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!

Three is the magic number

1. Mitchel, please stop trying to seduce me while I'm trying to learn about environmentalism. It makes me very upset.

2. I'm glad to see that they're concerned with recycling and alternative modes of transportation in the dystopian concrete bunker where you live!

3. Kid, your hair grows Budnickier by the day. That's not a compliment.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Zachary, you know, maybe if you showered occasionally your hair would not be so slick that your hat would fall off while you're on stage AT THE FUCKING OSCARS, you jackass.

(At least it wasn't a toolish wool cap, I suppose...)

Good job not falling down or visibly screwing up otherwise, though.

A very long intro to a very short joke

So Becky has a little bit of a crush on David Henrie (Gay Older Brother on Wizards of Waverly Place). I don't blame her. He's a cutie!


You know, in a Nice Jewish Boy way. But we're both Nice Jewish Girls, so we have this sort of gut reaction to that. (That gut reaction is: "Awwww.")

Anyway, naturally we were discussing how we'd like him to be in a Nice Jewish Boy movie with Josh Peck and David Moscow (Brandeis!: The Musical, perhaps?), and started wondering whether he could sing.

Jess: Well, I assume he can, because he's a Disney Kid. It's only a matter of time before they stick him in a pair of fuchsia pants...
Becky: ...and make him sing "Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide"?
Jess: I'm blogging this.

P.S. From now David Henrie will henceforth be known as "D-Hen." Or perhaps just "Henny." Make it so!

Picture from David Henrie Online.

Waxy Buildup

Can you tell which set of MoFoJoBros is made of wax? Me neither.


Picture from WireImage, obviously. Hat tip to my friend Mackenzie.

Ready yet? Get set! It's... Not All That?

Um. I have a confession. *cough*

Frequent readers will know that we here at Tweenage seriously dislike Demi Lovato -- and we really, really hated Camp Rock. And, well, you know how hard it was for me to admit that I kind of enjoyed Wizards of Waverly Place?

I. Um.

I actually enjoyed Sonny With a Chance, Disney's new Demi vehicle.

In fact, of all the various Disney sitcoms I've seen, Sonny has the most coherent pilot, and is surprisingly decent overall. Like, enough so that I almost mistook it for a show on Nickelodian, a network that actually understands how sitcom plots work! But then, that could be because it's really clear that someone at Disney sat down, watched a crapload of Dan Schneider programming, and stole blatantly.

So Sonny, the protagonist, is the new girl on a weekly kids' sketch comedy show called "So Random." And it seems like every episode of the sitcom about said show opens with a "So Random" sketch. Both of the sketches we've seen so far were probably supposed to be parodies, but actually just seemed like they could have been real -- albeit short -- sketches directly from Schneider's All That. And one of them was genuinely funny! Though that was only because the whole premise consisted of throwing food at Demi Lovato.

Speaking of Demi: she is definitely the weakest link. This is not exactly a surprise. But Sonny as a character is pretty much exactly Demi's public persona: she is desperate for people to really, really like her! And maybe if she smiles enough, we will! Which would be fine for a character but, unfortunately, Demi sucks as much at playing that character as she does at living that persona, because every line she squeaked (all but a few, which were yelled) was grating and irritating. She was supposed to be the sympathetic nice girl, compared to the standard cliche blond mean girl on the show, but... Well, the mean girl was better acted, with better comedic timing, so (even though she was probably the second-weakest actor on the show) I was kind of rooting for her. But in the few moments where Sonny was angry and not actively trying to befriend the whole wide world -- and also when she was covered in ketchup -- she was mildly tolerable. Almost.

The rest of the cast was pretty decent! I could easily picture this show suffering from Hannah Montana Syndrome: the main character is horrible (poorly acted, poorly written, and obnoxious) but the peripheral cast is quite amusing. The writing itself was a bit of a mixed bag; there were plenty of elements that didn't make sense -- well, that's standard on a kids' show, and triply-so on a Disney sitcom -- and a lot of really flat "laugh" lines. And there were a few obvious punchlines they just somehow missed. (When you have a protagonist who puns, who's writing a sketch about bees, who's been told she should leave something alone, her line should be, "I guess that's none of my BEESWAX," not "None of my bees-ness!" because BEESWAX IS ALREADY A THING PEOPLE SAY, zomg, punchline: ur doin it wrong.) But there were also a few decent laugh lines throughout, both within the parody sketches and the show at large.

Conclusion? To my surprise, I will probably watch this show in spite of its star. Of course, while I'm watching, I'll keep thinking it really would be a better show if it had a different star, a different writer, and was on a different network... But for Disney's original sitcoms, that's actually a step up in terms of quality.

Now excuse me. I need to go look for my sense of shame; I think I've lost it somewhere.

E-T-Freaking-A: Following trackbacks to our blog -- hi! thank you, we also think Ryan Evans is gay and the Jonas Brothers suck! -- I found a thread about Sonny over at TWoP, which points out that, while Schneider isn't involved, Sonny's executive producer Brian Robbins also produced All That. So there you go then. My gut instinct: pretty darned close!

Unfortunately, Serious

Here at Tweenage, we like to keep things pretty light. Because tween stars are hilarious. Even -- perhaps especially -- their stupid scandals are hilarious. (Hey, remember when Miley took some "scandalous" pictures with a well-known photographer for a legitimate magazine while her father was in the room, but OMG SHE'S SUCH A WHORE?!)

But sometimes these things aren't funny.

Miley Cyrus, posing for a picture while pulling back your eyes, joking about being Asian, is NOT FUNNY. It is racist.

I usually really like Miley. I think she is by far the most talented singer of this generation of tweens. She's not a great actress -- she's a terrible dancer -- but the girl has pipes. And by that virtue alone, she stands head and shoulders above imitators. I've defended her on those grounds time and time again.

But I can not, and will not, defend something like this.

Be careful, Miley: Selena Gomez may only have a tenth of your talent, but she has yet to seriously piss me off. And her made-for-TV movie is waiting on my TiVo. And it's a lot easier to like someone who, at least to the best of my knowledge, doesn't confuse racism and comedy. I'm just sayin'.