I Can’t Waste Time so Give it a Moment

For some reason I have been labeled as some American Idol basher. This is understandable in regards to the show itself which is just of mediocre singers singing crappy songs. Despite my hatred of the national karaoke night, I have gone into listening former karaokers alums with an open ear but rarely been impressed with America’s ability at picking the next great singer. Of course this has led to people calling me a music snob just because I don’t like the mom-rock of Daughtry even though they fail to point out both Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood both ranked multiple times on my Best Songs of 2006 list.

After the puzzling win of Taylor Hicks selection, America has gone back to anointing a young girl as their karaoke queen. But unlike Clarkson and Underwood who used their girl next door charm to vault them into superstardom, that will not be the case for Jordin Sparks and it really doesn’t come as a surprise that the Ugly Betty doppelganger is the product of a former defensive back. And one listen to her first single Tattoo leaves non-Karaoke watchers scratching asking themselves, seriously her? That’s the best they could do? The song is a blatant rip-off of Rihanna’s Umbrella complete with nonsensical metaphors and annoying over-intrusive production. But unlike Umbrella, which had a second life with sweet acoustic cover versions, don’t expect many lame YouTuber to upload their own versions or any semi-ironic covers from established artists.

What’s so bad about Jordin’s self titled album is that we already heard it earlier this year when fellow former karaoker Katherine McPhee released essentially the exact same album (see I Want this to Be Over, I So Want this to Be Through). Both albums are chalked full of your typical bland overproduced album we have heard over and over again for the last five years. Okay, at least there are no songs on Jordin’s album as horrible as Open Toes, but at least McPhee didn’t have Chris Brown, who is by far a better dancer than singer, on hers.

It is not surprising that the two best songs on the album, Now You Tell Me and Permanent Monday, are the only tracks that actually use real instrumentation instead of using drum machines and beats that no rapper would think of using. But on the other end of the spectrum there is the laughable God Loves Ugly. The song basically sounds as if the writer thought, “that Christina Aguilera song Beautiful is great, but what if I wrote a song with the same sentiment but not as touching, then give it to someone that doesn’t have the vocal power to express the message anyway.” Of course you can take this review with a grain of salt because as you know I’m just a music snob.

Song to Download - Now You Tell Me

Jordin Sparks gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.