RIP Modern Pop Music: 1960-2010
Ladies and gentlemen, it has finally happened. What has been often threatened with the release of every Ke$ha single or Katy Perry album has managed to come to fruition. There is no turning back from the destruction that we're about to deal with. Hold me.
Pop music is dead and Mike Posner is holding the smoking gun. The former Duke student became an out-of-nowhere success story earlier this year with Cooler Than Me, a top 10 single that had a fairly decent melody but quickly grew very very old. Of course, that meant that it would be run into the ground by radio, MTV, and the obnoxious people on my Facebook. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I figured I would try out 31 Minutes to Takeoff; I mean, nobody's first single is the best thing on their album, so I assumed I would find a guilty pleasure jam or two and be done with it.
Oh how wrong I was. Posner's debut album is one douchebag lyric after another, most evident on the wretched Cheated. In addition to an incredibly jarring chorus where he calls his cheating ex-girlfriend out of her name (and eventually says her full name toward the end of the song, saying this song is for her), it's got this gross Euro-trash gloss about it that he nasally whines over for a painful 3 minutes. I love a good kiss-off song and this same overall message has been done before, but the production sounds like a David Guetta ripoff and the vocals are too thin to really make much of a difference. Just when you think that maybe the previous track is a one-off bad track and just a part of his musical growing pains, we get Gone in September, where he details cheating on his girlfriend, how he only told her she was pretty to "score" with her, and his fall from being a "good guy" to the man you hear before you. Its got the strangest disconnect that I've heard in a minute; you'd think something like this would have a little bit of aggression, a little fire to it, but it's this very passive, beach-y midtempo that is decidedly pop-rock (the random keyboard blips try to tie it in with the rest of the album but they sound out of place). You just don't root for Mike Posner and he's never even captivating in a troubled anti-hero type of way, which is one of the most glaring faults of the album; he's not a good guy and it's difficult to keep listening to music from someone like that. Bow Chicka Bow Wow tries to be sexy but it comes off as pretty limp. Instead of, y'know, offering up anything resembling romantic lyricism or an emotive vocal, you get corny throwaway lines about Red Bull and teddy bears over a melody that I'm convinced was stolen from Justin Bieber's One Time. The production isn't half bad and could have been used by someone more original and with a better voice to create a halfway decent bedroom cut, but Posner's emotionless, unrightfully cocky Ray J-esque mumblings are all we're left with. Darn.
Delta 1406 is the closest thing that resembles a halfway decent track and it would be low quality on just about any of his peers' albums. The main positive is that the bravado from most of the record is pushed aside in favor of actual honest lyricism that reveals a little bit about who Mike Posner is. He's not a caricature here and it's quite refreshing, but he's again by far the least interesting thing on his own song. His gravelly rasp works better with the darker production, but he has some good lines that don't have as much impact as they would have with someone who knew how to project feelings. When I saw Boyz II Men on the tracklist for this album, I immediately grew scared; I know the trio has been off the pop culture radar for more than a few years, but I didn't want them to come back on just anybody's record. Déjà vu is not the proper venue for them to return; aside from their trademark harmonies on the alright intro, they're relegated to digitized back-up vocalists. Let that sink in. Boyz II Men. Back-up vocalists. Singing about "messing that sh-t all up". As I pick up the pieces after my head explodes from that fact, I have to say that they put Posner to shame, as he sounds lost and even more painfully thin than he does on the rest of the album. On this rather obvious ode to friends with benefits, Posner doesn't come off as the dangerous bad boy that he thinks of himself as; Déjà vu is awkward, poorly written, and a hot mess. Save Your Goodbye sounds like two or three different songs fused together. I can respect trying different musical combinations, but there's no continuity. I immediately cringed at the parts with just a piano for obvious reasons, but upon a few other listens, I think it would have been nice to actually hear him not have a lot of cushy production to hide behind. He again has next to no presence on the track and whatever shred of genuine emotion was possible gets swept under the pulsating bassline, obnoxious layering, and random blips and bleeps to never be heard from again.
Mike Posner has created the worst album of the year (that I've heard) in a cakewalk. There may have been worse records on the surface, but they know they're bad and revel in their trashiness; Mike Posner takes himself a little too seriously considering his vocal "abilities", lyrical content, and overall demeanor. Amping up the douchebag level to 148, Posner just isn't a likable presence and never brings any semblance of life or charisma to these songs. I could handle it if he was deficient in one area but managed to pick it up in others; if he's not the strongest singer in the world (which he's not, as he sounds like Ray J and Justin Bieber had a child, that child had tonsil surgery and then decided to try a singing career immediately after), that's more than fine. Just give me a good melody, some catchy lyricism, something. Alas, Posner seems content with the kind of frat boy posturing and generic production that will make this album rightfully forgotten about by the end of the year. I mean, the man made Boyz II Men sound bad. Boyz II Men. Need I say more?
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