Each Time I Try to Be the Good Girl

Kristania DeBarge has a lot to live up to. Yes the last name is courtesy of her father James who was part of the eighties group that brought us the theme song to Short Circuits. Then her debut album Exposed was produced by nineties uber-producer Babyface who also wrote four songs for the album. With that lineage, Exposed is a little disappointing.

The album just sounds like every other album from other cookie cutter R&B pop acts of the past couple years like Jordin Sparks and the like getting the scraps that Rihanna pass on. Debarge even tries to do for Steam’s Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye for her Goodbye what Rihanna did for Tainted Love on S.O.S. to lesser effect (it also doesn’t help that Wale and Jay-Z also decided to co-opt the same song this year). And it doesn’t help that Ryan Tedder contribute a track because Speak Up doesn’t help his rap that he basically only has one song that he recycles to ever artist he works with to the point you can understand why Kelly Clarkson was so upset.

Even the Babyface songs like Cried Me a River come off a little too smaltzy and too overproduced making you wish of the days when ‘face could do no wrong but that was over a decade ago. He does manage to take us back to when Kristinia’s father ruled the charts on the throwback It’s Got to Be Love which borrows from I Need Love from LL Cool J.

But on the bright side, the album is good clean fun for the tween set who are looking for something edgier than the Magic Kingdom is exporting and not ready for the oversexualized music that plagues R&B radio these days. Anyone one in that age bracket will be more than happy to sing along to songs like Goodbye, Future Love and Doesn’t Everybody Want to Fall in Love.

Song to Download – Doesn’t Everybody Want to Fall in Love

Exposed gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.