One Republic - Dreaming out Loud
Sunday, February 24th, 2008
OneRepublic considers its music to be influenced by everyone from the Beatles to U2, and anything in between. “We’re no respector of genre,” says frontman Ryan Tedder, “If it’s a good song or a good artist whether rock, pop, indie or hip hop, they’ve probably influenced us on some level…nothing’s new under the sun, we’re a sum of a bunch of parts.” They aspire to move their listeners the way Bono does onstage. “You go to a U2 concert and it’s like church,” Tedder says. “I’d love to make people feel like that. I don’t want someone to just say, `Oh, nice voice, nice song.’ I want that person to walk away and feel like he or she has had a religious experience; we want them to feel moved.”
“I’m talkin’ ’bout things I know,” Mary J. Blige wails on “Work That,” the second single and opening track of Growing Pains. The album squeaked into 2007 too late to make best-of lists but otherwise would have stormed its way up several, for sure. She needn’t have hit us with such a pronouncement: In 16 songs that ring as remarkably, unflinchingly true as those on 2005’s landmark The Breakthrough, the queen of hip-hop soul keeps “keeping it real” a specialty. There’s no sense in trying to assign credit for the skin-tight grooves and funked-up retro vibe here; with nine producers padding Blige’s emotion-rich voice and the lyrics she so obviously lives by, what we’re left with is a melange of sounds. But it’s a measure of an artist who has mastered her own identity and left nothing to chance that this, her eighth studio album, comes off so free of wild cards and loose edges. “You ask what love feels like,” she sings on “What Love Is,” one of the disc’s less fierce tracks. “It feels like joy, and it feels like pain, and it feels like sunshine, and it feels like rain,” she continues, answering the question. The album feels the same way, a passel of complex feelings all wrapped up in love. No one knows struggle, heartache, and triumph over mediocrity like Blige.
For most of the great artists in musical history, there is more to their back catalog than just hit singles. In many cases, their album tracks stand out head and shoulders above what their label has designated as a hit. The Collections series digs deeper than just the Billboard chart singles and offers an assortment of hits and memorable album tracks that are just as worthy.
On Pocketful of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield sounds like Joss Stone only bouncier. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, the brightness and buoyancy of this record will keep it spinning long after CDs that shoot for hipster credibility–with funked-up bells and fancy production whistles–have been deposited back into their jewel cases for all eternity. Check it out: “Love Like This,” with Sean Kingston, puts its hands in the air for puppy love–the kind that’ll bring you back to your “middle school kiss”–and a couple of other songs follow the youth-themed suit. “Backyard” time-travels to an idyllic childhood, while “Freckles” fleshes out, for the benefit of the insecure, the beauty in imperfections. Elsewhere, Bedingfield is her indomitably upbeat self. Opener “Put Your Arms Around Me” reeks of reassurance and tenderness. “Happy” implores would-be gloom-and-doomers to snap out of it, and while the title track doesn’t wander all that far lyrically, it benefits from a chanted verse brimmed in (positive) attitude. The vibe, overall, is beach-blanket warm and blue-sky ready. Sunshine earns a pocketful, if not more, of pop-music props.
