First of all, I wanna talk about the few compliments I have to give. The main one is that the overall sound & production style can be pretty good. While I wouldn’t say the melodies are as catchy or the instrumentation is as distinctive from track to track, for a lot of the time they’re at least serviceable. The rhythm sections at their best are tight, punchy & keep the songs going at aFirst of all, I wanna talk about the few compliments I have to give. The main one is that the overall sound & production style can be pretty good. While I wouldn’t say the melodies are as catchy or the instrumentation is as distinctive from track to track, for a lot of the time they’re at least serviceable. The rhythm sections at their best are tight, punchy & keep the songs going at a good pace. “Take Back the Night” was a fantastic choice for the lead single. It’s a smooth slice of late-70’s disco-funk that works in all departments. It’s a fun party song that does everything a fun party song can do right. It has that same natural coolness that made “Suit & Tie” another great first impression. The one other song I have nothing negative to say anything about is “Amnesia”, an effectively melancholy breakup song with some of the best lyrics on the whole album. The bluesy guitar riffs in “Only When I Walk Away” were also a great touch. Now onto the negatives…
I thought the first 20/20 was pretty good, if a little bloated or cheesy at times. The songwriting was solid for the most part & there was still a potentially great pop album with the core songs. But here, in most cases not even those are worth existing. The first big problem is the lyrics. There are extremely badly written corny metaphors for girls/sex/etc in nearly every song of the first half that just come off cheesy & forced. There’s no real creativity to be found in any of them. And when you take away the “symbolism” those first they're really boring in terms of subject matter, never going outside generic tropes of clubbing & sex. “Murder” actually had a fairly interesting concept going for it about a beautiful but deceptive girl that only sets out to break hearts. But that whole theme is undercut by the narrator happily giving in to her temptation. It really sends a mixed message as to what the listener is supposed to take from this song, made even worse with the cringe-worthy Yoko Ono/Beatles reference in the first few bars of Jay-Z’s verse. And “TKO” just feels awkwardly phoned-in. I’ve personally never been in the situation described in the song, but I find it too one-dimensional to come off authentic. “Amnesia” uses its figurative language to enhance the emotion being conveyed, which “TKO” fails to do all that well.
Also, this is a horribly unfocused album. In one song JT is a womanizing playboy, then in the next he’s on the innocent receiving end of a breakup, then in the next he’s reflecting on his current long-term relationship. All I see is either 1) an identity crisis of JT’s musical persona, or 2) a compilation of random outtakes from the first one. And after all the unabashed misogyny & douchey pickup lines, the album ends with 2 songs called “Not a Bad Thing” and “Pair of Wings” that try to portray him as some innocent nice-guy. The former is a generic love song void of personality that sounds like a bad N’SYNC outtake remixed for Radio Disney. And the latter finds JT trying both desperately & lazily to get the fangirls swooning (even though chances are he succeeded with that goal). For any of the little complaints I had about the lyrical content in the first one, it at least felt sincere a good majority of the time. This on the other hand is one painfully forced moment after the next. Case in point: “Drink You Away”, a lame attempt at country that finds JT embarrassingly out of his element. He seems to just grab at the lyrical theme’s default traits rather than actually being creative about it & making it his own.
The second big problem is the the song lengths. He said in an interview, “If Pink Floyd & Led Zeppelin & Queen can do 10-minute songs then why can’t we?” Look, the last thing I ever wanna do is put a versatile artist in a stylistic box, but it’s clear from quotes like this that he simply doesn’t know his creative strengths & weaknesses. These aren’t ambitious epics, but meandering messes that do nothing but slow down any momentum the 4 to 5-minute pop song before it had. He also said “we’ll decide the radio edits later”, which would make sense if these didn’t just sound like pop songs with boring, nauseatingly incessant nonsense tacked on to double the run time for no good reason. “Only When I Walk Away” (as well as a lot of other songs here) would’ve been perfect if it just stopped at around the 4 minute mark instead of devolving into endless repetition & annoying vocal splicing that only drags the song as a whole down. The worst case is “True Blood”, which goes on for 10 minutes, half of which has absolutely no reason to be there. You wanna make a long song? Go ahead. But don’t think ambitious experimentation means taking a good pop song & bloating it to the point where all appeal is lost. Basically this is easily my least favorite album of 2013 so far.
Top 3 tracks: Take Back the Night, Amnesia, Only When I Walk Away
Score: 39/100
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