Post by StevePulaski on Sept 22, 2014 17:06:47 GMT -5
Aaron Carter (1997)
By: Aaron Carter
By: Aaron Carter
Rating: ★½
Aaron Carter is such a curious chapter in pre-teen pop music, mainly because of how manufactured and structured his entire career appears to be. With four albums, multiple greatest hits albums (for a five year-long career at the top?), movie deals, and notable ubiquity in the late 1990's and early 2000's, few artists have gone on to live with such little relevance after their time in the spotlight. This past week, I've been devoted to name dropping Carter, mostly to my female friends, to hear them curiously reflect and laugh at their young selves, buying his albums and listening to his most famous tracks over and over again before growing up and developing taste (okay, devotion to the next big thing in music).
Aaron Carter's eponymous debut album is a stunningly awful stride through an endless array of cheesy love songs, sung by a, at the time, ten-year-old Carter, bringing a notable awkwardness to the table right up front. About seventy percent of the tracks found on Aaron Carter deal with love, finding love, or being in love, ideas and concepts we can tell, at the time, Carter knows little about. Songs like "I'm Gonna Miss You Forever" and "I Will Be Yours" boast a kind of self-identified, long-lost love quality that Carter couldn't possibly have at that age, and features concepts that are sung so vaguely and blandly that they have little identification whatsoever.
Carter hits passable fare when he ventures into more lively tracks like "Get Wild," which is almost ruined by the fact that it goes on nearly five minutes, and his ridiculous romanticism comes in handy with the album's highlight track "I'll Do Anything," which is buoyed by a solid flow and a catchy chorus. In addition, "One Bad Apple" carries a catchy melody, and Carter's higher-pitched voice makes one forget this song has been done in the past in a more sophisticated manner. With that, Carter's forty-five minute album is a tiresome retread of romantic cliches, only this time, ones that carry a certain feeling of insincerity be it they're sung by somebody who seems to be reading off of lyrics written by others rather than his own personal feelings and experiences.
Recommended tracks (in order): "One Bad Apple" and "I'll Do Anything."