voice for the ages - she's not as striking or powerful as, say, Miley - but her pipes are strong and she has impressive range. In "There Will Be Tears," for example, she takes the verses about an octave deeper than usual, and sounds like an entirely different person. (Still good, though.)

The music is standard pop fare, but I love standard pop fare, so that's not a complaint. There are, inevitably, some bombs: the overproduced dancepop variety ("BAM"); the overly-saccharine inspirational ballad variety ("Hey You"); and the "I think I'm a rock star but I am incorrect" variety ("Daydream"). But for the most part the album is extremely listenable, whether Miranda's singing with breathless excitement about new love ("Kissin' U," "Shakespeare") or sassy disdain about a man who done her wrong ("There Will Be Tears," "Brand New You"). There are some nice ballads, too: "Beautiful Mess" is a surprisingly convincing picture of the messy end of a troubled relationship, and Miranda gets to show off her belt nicely in "What Are You Waiting For?"

My favorite, though, is the bouncy, hiccupy "Disgusting" - I listened to the album straight through, then went back and listened to this one like ten times in a row. My only quibble is the utterly baffling line "It's disgusting how you change me/ From a bandit to a baby." Bandit? Really? Because that just makes me picture this:


...which is actually a pretty delightful image, so BONUS POINTS.

Seriously, though, Sparks Fly is pretty much an all-around great pop album, and definitely one of my favorite offerings from the various TV pop princesses. Well done, Miranda. Might I suggest more music and less shrugging in your future? Pretty please?

No guilt here, just pleasure.

One of the (many) reasons I love Tizz is that she just keeps getting better. She was vaguely endearing when The Suite Life of Zack and Cody started; she wound up being the apparent glue that held the show together, since The Suite Life on Deck is unwatchable without her. She was one of the only tolerable actors in High School Musical; by High School Musical 3, her background eyerolls were more entertaining than anything in the nonsense plot. And while her debut album, Headstrong, was an embarrassment all around, Guilty Pleasure, her sophomore effort, is…really, really fun. Who knew?

This is first and foremost because Tizz sounds surprisingly good. Gone is the squeaky, Hilary Duff-esque Tizz of the past; this is a strong, grown-up voice, one that can actually belt and convey multiple emotions, something only a couple of her peers can do. It’s a continued growth from her surprisingly good (albeit sadly truncated) singing performance in HSM 3. Hey, remember how we all scoffed at her “deviated septum” story back when she had her nose job? It might actually have been true, because she sings much more powerfully and less nasally now. I know, I can’t believe it either!

The songs themselves are, for the most part, decent. Most of them tend to run together – there’s 19 on the album, and a good five could have been cut without a noticeable change to the content. They all tend to follow a basic formula of “purred verse, bridge, shouted chorus, rinse and repeat,” as if whoever wrote them was taught to adhere to song structure as rigidly as Elizabethan sonnets, but they’re definitely listenable. The whole album is also seriously 80s-inspired; the title track in particular sounds like it was once recorded by Paula Abdul in her heydey. Others, like “Crank It Up,” sound more current, where “current” equals “like a lost track from Britney Spears’ Circus.”

There are, however, some standouts. There’s only one really bad song, “How Do You Love Someone,” but its caterwauling melodrama is really bad. And the otherwise unremarkable “Time’s Up” is notable for bizarre lyrics like “We’ve squeezed the fruit ‘til there’s no more juice left” and “This cake’s already baked.” Uh. What?

On the other hand, there are some really bright, fun songs: “It’s Alright, It’s OK” is a great kiss-off song, “Hot Mess” is endearingly, well, messy, and “Switch” is bouncy good times. On the rather lovely ballad “Me Without You,” Tizz delivers a vocal performance I wouldn’t have guessed she was capable off, moving effortlessly from whispered vulnerability to a belt that reaches to the cheap seats. And “Hair” is hands-down the best song on the album; the lyrics are clever (well, if you ignore the part where she says “unperfect”), Tizz’s singing is strong, and the whole thing has a lilting, unusual cadence that I just can’t get enough of.

This is not the next Abbey Road, or even the next, say, Oops! I Did It Again. But it is a good, strong, fun album, and gosh darn it, I’m proud of Tizz. Keep it up, sister! You keep defying my expectations, and that’s just fine by me.

Who would've thought that a girl like me would double as a superstar?

I just realized I never got around to reviewing the latest Miley Cyrus album, Breakout. Whoopsies! Since it’s way too late to be anything like a timely review, I’m going to do a retrospective instead and review the first Hannah Montana soundtrack. We shall follow in later posts with Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus and Breakout, and, eventually, the inevitable Hannah Montana 3 and the movie soundtrack (omg how excited are you?)!!!

Now, the thing I like most about Miley is her voice. She has power and range and pitch, which is, sadly, more than you can say for most of the other Disney girls churning out albums. But she also has a very distinctive voice. Most of her peers have variations on a chirpy, squeaky soprano (Vanessa Hudgens, Emily Osment, Selena Gomez, Miranda Cosgrove, Aly and AJ, and Tizz, to name a few). Some do it better than others, but it’s a very definite and omnipresent type.

But Miley doesn’t sound like that. And it's not just that her voice is richer and more mature, although it is both of those things. It’s…smoky with a metallic tang; it’s coppery. I considered likening it to scraping charred barbecue sauce off a hot grill with your teeth, but I thought “coppery” sounded nicer. (I swear, the whole barbecue sauce thing is a compliment.)

The point is, regardless of the stupidity of any particular song (and she has sung some real clunkers in her time, let me tell you), I enjoy the experience of listening to her. And though her voice wasn’t as strong on this first album as it would eventually grow to be, it’s still leaps and bounds ahead of the competitors’.

So let’s get to the music itself. First off, there’s the triumvirate of songs about her double life: “The Best of Both Worlds,” “Just Like You,” and “The Other Side of Me.” These are all, essentially, the same song: “It’s really you but no one ever discovers/ So what you see is only half the story, there’s another side of me/ I’m just like anybody else, can’t you tell?” I mean, they’re all pretty good songs, so I’ve got no beef with the repetition of the theme. The only thing worth noting is that I can’t hear “The Best of Both Worlds” without picturing the opening credits to the show. It’s barely a song to me anymore. It’s just a Pavlovian cue for poorly-acted shenanigans.

I also enjoy the Girl Power diptych, “Who Said” and “I Got Nerve.” I do prefer the former, as “I Got Nerve” kind of doesn’t make any sense (“Electrified/ I’m on a wire/ Getting together and we’re on fire…Don’t close/ Your mind/ The words I use are open.” What?). And I love the slightly bizarre choice in “Who Said” of “Who said I can’t be Superman?” instead of “Supergirl,” not to mention the presidential aspirations and “every girl has a choice.” It’s a fun, bouncy song that makes me want to dance, with a good message to boot. A+!

I’m glad that there is only one Miley-sung song that could really be classified as a love song, considering that a) Miley was tiny when she recorded these, and b) the target audience is eight. That said, “If We Were a Movie” is definitely my favorite song on the album, and one of my favorite Miley songs, period. I love the rollicking rhythm to it, but I also have a lifelong weakness for the “girl in love with best guy friend” trope. Too much Some Kind of Wonderful at a formative age, I guess. (Second favorite: “This Is The Life.” The mellow beat and delivery pleases me.)

“Pumping Up the Party” bores me to tears. And I never listen to the non-Miley songs on this album, except now that I’m reviewing it. Listening to them now, I think I made the right choice to completely ignore them, especially since one of them is by Jesse McCartney, and you know how I feel about him. And finally, “I Learned From You,” the Miley/Billy Ray duet, is deeply cheesy, but as deeply cheesy power ballads go, it’s not bad.

Final verdict? The contents of the album are decent bubblegum pop, but nothing to write home about. The only thing that makes this album extraordinary is Miley’s voice, which wouldn’t be used to its full potential for another year. Stay tuned!

Hudgentified

Well, Vanessa Hudgens has done it again.

By "it," of course, I mean "released an album so bland and overproduced it makes Aly and AJ look like groundbreakers." Her debut offering, V, was a total snoozefest, and Identified is no different. Check out the video for the first single:



What I find completely fascinating about this is what V is doing with her voice. Normally the Hudge has a piping, chirpy little soprano, with a tendency towards a breathy delivery on her non-HSM songs (and of course every note she sings goes straight through her nose, which should have been beaten out of her by her vocal coach years ago, but whatcha gonna do?). But listen to her wail (well, "wail") on this one! She's doing her utmost to sound like a grownup, getting some Christina in there, some Aretha, some big girl voices going on!

And, well, it doesn't actually work. Because Vanessa Hudgens is a tiny pixie made of spun sugar, a dollop of meringue in a sundress, and meringue cannot wail. But by gosh, she's giving it the old college on-set tutoring try!

It is nice to see her being allowed to be non-Caucasian, after the atrocity of her makeup in HSM2, where they apparently attempted to powder away her natural color, despite the shrieking orangeosity of Zef and Tizz. (I originally referred to this as "flouring" her face, but after Camp Rock went whole hog and had its Latina heroine actually stick her face in a bag of flour, I guess I'll have to stop calling it that.) Also, check the sexuality going on here! I guess once you're naked on the internet you can strut your be-sneakered gams down darkened streets with impunity.

Anyhoodle, the entire album vacillates between this attempt at Big Girl Voice and our usual squeaky robot Vanessa. There's very little that's stand-out good or stand-out bad; it pretty much all falls on a spectrum of "mediocre" to "mildly crappy," with a couple of minor exceptions. "Paper Cut" sticks out at me because it makes me a little concerned for the Hudge: "Your love hurts like a paper cut, so sweet/ Never even feel the slice, it's so deep…" But for my money the What the Hell Award goes to "Party on the Moon," which includes not only the word "astrologic," but also the astonishing phrase "Milky Way hotties." Nice one, V.

(I have to say, though, that looking over online lyrics to this album, I feel a bit gypped that I don't live in Japan. Over in the Land of the Rising Sun they get gems like "Set It Off." Not only does it appear to be about Vanessa's high-tech chastity belt, it contains lines like "Now bend over like Houdini/ And there's no key/ You gotta pick the lock." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I know it's dirty!)

In conclusion, Baby V continues to run a C average - passing, but nothing to write home about. Better luck next time, Sneaks!