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Originally posted on 21/3/10

JLS - JLS - Album Review

Let's get one thing straight, I hate this band. I hate them and everything the represent. I am only reviewing their first (and only) album as Martin decided to bring up the JLS/Muse mud-slinging (not a debate, as a debate has two sides), and even i'm fed up of it. As such, this completely objective review will once and for all provide a fair view of it.

Normally when I review an album I make comments on progression from previous work, vocals, lyrics and instrumental talent. Obviously, I can't do any of those for this, so we'll have to look at it differently. While boy band pop is a perfectly legitimate music genre, albeit one that should've followed acid house's example and died in the 90's, JLS manage to rip-off all the best aspects (or, least bad) of it, combine it with some modern r'n'b beats and production and still manage to sound like something that Robbie Williams circa Rudebox would have rejected for sounding too cheesy. By looking at pretty much every song title, you will be able to guess what the song will be like. Nor does it help when they're all pretty much the same. Beat Again manages to be something of a standout, but that's like saying Hitler was a standout member of the Nazi party. Given that you could take the choruses and verses from it, rearrange them in any order and still have something that sounds exactly the same, you get the point i'm trying to make. There's zero imagination, nothing particularly distinguishing, and by the end you couldn't pick out anything particularly memorable about what you just wasted the last three minutes of your life on.

I talked about opening singles and what they can say about an album last week, a type I never mentioned was the lead single that is track #1 on the album. Very rarely do these ever turn out to be more than masks for a bad album, the only one I can think of that is safe is An End Has a Start by Editors. Not surprisingly, JLS hides behind Beat Again, albeit in the manner of a fat 7 year old using a lamp-post in a game of hide and seek. The following song is the following single, the wonderfully bland Everybody in Love, which is so beige i'm surprised the video wasn't shot in a nursing home.

While i'm at videos, I should elaborate on another reason I hate these types of bands. Aside from the fact they're all identical, they may as well just be put up on giant screens at their "concerts." From the various videos going around, i'm yet to see one where JLS actually sing live. I do see the reasoning behind this however, because they sure can't sing on the record, why bother embarassing yourself by doing it live? Aside from the odd strained harmony, there are no 'good' voices. There's also the odd burst of auto-tune, which always does nothing but raise the quality of a record. The absurd pitch changes wont distract from the toe-curling-ly awful lyrics though, stuff so cheesy even the French would turn their nose up at it. Everything seems to be aimed at the hearts of the young and impressionable, and while you'll hate society while listening to this because you know people will actually accept the lyrics, you're cheered by the fact that when they get over their crush on OMGASTON or OMG.......whoever else is in it, that they might find music with substance to base their lives around.

I hate music like this. Mainly because it isn't music. None of it is real. These 4 scrubs came second in a talent contest to a burd with a big nose, yet have gone on to be arguably more successful than her. I implore you, please stop buying crap like this. Please stop voting for all of these reality tv shows, particularly anything that has Simon Cowell's bored drawling smirk over it. While JLS are so forgettable even while you listen to them that you know within 6 months at most they will have fallen out of the public's consciousness completely, there will always be something else cookie-cutter to replace them. It is a sad indication of the world today that music with such little depth, with all the substance of the atmosphere of the moon, can manage to be bought by over one million people. It is not music, and should be treated as such. Ultimately, the album is the equivalent of chewing gum, something that gives you a very artificial burst of goodness at the beginning, then after about 30 seconds goes bitter and leaves you desperately aching for a bin to spit it out into, then searching for something worthwhile to clean the taste out of your mouth with.