The Sweet Escape
- Gwen Stefani
- Band Name: Gwen Stefani
- Record Label: Interscope
- Release Date: Dec 5, 2006
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It's the kind of album that drifts through '80s poolside jams and breathy trunk-bump bangers in all the best ways.
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80This album oozes wackiness.
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80Pharrell Williams' production and Stefani's fizzy personality make for an unexpected Christmas treat.
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There's such effortlessness in the confident pop music making here you get the sense she could keep knocking out hits this way in her sleep.
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70There is barely a note here that did not require a degree of bravery and chutzpah.
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70All spun together it works well, and maybe even better than on the debut. [16 Dec 2006]
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Few mainstream artists can hope to produce an album as wonderfully weird as The Sweet Escape.
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Ultimately, Stefani isn't convincing as a dissatisfied diva.
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65One step forward, three steps sideways, one step back, The Sweet Escape continues in Stefani's proud tradition of being caught somewhere between the vanguard and the insipid.
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60Delivers much of the same. [Feb 2007, p.86]
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60Stefani gets her groove back when she sticks to two essentials: sex and the Neptunes. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.88]
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If the dance production on The Sweet Escape were better, these hipster affectations would be easier to forgive, but they're not: they're canned and bland, which only accentuates Stefani's stiffness.
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60While The Sweet Escape is not as garishly over-the-top as its predecessor, Stefani maintains an admirably off-kilter sound, catchy yet electronically edgy. [Feb 2007, p.106]
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It's not that The Sweet Escape is an unwelcome diversion or that it comes too soon on the heels of Stefani's debut (it's been two full years), but it's starting to feel like No Doubt's future-you know, the one left in question after 2001's Rock Steady, the band's third consecutive creative zenith-is being squandered amidst all the solo stargazing.
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There is little here to delineate her above her far less interesting contemporaries, Fergie and Nelly Furtado, both of whom have presented fresher minted records this year.
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No one listens to Gwen Stefani to hear her rap. Or sing a sentimental power ballad. In fact, if there's a Gwen song that can't be described by putting two (or more) genres together, I'd suggest skipping it altogether.
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Identity is everything in pop, but the majority of this record serves only to bury what made Gwen Stefani unique in the first place.
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She's doing the same thing she did last time, except it's not as much fun.
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40The trouble is that in the two years since Love Angel Music Baby she doesn't seem to have moved on or evolved at all.
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40Erratic. [Feb 2007, p.126]
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40Escape's songwriting is woefully thin.
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Much of "The Sweet Escape" sounds forced and secondhand; it's one thing to emulate Madonna, another to be playing catchup with Fergie. [4 Dec 2006]
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The handful of [balalds] isn't enough, though, and vapid lyrics and cluttered beats on the rest of "The Sweet Escape" makes for musical heavy lifting.
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20Even Linda Perry, Swizz Beatz, Nellee Hooper and the Neptunes have their share of duff tracks, and it appears that's all they had to offer when Stefani came calling.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 47 out of 77
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Mixed: 8 out of 77
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Negative: 22 out of 77
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inad.10love this so much!!
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MaxImum0This album is so annoying! and so is Gwen Stefani.