Dumb Plus Dumb Equals You

Trends are so powerfully, even big time rock stars like The Rolling Stones were recording disco songs at the height of the genre. With the explosion of Adele this year as the most buzzed and bought artist, I bet record labels are already signing clones for the last couple months. You would think one artist who would love to jump on the Adele bandwagon would be Kelly Clarkson. After her most personal album My December bombed with critics and the public alike, she was resigned to recording what sounded like leftovers from Katy Perry and P!nk albums for the follow up All I Ever Wanted.

But instead of filling her latest album with Adele like tracks that more highlight the voice over cheep production effects that are meant to hide the limitations of lesser singer, Clarkson’s latest album Stronger is just a retread of her last album which sounds even more dated now two years later. Just how overplayed is her title track What Doesn’t Kill You (Stronger)? It actually inspired someone to compile a video of all the pop songs that have overused the Nietzsche quote.



From the title track, you get another twelve forgettable tracks. It is never a good sign when you go through a whole album and not one song sticks out from the mediocrity. They just sound like leftovers from her last album (which sounded like leftovers themselves and no one likes still eating turkey the Sunday after Thanksgiving). Okay, one song actually stick out, but not in a good way. Einstein features lyrics so painfully lame they would make Ke$ha songs read like something out of the Bob Dylan songbook. Not only is “Dumb + Dumb = You” a line in the song, it is the actual chorus. C’mon, you could not come up with a second insult that you had to add dumb to itself? Why not then just say “Dumb Squared = You” then? Hopefully Clarkson recorded Stronger before Adele had her success and we will have to wait for her to capitalize on Adele’s domination of the charts for her next album, because songs like Einstein are embarrassingly bad.

Song to Download – You Love Me

Stronger gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.