Aaron Carter - "Oh Aaron"

[StevePulaski]

Oh Aaron (2001)
By: Aaron Carter

Rating: ★★½

Oh Aaron comes at a time when Aaron Carter's popularity was soaring through the roof. He had become a household name, his last album, Aaron's Party (Come Get It), sold like hotcakes, he gained an enormous amount of radio play, played sold out venues, cut deals with Nickelodeon, and so forth. If Nick Carter, his older, Backstreet brother, wasn't going to get him enough recognition, his "cute" imagine and dreamy lyrics were going to get him somewhere and Oh Aaron follows up two massive hits off his last album with more songs to add to his short but sweet discography.

Much to my surprise, Aaron's Party was a fun romp, straying greatly from that grating, ballady love-song image Carter attempted when he was ten-years-old off his debut album. Oh Aaron catches him when he's fourteen, singing about promising his pals tickets to see his older brother perform in the catchy "Oh Aaron," talking about that awkward intermediate age between not being too young to hear certain ideas but not old enough to understand them in "Not Too Young/Not Too Old," and boasting a familiar but favorable track about love and insatiable affection called "I'm All About You."

The other notable track here, mainly for its goofiness and ability to make one roll their eyes so much they develop a small headache, is "The Kid in You," where Carter tries ever so hard to relate to the youth of today, despite having more money than any of their parents' entire incomes combined. Carter talks lounging, watching Nickelodeon all day, running errands for his parents (again, like I asked in my review of Aaron's Party, in what car?), going to school, and blasting convention, favoring the idea about shouting "Marco Polo" in the pool all day rather than day-after-day of school. Preach, kid. Carter also says he plans to change this sort of ho-hum lifestyle when he gets older. Good luck with that one.

With that, the album bears such a bleeding sense of commercialization that it's hard to play along like it isn't there. Despite some infectious jams, Carter still feels about as tailored and modified from his original form, whatever that may be, as a prom tuxedo, and doesn't feel like he's always reading his own lyrics, especially during his frothy array of love songs. There's a biting lack of sincerity, that at least he could fake on Aaron's Party, and the amount of catchy, memorable tunes has considerably decreased as well. There's fun to be had here, thankfully because Carter's voice has assumed a state where it no longer feels strange to hear a kid eight years younger than me sing about things he has no idea about. Still, it'd be nice for a return to form, and by that I mean an album that at least capitalizes off of the pop-rap, teen-pop genre without seeming so cloying in its artificiality.

The album also ends with a shameless, minute and a half long plug about Carter's future projects, such as songs off the soundtrack to Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, which, take his word for it, is good on account of the sneak preview he caught, and his forthcoming DVD. Talk about an awkward end to an already vaguely awkward album.

Recommended tracks (in order): "Oh Aaron," "I'm All About You," "Come Follow Me," and "The Kid in You."