Part of Pop Star SundayKimberly ColeThis opener for Katy Perry - which will automatically turn you off or hype you up depending on what you think about the musician - is very... well... typical. She's not fantastic or down-right awful. She's at that perfect level of mediocrity that makes her less than likable. She sings about guys and parties and sexy scenes set to artificial beats, which are the most overdone concepts on Earth.
And it's hard to take her seriously as an original artist when her songs follow the same three topics: Her back is against the wall, there's a hot guy with a fancy car who wants her and she's sooooo sexy you can't stand it. Unfortunately for Kimberly, she seems like another wannabe triple-threat (singer, actor, dancer) who is probably ten times more exciting when she isn't singing. Her songs just have 'fail' all over them, because they don't stand out. At all. If she ever rose to the top, it'd be easy as cake and ice cream to recycle her and it's a trend that new music needs to get out of. I'm pretty sure a preteen writing songs in her bedroom at night can do better than this.
Kristinia DeBargeIn a Billboard interview she compared her music to both Led Zeppelin and Mariah Carey. Uhh... okay? Since she doesn't have the voice of Mariah (old school or new school) or the skill of Zeppelin, I don't where she got that from. I know from listening to her music she is miles away from being vaguely compared to either one.
I'll admit that her stand out single is a nice track. Over 19 million plays. Sweet and addictive, like candy, 'Goodbye' has all the right pop elements: a catchy sample from a former hit song, a solid hook and you don't feel that ridiculous singing along. But her other songs on MySpace only have a couple hundred thousand plays and it's understandable why they haven't caught fire like 'Goodbye.' They all sound the same in one way or another. 'Gotta Be Love,' another sappy I-can't-live-without-you song, tries too hard to be R&B ontop of being boring. Songs like 'Sabotage' and 'Doesn't Everybody Want To Fall In Love' have the exact same piano-turned-dance ballad sound. Complete with banging drum beats and hand claps. Both are supposed to be deep - but poor Kristinia. She just doesn't succeed at that.
Her
other piano ballad 'Cried Me A River' is a little scary. Kristinia's scream (it's a soft scream, but still very WTF) is actually part of the beat. She throws out a bunch of tired metaphors in the chorus that don't have much substance. Her heart apparently has been set on singing since she was a baby... and maybe a genius is in there somewhere. I wish she'd find it and stop singing all these lame cookie cutter romance songs. She's simply not good enough or well-known enough to get away with this kind of uniformity.
The Landers SistersOkay, that doesn't start with a K, but one of the sisters' name is Kristy - so they are eligible! The other girl is named Lindsey. Which is unimportant. All you need to know is that they aren't good. It's almost painfully obvious how fake they are. They're aiming to be these twin pop rock socialites who are 'edgy.' Instead they come off as an underproduced version of
The Veronicas - with considerably less pop appeal. Which I'd think wouldn't be the case since they were featured on shows like "Dollhouse" and "Grey's Anatomy."
Again - the lyrics are what suffer the most here. 'I be cool, I be cool, I be breaking all the rules' and 'Lips like a viper, tongue like honey, one look at you and I feel like money' just made me cringe. Their MySpace playlist dupes you into thinking they're worth listening to by putting their only interesting song 'Welcome to LA' first. But the further you get down the list, the more the songs start to suck - the rhyming words are pathetically basic and overrun with cliches, their voices warble
a lot when attempting to moan or hit high notes and the actual poppy songs are repetitive stereotypical tracks about guys and love.
I'm not sure if they sold-out to have their song played on "The Hills" or if they were always this bad. But I'm not interested in finding out. I only hope Aly and AJ aren't this horrendous when they hit the 20s.
Labels: Kimberly Cole, Kristinia DeBarge, Pop Star Sunday, The Landers Sisters
